Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Jeremiah 20:1
Now Pashur the son of Immer the priest, who [was] also chief governor in the house of the LORD, heard that Jeremiah prophesied these things.
Jer 20:1 . Now Pashhur the son of Immer the priest ] The name seems to have been a common one. In Jer 21:1 and Jer 38:1 a P. “son of Malchiah” is mentioned, and in the latter v. we find a third (possibly, however, identical with the present one), who was father of Gedaliah. Doubt has been thrown on the authentic character of this passage, inasmuch as in later times Immer (Ezr 2:37; Ezr 10:20; Neh 7:40; Neh 11:13) and apparently Pashhur (see on Ezr 2:38 in C.B.) were the names of priestly families, while in Jeremiah they are personal names. Moreover, since in b.c. 537 the priestly house of Immer was 1052 strong (Ezr 2:37 and so Neh 7:40), it cannot have been named after the father of this P. But “son of Immer,” as Co. points out, may only mean a member of the family named after him as ancestor. Du. maintains that there is no room for the P. of the text here, as Jer 29:26 shews that the predecessor of the Zephaniah, there mentioned as holding the same office, was not P. but Jehoiada. Erbt, on the other hand, points out that the office need not be the same, for in Jer 52:24 we find that Zephaniah is but one of several officers of the Temple, and so, at the time to which Jer 29:26 belongs, may have been the chief of the three “keepers of the door,” and not successor to the office here held by Pashhur.
chief officer ] lit. overseer, ruler, but the latter word in MT. “is probably a gloss, identifying Jeremiah’s ‘overseer’ (see Jer 29:26) with the ‘ruler’ often mentioned in later times in connexion with the Temple, 1Ch 9:11 (= Neh 11:11); 2Ch 31:13 ; 2Ch 35:8.” Dr.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Pashur, the father probably of the Gedaliah mentioned in Jer 38:1, was the head of the 16th course (shift) of priests (marginal reference); the other Pashur Jer 21:1 belonged to the fifth course, the sons of Melchiah. Both these houses returned in great strength from the exile. See Ezr 2:37-38.
Chief governor – Or, deputy governor. The Nagid or governer of the temple was the high priest 1Ch 9:11, and Pashur was his Pakid, i. e., deputy (see Jer 1:10 note). Zephaniah held this office Jer 29:26, and his relation to the high priest is exactly defined 2Ki 25:18; Jer 52:24. The Nagid at this time was Seraiah the high priest, the grandson of Hilkiah, or (possibly) Azariah, Hilkiahs son and Jeremiahs brother 1Ch 6:13, Ezr 7:1.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
CHAPTER XX
Jeremiah, on account of his prophesying evil concerning Judah
and Jerusalem, is beaten and imprisoned by Pashur, chief
governor of the temple, 1, 2.
On the following day the prophet is released, who denounces the
awful judgments of God which should fall upon the governor and
all his house, as well as upon the whole land of Judah, in the
approaching Babylonish captivity, 3-6.
Jeremiah then bitterly complains of the reproaches continually
heaped upon him by his enemies; and, in his haste, resolves to
speak no more in the name of Jehovah; but the word of the Lord
is in his heart as a burning flame, so that he is not able to
forbear, 7-10.
The prophet professes his trust in God, whom he praises for his
late deliverance, 11-13.
The remaining verses, which appear to be out of their place,
contain Jeremiah’s regret that he was ever born to a life of so
much sorrow and trouble, 14-18.
This complaint resembles that of Job; only it is milder and
more dolorous. This excites our pity, that our horror. Both are
highly poetical, and embellished with every circumstance that
can heighten the colouring. But such circumstances are not
always to be too literally understood or explained. We must
often make allowances for the strong figures of eastern poetry.
NOTES ON CHAP. XX
Verse 1. Pashur – chief governor] Pashur was probably one of the chief priests of the twenty-four classes.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The course of Immer was the sixteenth course of the priests, as we read in 1Ch 24:14.
