Take thee a roll of a book
A roll of parchment, which being wrote on, and rolled up, was
called a book; but books, in those times, did not consist of
leaves cut and stitched together, and bound up, as our books are,
but sheets of parchments being written upon, were glued together,
and then rolled up; hence such writings were called volumes;
which name we still retain, and give to books, though the same
practice is not used: and write therein all the words that
I have spoken unto thee against
Israel, and against Judah;
for though Israel was carried captive before the times of
Jeremiah, and his prophecies were chiefly directed against Judah;
yet as there were some of the ten tribes mixed with them, they
were included in these prophecies, and therefore mentioned:
and against all the nations;
such as Egypt, Edom, Ammon, and Moab, ( Jeremiah
9:26 ) ; from the day that I spake unto thee, from the
days of Josiah, even unto
this day;
that is, from the time the Lord called him to prophesy in his
name, which was in, the thirteenth year of Josiah, who reigned
one and thirty years; and this being the fourth year of
Jehoiakim, it must be the three and twentieth year of his
prophesying, and the a course of full two and twenty years; see (
Jeremiah
1:2 ) ( 25:3 ) ; now
all the sermons, discourses, and prophecies, he had delivered out
against one and another, during this time, must all be written in
one roll or book, that that they might be read. Kimchi says their
Rabbins F14 would have it that this roll was
the book of the Lamentations, called by them "Megallah", or roll.