The people call a fast before the Lord in the fifth year of the ninth month of Jehoiakim’s reign. This is about two months after Jeremiah called Baruch to help him write the scroll. Baruch reads the scroll in the house of the Lord, in the chamber of Gemariah the son of Shaphan the secretary, which was in the upper court, at the entry of the New Gate of the Lord’s house.
It was Shaphan who read the scroll that was discovered in the temple during the reign of Josiah (2 Kings 22:3–23:3). His son Gemariah is an official in Jehoiakim’s government. Gemariah appears to be sympathetic to Jeremiah and allows Baruch to read Jeremiah’s scroll in his chamber. The chamber was in the upper court, and so people gathered for the fast in the temple courtyard below would hear and see Baruch as he read.1
9 In the fifth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, in the ninth month, all the people in Jerusalem and all the people who came from the cities of Judah to Jerusalem proclaimed a fast before the LORD.