Pashur was his son, that is, descended from him through many generations. It is neither much material for us to know, nor very easy to determine, in what sense he is called the
chief governor of the temple, whether he was deputy to the high priest, or the head of his course, which at that time waited in the temple, or had some place as captain of the temple, to take notice of any disorders should be committed there, contrary to the law. Certain it is he was no high priest, for then he could not have been one of the course of Immer.
Heard that Jeremiah prophesied these things; either he heard Jeremiah himself, (which is most probable,) or somebody told him what Jeremiah had prophesied in the temple, which was within his charge and jurisdiction.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1. sondescendant.
of Immerone of theoriginal “governors of the sanctuary and of the house of God,”twenty-four in all, that is, sixteen of the sons of Eleazar and eightof the sons of Ithamar (1Ch24:14). This Pashur is distinct from Pashur, son of Melchiah(Jer 21:1). The “captains”(Lu 22:4) seem to have beenover the twenty-four guards of the temple, and had only the right ofapprehending any who were guilty of delinquency within it; butthe Sanhedrim had the judicial power over such delinquents[GROTIUS] (Jer 26:8;Jer 26:10; Jer 26:16).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Now Pashur the son of Immer the priest,…. Not the immediate son of Immer, but one that descended from him after many generations; for Immer was a priest in David’s time, to whom the sixteenth course of the priests fell by lot, 1Ch 24:14;
who [was] also chief governor in the house of the Lord; the temple; not the high priest, since he was of the course of Immer; perhaps he was the head of the course to which he belonged, the chief of the priests of that course. The Targum calls him the “sagan” of the priests. There was such an officer, who was called the “sagan” or deputy to the high priest, who upon certain occasions acted for him; and some think that this man was in the same office; though others take him to be the same with the captain of the temple, Ac 4:1. Who
heard that Jeremiah prophesied these things; some that heard him in the court of the temple prophesying of the evil that should come upon the city, and places adjacent to it, went and told the chief governor of it. Though the words may be rendered, “now Pashur heard u—-Jeremiah prophesying these things”; he heard him himself; either he was one of the ancients of the priests that went with him to Tophet, and heard him there; or, however, when he came from thence, and stood and prophesied in the court of the temple, he heard him.
u “audivit autem”, Paschchurus, Schmidt; “audiens autem”, Paschhur, Junius & Tremellius, Piscator.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
| The Sin and Doom of Pashur. | B. C. 600. |
1 Now Pashur the son of Immer the priest, who was also chief governor in the house of the LORD, heard that Jeremiah prophesied these things. 2 Then Pashur smote Jeremiah the prophet, and put him in the stocks that were in the high gate of Benjamin, which was by the house of the LORD. 3 And it came to pass on the morrow, that Pashur brought forth Jeremiah out of the stocks. Then said Jeremiah unto him, The LORD hath not called thy name Pashur, but Magor-missabib. 4 For thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will make thee a terror to thyself, and to all thy friends: and they shall fall by the sword of their enemies, and thine eyes shall behold it: and I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall carry them captive into Babylon, and shall slay them with the sword. 5 Moreover I will deliver all the strength of this city, and all the labours thereof, and all the precious things thereof, and all the treasures of the kings of Judah will I give into the hand of their enemies, which shall spoil them, and take them, and carry them to Babylon. 6 And thou, Pashur, and all that dwell in thine house shall go into captivity: and thou shalt come to Babylon, and there thou shalt die, and shalt be buried there, thou, and all thy friends, to whom thou hast prophesied lies.
