Baruch 1

1Now these are the words of the book written by Baruch, the son of Neriah, the son of Mahseiah, the son of Zedekiah, the son of Hasadiah, the son of Hilkiah, while in Babylon,

2in the fifth year, on the seventh day of the month, at the time the Chaldeans took Jerusalem and burned it with fire.

3And Baruch read the words of this book to Jechoniah the son of Joachim, king of Judah, and to all the people who came to hear the book:

4to the nobles and the sons of the kings, to the elders and all the people from small to great, and to everyone dwelling in Babylon by the river Sud.

5Then they wept and fasted and prayed before the Lord.

6They took up a collection of silver, as each was able to give,

7and sent it to Jerusalem to Joachim the high priest, son of Hilkiah, son of Salom, and to the priests and to all the people found with him in Jerusalem.

8At the same time, on the tenth day of the month Sivan, Baruch took the silver vessels of the house of the Lord fashioned by Zedekiah the son of Josiah, king of Judah, in order to return them to the land of Judah, those vessels previously taken away from the temple

9when Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away Jechoniah and the princes, along with the captives, the powerful men, and the people of the land, and had brought them from Jerusalem into exile in Babylon.

10And they said, 'Behold, we send you silver. With it, buy whole burnt offerings and sin offerings and incense, and prepare bread, and offer them upon the altar of the Lord our God.

11And pray for the life of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and his son Belshazzar, that their days on earth may be like the days of heaven.

12And the Lord will give us strength and enlighten our eyes, and we will live under the shelter of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and under the shelter of Belshazzar his son, and we will serve them for many days and find mercy in their sight.

13'Pray for us to the Lord our God, because we have sinned against the Lord our God. Even to this day the wrath of the Lord and His anger is not turned away from us.

14And you shall read this book which we are sending to you, in order to make confession in the house of the Lord on the feast days and on the solemn days.

15'And you shall say, 'To the Lord our God belongs righteousness, but for us shame is on our faces, as it is this day for the people of Judah and to those inhabiting Jerusalem,

16and for our kings, for our rulers, for our priests, for our prophets, and for our fathers,

17who have sinned before the Lord.

18We have disobeyed Him and have refused to heed the voice of the Lord our God, to walk in the ordinances of the Lord, which He gave to us openly.

19Since the day the Lord led our fathers out of the land of Egypt until this day, we have been disobedient toward Him and neglected to heed His voice.

20'So to this day evils cling to us, even the curse which the Lord set forth through His servant Moses in the day He led our fathers out of the land of Egypt to give us the land flowing with milk and honey.

21We did not heed the voice of the Lord our God in all the words of the prophets whom He sent to us.

22Instead, each one has followed the imaginations of his own wicked heart, to serve strange gods and to do evil deeds in the sight of the Lord our God.