18. Baruch answered, “He dictated everything to me, and I wrote it on the scroll in ink.”
19. The officials said to Baruch, “You and Jeremiah must hide. Don’t let anyone know where you are.”
20. After they put the scroll in the side room of the scribe Elishama, they went to the king in the courtyard and told him everything.
21. Then the king sent Jehudi to get the scroll. He took the scroll from the side room of the scribe Elishama. Jehudi read it to the king and all the officials standing by the king.
22. It was the ninth month, and the king was in his winter house sitting in front of the fire in the fireplace.
23. As Jehudi read three or four columns, the king would cut them off with a scribe’s knife and throw them into the fire in the fireplace. He did this until the whole scroll was burned up.
24. The king and all his attendants didn’t show any fear or tear their clothes in fear when they heard everything being read.
25. Even when Elnathan, Delaiah, and Gemariah urged the king not to burn the scroll, he refused to listen to them.
26. The king commanded Jerahmeel (the king’s son), Seraiah (son of Azriel), and Shelemiah (son of Abdeel) to arrest the scribe Baruch and the prophet Jeremiah. But the Lord had hidden Baruch and Jeremiah.
27. After the king burned up the scroll that Baruch had written and that Jeremiah had dictated, the Lord spoke his word to Jeremiah. He said,
28. “Take another scroll, and write on it everything that was written on the scroll that King Jehoiakim of Judah burned.
29. Say about King Jehoiakim of Judah, ‘This is what the Lord says: You burned this scroll, and you asked Jeremiah, “Why did you write that the king of Babylon will certainly come to destroy this land and take away people and animals?”
30. This is what the Lord says about King Jehoiakim of Judah: He will have no one to sit on David’s throne, and his own corpse will be thrown out and exposed to the heat of day and the cold of night.