Here is, I. Pashur’s unjust displeasure against Jeremiah, and the fruits of that displeasure, Jer 20:1; Jer 20:2. This Pashur was a priest, and therefore, one would think, should have protected Jeremiah, who was of his own order, a priest too, and the more because he was a prophet of the Lord, whose interests the priests, his ministers, ought to consult. But this priest was a persecutor of him whom he should have patronized. He was the son of Immer; that is, he was of the sixteenth course of the priests, of which Immer, when these courses were first settled by David, was father (1 Chron. xxiv. 14), as Zechariah was of the order of Abiah, Luke i. 5. Thus this Pashur is distinguished from another of the same name mentioned ch. xxi. 1, who was of the fifth course. This Pashur was chief governor in the temple; perhaps he was only so pro tempore–for a short period, the course he was head of being now in waiting, or he was suffragan to the high priest, or perhaps captain of the temple or of the guards about it. Acts iv. 1. This was Jeremiah’s great enemy. The greatest malignity to God’s prophets was found among those that professed sanctity and concern for God and the church. We cannot suppose that Pashur was one of those ancients of the priests that went with Jeremiah to the valley of Tophet to hear him prophesy, unless it were with a malicious design to take advantage against him; but, when he came into the courts of the Lord’s house, it is probable that he was himself a witness of what he said, and so it may be read (v. 1), He heard Jeremiah prophesying these things. As we read it, the information was brought to him by others, whose examinations he took: He heard that Jeremiah prophesied these things, and could not bear it, especially that he should dare to preach in the courts of the Lord’s house, where he was chief governor, without his leave. When power in the church is abused, it is the most dangerous power that can be employed against it. Being incensed at Jeremiah, 1. He smote him, struck him with his hand or staff of authority. Perhaps it was a blow intended only to disgrace him, like that which the high priest ordered to be given to Paul (Acts xxiii. 2), he struck him on the mouth, and bade him hold his prating. Or perhaps he gave him many blows intended to hurt him; he beat him severely, as a malefactor. It is charged upon the husbandmen (Matt. xxi. 35) that they beat the servants. The method of proceeding here was illegal; the high priest, and the rest of the priests, ought to have been consulted, Jeremiah’s credentials examined, and the matter enquired into, whether he had an authority to say what he said. But these rules of justice are set aside and despised, as mere formalities; right or wrong, Jeremiah must be run down. The enemies of piety would never suffer themselves to be bound by the laws of equity. 2. He put him in the stocks. Some make it only a place of confinement; he imprisoned him. It rather seems to be an instrument of closer restraint, and intended to put him both to pain and shame. Some think it was a pillory for his neck and arms; others (as we) a pair of stocks for his legs: whatever engine it was, he continued in it all night, and in a public place too, in the high gate of Benjamin, which was in, or by, the house of the Lord, probably a gate through which they passed between the city and the temple. Pashur intended thus to chastise him, that he might deter him from prophesying; and thus to expose him to contempt and render him odious, that he might not be regarded if he did prophesy. Thus have the best men met with the worst treatment from this ungracious ungrateful world; and the greatest blessings of their age have been counted as the off-scouring of all things. Would it not raise a pious indignation to see such a man as Pashur upon the bench and such a man as Jeremiah in the stocks? It is well that there is another life after this, when persons and things will appear with another face.
II. God’s just displeasure against Pashur, and the tokens of it. On the morrow Pashur gave Jeremiah his discharge, brought him out of the stocks (v. 3); it is probable that he continued him there, in little-ease, as long as was usual to continue any in that punishment. And now Jeremiah has a message from God to him. We do not find that, when Pashur put Jeremiah in the stocks, the latter gave him any check for which he did; he appears to have quietly and silently submitted to the abuse; when he suffered, he threatened not. But, when he brought him out of the stocks, then God put a word into the prophet’s mouth, which would awaken his conscience, if he had any. For, when the prophet of the Lord was bound, the word of the Lord was not. What can we think Pashur aimed at in smiting and abusing Jeremiah? Whatever it is, we shall see by what God says to him that he is disappointed.
