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Jeremiah Persecuted by Pashhur

Now the priest Pashhur son of Immer, who was chief officer in the house of the L ord, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things. ²Then Pashhur struck the prophet Jeremiah, and put him in the stocks that were in the upper Benjamin Gate of the house of the L ord. ³The next morning when Pashhur released Jeremiah from the stocks, Jeremiah said to him, The L ord has named you not Pashhur but “Terror-all-around.” ⁴For thus says the L ord: I am making you a terror to yourself and to all your friends; and they shall fall by the sword of their enemies while you look on. And I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon; he shall carry them captive to Babylon, and shall kill them with the sword. ⁵I will give all the wealth of this city, all its gains, all its prized belongings, and all the treasures of the kings of Judah into the hand of their enemies, who shall plunder them, and seize them, and carry them to Babylon. ⁶And you, Pashhur, and all who live in your house, shall go into captivity, and to Babylon you shall go; there you shall die, and there you shall be buried, you and all your friends, to whom you have prophesied falsely.

Jeremiah Denounces His Persecutors

O L ord, you have enticed me,

and I was enticed;

you have overpowered me,

and you have prevailed.

I have become a laughingstock all day long;

everyone mocks me.

For whenever I speak, I must cry out,

I must shout, “Violence and destruction!”

For the word of the L ord has become for me

a reproach and derision all day long.

If I say, “I will not mention him,

or speak any more in his name,”

then within me there is something like a burning fire

shut up in my bones;

I am weary with holding it in,

and I cannot.

For I hear many whispering:

“Terror is all around!

Denounce him! Let us denounce him!”

All my close friends

are watching for me to stumble.

“Perhaps he can be enticed,

and we can prevail against him,

and take our revenge on him.”

But the L ord is with me like a dread warrior;

therefore my persecutors will stumble,

and they will not prevail.

They will be greatly shamed,

for they will not succeed.

Their eternal dishonor

will never be forgotten.

O L ord of hosts, you test the righteous,

you see the heart and the mind;

let me see your retribution upon them,

for to you I have committed my cause.

Sing to the L ord;

praise the L ord!

For he has delivered the life of the needy

from the hands of evildoers.

Cursed be the day

on which I was born!

The day when my mother bore me,

let it not be blessed!

Cursed be the man

who brought the news to my father, saying,

“A child is born to you, a son,”

making him very glad.

Let that man be like the cities

that the L ord overthrew without pity;

let him hear a cry in the morning

and an alarm at noon,

because he did not kill me in the womb;

so my mother would have been my grave,

and her womb forever great.

Why did I come forth from the womb

to see toil and sorrow,

and spend my days in shame?

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

He then adds, My mother might have been my grave; ¹⁸¹⁸     Our version seems right in rendering the ו in this sentence or; and so it ought to be rendered in the previous verse, otherwise there is an inconsistency in representing a man destroyed, and hearing an outcry, etc. The two verses may be thus rendered, —
   16. And let that man be like the cities Which Jehovah overturned and repented not; Or a hearer of an outcry in the morning And of tumult at noon-tide.
   17. Why not slay me did he from the womb? Or become to me did my mother my grave, And her womb a perpetual conception?
   The last words are, literally, “a conception of perpetuity,” — the Vulg. has, “an eternal conception,” — the Syr., “a perpetual conception.” Then the next verse is as follows, —
   18. For what purpose has this been? From the womb I came forth To see labor and sorrow, And spent in shame are my days.
   — Ed. that is, “This light and life I value not; why then did I not die in my mother’s womb? and why did she conceive me?” Then he says, Why came I forth from the womb that I might see trouble and sorrow, and that my days. might be consumed in, reproach? Here he gives a reason why he was wearied of life; but he could not have been cleared on this account, nor ought he to be so at this day; for what just cause can we have to contend with God? Jeremiah was created to sorrow and trouble: this is the condition of all; why, then, should God be blamed? his days were spent in reproach: there was nothing new in his case; for many who have received an honorable testimony from God had suffered many wrongs and reproaches. Why, then, did he not look to them as examples, that he might bear with patience and resignation what had happened to other holy men? but he seemed as though he wished to appear as it were in public, that he might proclaim his disgrace, not only to his own age, but to every age to the end of the world.

At the same time we must remember the object he had in view; for the Prophet, as we have said, was not seized with this intemperate spirit after he had given thanks to God, and exulted as a conqueror, but before; and in order to amplify the grace of God in delivering him as it were from hell itself, into which he had plunged himself, he mentioned what had passed through his mind. The drift of the whole description seems to be this, — “I was lost, and my mind could conceive nothing but what was bitter, and with a full mouth I vomited forth poison and blasphemies against God.” What the Prophet then had here in view, was to render more conspicuous the kindness of God in bringing him to light from so deep an abyss.

A similar mode of speaking is found in the third chapter of Job. But Job had not the reason which, as we have said, Jeremiah had; for Jeremiah was not influenced by any private grief when carried away by all insane impulse to speak against God. Whence, then, was his great grief? even because he saw he was despised by the people, and that the whole of religion was esteemed by them as nothing: in short, he saw that the state of things was quite hopeless. He was, then, inflamed with zeal for God’s glory; and he also was extremely grieved at the irreclaimable wickedness of the people; but Job had only a respect to his own sufferings. There was, therefore, a great difference between Job and Jeremiah; and yet we know that both were endowed, as it were, with angelic virtue, for Job is named as one of three just men, who seemed to have been elevated above all mankind; and Jeremiah, if a comparison be made, was in this instance more excusable than Job; and yet we see that they were both inflamed with so unreasonable a grief, that they spared neither God nor man.

Let us then learn to check our feelings, that they may not break out thus unreasonably. Let us at the same time know that God’s servants, though they may excel in firmness, are yet not wholly divested of their corruptions. And should it happen at any time to us to feel such emotions within us, let not such a temptation discourage us; but as far as we can and as God gives us grace, let us strive to resist it, until the firmness of our faith at length gains the ascendency, as we see was the case with Jeremiah. For when overwhelmed with such a confusion of mind as to lie down as it were dead in hell itself, he was yet restored, as we have seen, to such a soundness of mind, that he afterwards courageously executed his own office, and also gloried, according to what we observed yesterday, in the help of God. Let us proceed, —

¹⁸ Our version seems right in rendering the ו in this sentence or; and so it ought to be rendered in the previous verse, otherwise there is an inconsistency in representing a man destroyed, and hearing an outcry, etc. The two verses may be thus rendered, — 16. And let that man be like the cities Which Jehovah overturned and repented not; Or a hearer of an outcry in the morning And of tumult at noon-tide. 17. Why not slay me did he from the womb? Or become to me did my mother my grave, And her womb a perpetual conception? The last words are, literally, “a conception of perpetuity,” — the Vulg. has, “an eternal conception,” — the Syr., “a perpetual conception.” Then the next verse is as follows, — 18. For what purpose has this been? From the womb I came forth To see labor and sorrow, And spent in shame are my days. — Ed.