** The date given in Jer. xxxvi. 9 makes the year begin in spring, since the ninth month occurs in winter; this date belongs, therefore, to the later recensions of the text.  It is nevertheless probably authentic, representing the exact equivalent of the original date according to the old calendar.

Micaiah, the son of Gremariah, was among those who listened, and noting that the audience were moved by the denunciations which revived the memory of their recent misfortunes, he hastened to inform the ministers sitting in council within the palace of what was passing.  They at once sent for Baruch, and begged him to repeat to them what he had read.  They were so much alarmed at its recital, that they advised him to hide himself in company with Jeremiah, while they informed the king of the matter.  Jehoiakim was sitting in a chamber with a brazier burning before him on account of the severe cold:  scarcely had they read three or four pages before him when his anger broke forth; he seized the roll, slashed it with the scribe’s penknife, and threw the fragments into the fire.  Jeremiah recomposed the text from memory, and inserted in it a malediction against the king.  “Thus saith the Lord concerning Jehoiakim, King of Judah:  He shall have none to sit upon the throne of David:  and his dead body shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the night to the frost.  And I will punish him and his seed and his servants for their iniquity:  and I will bring upon them, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and upon the men of Judah, all the evil that I have pronounced against them; but they hearkened not."*

* Jer. xxxvi.  Attempts have been made to reconstruct the contents of Jeremiah’s roll, and most of the authors who have dealt with this subject think that the roll contained the greater part of the fragments which, in the book of the prophet, occupy chaps, i. 4-11, ii., iii. 1-5, 19-25, iv.- vi., vii., viii., ix. 1-21, x. 17-25, xi., xii. 1-6, xvii. 19-27, xviii., xix. 1-13, which it must be admitted have not in every case been preserved in their original form, but have been abridged or rearranged after the exile.  Other chapters evidently belong to the years previous to the fifth year of Jehoiakim, as well as part of the prophecies against the barbarians, but they could not have been included in the original roll, as the latter would then have been too long to have been read three times in one day.

The Egyptian tendencies evinced at court, at first discreetly veiled, were now accentuated to such a degree that Nebuchadrezzar became alarmed, and came in person to Jerusalem in the year 601.  His presence frustrated the intrigues of Pharaoh.  Jehoiakim was reduced to order for a time, but three years later he revolted afresh at the instigation of Necho, and this time the Chaldaean satraps opened hostilities in earnest.  They assembled their troops, which were reinforced by Syrian, Moabite, and Ammonite contingents, and laid siege to Jerusalem.*