1. Did he aim to establish himself, and make himself easy, by silencing one that told him of his faults and would be likely to lessen his reputation with the people? He shall not gain this point; for, (1.) Though the prophet should be silent, his own conscience shall fly in his face and make him always uneasy. To confirm this he shall have a name given him, Magor-missabib–Terror round about, or Fear on every side. God himself shall give him this name, whose calling him so will make him so. It seems to be a proverbial expression, bespeaking a man not only in distress but in despair, not only in danger on every side (that a man may be and yet by faith may be in no terror, as David, Psa 3:6; Psa 27:3), but in fear on every side, and that a man may be when there appears no danger. The wicked flee when no man pursues, are in great gear where no fear is. This shall be Pashur’s case (v. 4): “Behold, I will make thee a terror to thyself; that is, thou shalt be subject to continual frights, and thy own fancy and imagination shall create thee a constant uneasiness.” Note, God can make the most daring sinner a terror to himself, and will find out a way to frighten those that frighten his people from doing their duty. And those that will not hear of their faults from God’s prophets, that are reprovers in the gate, shall be made to hear of them from conscience, which is a reprover in their own bosoms that will not be daunted nor silenced. And miserable is the man that is thus made a terror to himself. Yet this is not all; some are very much a terror to themselves, but they conceal it and seem to others to be pleasant; but, “I will make thee a terror to all thy friends; thou shalt, upon all occasions, express thyself with so much horror and amazement that all thy friends shall be afraid of conversing with thee and shall choose to stand aloof from thy torment.” Persons in deep melancholy and distraction are a terror to themselves and all about them, which is a good reason why we should be very thankful, so long as God continues to us the use of our reason and the peace of our consciences. (2.) His friends, whom he put a confidence in and perhaps studied to oblige in what he did against Jeremiah, shall all fail him. God does not presently strike him dead for what he did against Jeremiah, but lets him live miserably, like Cain in the land of shaking, in such a continual consternation that wherever he goes he shall be a monument of divine justice; and, when it is asked, “What makes this man in such a continual terror?” it shall be answered, “It is God’s hand upon him for putting Jeremiah in the stocks.” His friends, who should encourage him, shall all be cut off; they shall fall by the sword of the enemy, and his eyes shall behold it, which dreadful sight shall increase his terror. (3.) He shall find, in the issue, that his terror is not causeless, but that divine vengeance is waiting for him (v. 6); he and his family shall go into captivity, even to Babylon; he shall neither die before the evil comes, as Josiah, nor live to survive it, as some did, but he shall die a captive, and shall in effect be buried in his chains, he and all his friends. Thus far is the doom of Pashur. Let persecutors read it, and tremble; tremble to repentance before they be made to tremble to their ruin.
2. Did he aim to keep the people easy, to prevent the destruction that Jeremiah prophesied of, and by sinking his reputation to make his words fall to the ground? It is probable that he did; for it appears by v. 6 that he did himself set up for a prophet, and told the people that they should have peace. He prophesied lies to them; and because Jeremiah’s prophecy contradicted his, and tended to awaken those whom he endeavoured to rock asleep in their sins, therefore he set himself against him. But could he gain his point? No; Jeremiah stands to what he has said against Judah and Jerusalem, and God by his mouth repeats it. Men get nothing by silencing those who reprove and warn them, for the word will have its course; so it had here. (1.) The country shall be ruined (v. 4): I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon. It had long been God’s own land, but he will now transfer his title to it to Nebuchadnezzar, he shall be master of the country and dispose of the inhabitants so me to the sword and some to captivity, as he pleases, but none shall escape him. (2.) The city shall be ruined too, v. 5. The king of Babylon shall spoil that, and carry all that is valuable in it to Babylon. [1.] He shall seize their magazines and military stores (here called the strength of this city) and turn them against them. These they trusted to as their strength; but what stead could they stand them in when they had thrown themselves out of God’s protection, and when he who was indeed their strength had departed from them? [2.] He shall carry off all their stock in trade, their wares and merchandises, here called their labours, because it was what they laboured about and got by their labour. [3.] He shall plunder their fine houses, and take away their rich furniture, here called their precious things, because they valued them and set their hearts so much upon them. Happy are those who have secured to themselves precious things in God’s precious promises, which are out of the reach of soldiers. [4.] He shall rifle the exchequer, and take away the jewels of the crown and all the treasures of the kings of Judah. This was that instance of the calamity which was first of all threatened to Hezekiah long ago as his punishment for showing his treasures to the king of Babylon’s ambassadors, Isa. xxxix. 6. The treasury, they thought, was their defence; but that betrayed them, and became an easy prey to the enemy.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
JEREMIAH – CHAPTER 20
JEREMIAH’S IMPRISONMENT AND
COMPLAINT’
In this chapter one may clearly observe the testings, afflictions, perplexities, emotional openness, hopefulness, discouragements and despair of the man of God. Let those who are quick to condemn the prophet’s “failings” stop to consider that they would never have known of his frustrations but for his own candor. And let it also be recognized that Chapter 20 does not describe the moods of a single day. Rather, this appears to be a collection of complaints from various periods and experiences during Jeremiah’s prophetic ministry.
