Wednesday, November 12, 2025
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: Jeremiah 36-44
Key Verse
Jeremiah 40:1 — “The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD, after that Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard had let him go from Ramah, when he had taken him being bound in chains among all that were carried away captive of Jerusalem and Judah, which were carried away captive unto Babylon.”
Devotional Thought
Jehoiakim sits in his winter house in the ninth month, a fire burning on the hearth before him, and as Jehudi reads the scroll three or four columns at a time, the king takes a scribe’s penknife and cuts off each section and casts it into the flames. This is one of the most vivid scenes in all of Scripture: a king who will not even argue with God’s word, only destroy it. In the ninth month, our own November, the days are short and the nights cold, and perhaps we feel the pull of that fireside. The temptation of Jehoiakim is not far from us. When the Word of God speaks of judgment we would rather not hear, or of obedience we would rather not render, we have our own penknives—the quiet dismissal, the postponed reading, the passage we skip because it cuts too near the bone.
Notice that the king’s burning accomplished nothing. The LORD simply told Jeremiah, “Take thee again another roll, and write in it all the former words,” and “there were added besides unto them many like words.” You cannot burn the truth out of existence. But notice also the courage of the lesser figures: Baruch the scribe, who wrote at Jeremiah’s mouth and read the scroll aloud in the LORD’s house; Michaiah, who carried the words to the princes; Elnathan, Delaiah, and Gemariah, who pleaded with the king not to burn the roll. And then Ebedmelech the Ethiopian, a foreigner and a eunuch, who alone went to the king on Jeremiah’s behalf when the prophet had sunk in the mire of Malchiah’s dungeon. God’s word finds bearers in the most unlikely places, and God’s care for His servant comes through the most unexpected hands.
Jeremiah’s path through these chapters is a long descent—from the court to the prison, from the prison to the dungeon, from the dungeon to the mire, where he sinks and waits. Yet even there the LORD hid him, and even there a deliverer came with old cast clouts and rotten rags to cushion the cords. Zedekiah, meanwhile, asks in secret, “Is there any word from the LORD?”—and then, hearing it, refuses to obey, fearing the mockery of men more than the judgment of God. How much of our own hesitation is exactly this: we want the word, but we fear what obedience will cost us before others.
The LORD told Jeremiah that His word was sent “It may be that the house of Judah will hear… that they may return every man from his evil way; that I may forgive their iniquity and their sin.” Even the warnings are mercy. The scroll was rewritten, longer than before, because God’s patience outlasts the fire. In this season of shortening days, let us not sit by the hearth with a penknife in hand, but with hearts soft enough to hear, and to return.
Reflection
- Is there a portion of God’s Word you have quietly cut away—avoided, explained down, or postponed—because obeying it would cost you before others?
- Like Ebedmelech, are you willing to speak up for a servant of God when it is inconvenient, or like Zedekiah, do you fear the mockery of men more than the judgment of God?
Prayer
O Lord, whose word endures when every scroll is burned and every king is gone, give us hearts that tremble at Your word rather than hands quick to cut it away. Forgive us for the passages we have skipped and the convictions we have softened because we feared men. Make us like Baruch, faithful to write and speak; like Ebedmelech, brave to plead for Your servants; and unlike Jehoiakim, unwilling to trade Your truth for the warmth of a fire. Hide us in Your mercy as You hid Jeremiah, and let Your word, rewritten and multiplied, find in us a willing hearing, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.