Jehudi

Jehudi was an official of Jehoiakim's court who read the scroll of Jeremiah's prophecies aloud to the king as it was unrolled, and whom the king sent to retrieve the scroll from Baruch (Jeremiah 36:14, 21). As Jehudi read each three or four columns, Jehoiakim cut them off with a penknife and threw them into the fire — a deliberate, contemptuous destruction of the prophetic word.

Jehudi's role is that of an unwitting instrument in one of the most dramatic scenes of prophetic history: the burning of Jeremiah's scroll. His name means "a Jew" or "belonging to Judah" and his genealogy is traced four generations back (Jeremiah 36:14), suggesting he was a notable court figure. The episode immediately provokes God's command to Jeremiah to dictate a new scroll — and to add further judgments against Jehoiakim who had burned the first.