1And Pashhur son of Immer the priest—he was the chief official in the house of the LORD—heard Jeremiah prophesying these things. 2And Pashhur struck Jeremiah and put him in the stocks that were in the upper Benjamin Gate which was in the house of the LORD. 3And it happened on the morrow that Pashhur let Jeremiah out of the stocks, and Jeremiah said to him, “Not Pashhur has the LORD called your name but Terror-All-Around. 4For thus said the LORD: I am about to give you over to terror, you and all who love you, and they shall fall by the sword of your enemies, with your own eyes beholding, and all Judah will I give into the hand of the king of Babylonia, and he shall exile them to Babylonia and strike them down with the sword. 5And I will give all that is stored in this city and all its gain and all its precious stuff and all the treasures of the king of Judah I will give into the hand of their enemies, and they shall plunder them and take them and bring them to Babylonia. 6As for you, Pashhur, and as for all who dwell in your house, you shall go away in captivity and come to Babylonia, and there you shall die, you and all who love you, as you have prophesied lies to them.
7You enticed me, O LORD, and I was enticed.
You were stronger than I, and You prevailed.
I became a laughingstock all day long,
all of them mocking me.
8For whenever I spoke, I screamed.
“Outrage and violence,” I called.
For the word of the LORD became to me
disgrace and contempt all day long.
9And I thought, “I will not recall Him,
nor will I speak anymore in His name.”
But it was in my heart like burning fire
shut up in my bones,
and I could not hold it in,
I was unable.
10For I heard the slander of many;
All my intimates
watch for my fall:
“Perhaps he will be enticed and we shall prevail over him,
and we shall take our revenge of him.”
11But the LORD is with me as a fierce warrior,
so my pursuers shall stumble and shall not prevail.
They shall be utterly shamed, for they shall not succeed,
everlasting disgrace that shall not be forgotten.
12LORD of Armies, probing the righteous,
Who sees the conscience and the heart,
let me see Your vengeance against them,
for to You I laid out my case.
13Sing to the LORD,
praise the LORD,
for he has saved the life of the needy
from the hand of evildoers.
14Cursed the day that I was born,
the day my mother bore me,
let it not be blessed.
15Cursed the man who brought tidings
to my father, saying,
“A male child is born to you,”
16And let that man be like the towns
that the LORD overturned and did not relent.
And let him hear screams in the morning,
and battle shouts at the hour of noon.
17Because he did not kill me in the womb,
that my mother could be my grave
and her womb pregnant for all time.
18Why from the womb did I come out
to see wretchedness and sorrow,
and my days end in shame?
CHAPTER 20 NOTES
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2. struck. This might be merely a slap in the face, but the verb used also could mean “beat.”
the stocks. The noun mahpekhet is some sort of device of confinement and perhaps also torture. Because it derives from a verbal stem that means “overturn,” some have conjectured that it might be stocks in which a person is locked upside down. In any case, it is clear that Jeremiah undergoes very rough treatment at the hands of this establishment priest. But when he is freed, he remains unflinchingly defiant.
4. all who love you. The Hebrew term suggests both intimate friends and family.
7. You enticed me, O LORD, and I was enticed. The switch to poetry here signals the beginning of a new prophecy. Its urgent autobiographical content is a trait that sets Jeremiah apart from the other prophets. The verb represented as “enticed” could also mean “seduced” in the sexual sense. Jeremiah was drawn into his prophetic calling because he heard God addressing him, but prophecy has brought him nothing but misery, as the harsh treatment at the hands of Pashhur that was just reported painfully illustrates.
You were stronger than I, and You prevailed. The language here harbors an oblique hint of rape, as in the report of the rape of Tamar in 2 Samuel 13:14.
8. Outrage and violence. These are the conventional words shouted by someone being attacked by thieves or hooligans.
9. But it was in my heart like burning fire. The resolution to withdraw from prophecy cannot, to Jeremiah’s great anguish, be sustained because God’s word—which is to say, the overriding imperative to denounce the crimes of the people and warn them of the impending disaster—is so powerful that he cannot hold it in: it bursts forth from him like flames.
10. Terror all around. The words he has used in denouncing Passhur and predicting the imminent destruction are mockingly quoted by the people of Jerusalem.
Tell, let us tell on him. This is a literal rendering of the Hebrew: what they have in mind is to inform against Jeremiah, identifying him as a traitor for his prophecies of doom.
Perhaps he will be enticed and we shall prevail over him. These two verbs pointedly repeat the beginning of Jeremiah’s personal complaint against God, which of course, they could not have heard. This is a very different enticement—an intent to draw Jeremiah into making statements that could be judged to be treasonous and thus cause him to be arrested and perhaps executed.
11. But the LORD is with me as a fierce warrior. This does not really contradict the opening lines of the poem. God has enticed the prophet to take up a calling that entails endless anguish, but this same God—after all, a God of truth and justice—will defend him against his malevolent enemies.
14. Cursed the day that I was born. This is surely the beginning of a new poem of complaint because the preceding verses are a confident proclamation that God will defend the oppressed. The language of this poem throughout is strikingly similar to the death-wish poem in Job 3. The similarities are so extensive that one must conclude that the Job poet, writing more than a century after Jeremiah, was familiar with this text and reworked it—brilliantly, it must be said—for his own purposes.
15. giving him great joy. The tone is bitterly sardonic: of course, the father would rejoice to hear that his wife had born him a son, but for the prophet that the infant has grown up to become, there is no scintilla of joy in the fact of his birth.
16. And let that man be like the towns / that the LORD overturned. The towns are Sodom and Gomorrah, with the verb “overturned,” regularly used in connection with the cities of the plain, a clue to their identity. Jeremiah’s anger at being born into a destiny of anguish is poetically displaced onto the man who brought the tidings of his birth, whom he curses.
18. Why from the womb did I come out / to see wretchedness and sorrow. The first verset appears in Job 3:11 in what looks like an approximate quotation. The noun “wretchedness,” ʿamal, becomes a signature term in Job.