Vs. 1-5: JEREMIAH BEATEN AND IMPRISONED
1. Listening to Jeremiah’s prophecy in the temple court (Jer 19:14 -15) was Pashur, chief officer of the temple, and son of Immer, the priest, (1Ch 24:14; Ezr 2:37-38).
2. Infuriated by what he heard, Pashur reacted with violence, (vs. 2-3a;19).
a. He beat the prophet – quite possibly laying on the full 40 stripes, which was as much as the law allowed, (Jer 1:19; comp. 1Ki 22:27; 2Ch 16:10; 2Ch 24:20-21; Amo 7:10-13).
b. Then he had Jeremiah placed in stocks, near the north (Benjamin) gate of the inner court of the temple, as a spectacle and object of ridicule, (comp. Job 13:27; Jer 37:11-15; Jer 38:7-13; Act 16:34).
c. The next day, however, Pashur released the prophet from the stocks, (vs. 3a).
3. But Pashur was not yet finished with Jeremiah: the prophet was not so humiliated as to forget whose servant he was; thus, he took up the prophecy of the previous day and expanded it, (vs. 3b-6).
a. The Lord’s name for Pashur is a symbolic one: “Terror on Every Side” (vs. 10; Jer 6:25; La 2:22).
1) He will be a terror to himself and to all his friends, (vs. 4a; comp. Eze 26:21).
2) They will fall by the sword of their enemies, (vs. 4b).
3) And the eyes of Pashur will surely observe it all, (vs. 4c; comp. Jer 29:21-23; Jer 39:6-7).
4) For the first time, Jeremiah specifically names the King of Babylon as the enemy into whose hands the Lord will deliver the whole of Judah, (Jer 21:4-10; Jer 25:9) – some to be slain with the sword, and others to be taken captive to the land of the Chaldeans, (vs. 4b; Jer 13:19; Jer 52:24-27).
4. The treasures of Jerusalem, Judah and her kings will be given into the hands of the Babylonians and transported to a foreign land, (vs. 5; Jer 15:13-14; Jer 17:3-4; Jer 27:21-22; 2Ki 20:17-18; Isa 39:4-7).
5. The household of Pashur and all the friends, to whom he has prophesied falsely about the security of Jerusalem, will go into captivity together, (vs. 6; Jer 14:14; La 2:14; Amo 7:17; 2Pe 2:1); all of them will die and be buried in Babylon!
6. Let no one doubt that God’s faithfulness, in the execution of judgment threatened against unrepented sin, is as certain as His promise of blessing to obedience; whoever assumes that “all judgment is past for the Christian” assumes far more than the Word of God promises! (see Heb 10:26-30).
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
Jeremiah relates here what sort of reward he had received for his prophecy, — that he had been smitten and cast into prison, not by the king or by his courtiers, but by a priest who had the care of the Temple. It was a grievous and bitter trial when God’s servant found that he was thus cruelly treated by one of the sacred order, who was of the same tribe, and his colleague; for the priests who were then in office had not been without right appointed, for God had chosen them. As, then, their authority was founded on the Law and on God’s inviolable decree, Jeremiah might well have been much terrified; for this thought might have occurred to him, — “What can be the purpose of God? for he has set priests of the tribe of Levi over his Temple and over his whole people. Why, then, does he not rule them by his Spirit? Why does he not render them fit for their office?
Why does he suffer his Temple, and the sacred office which he so highly commends to us in his Law, to be thus profaned? or why, at least, does he not stretch forth his hand to defend me, who am also a priest, and sincerely engaged in my calling?” For we know that God commands in his Law, as a proof that the priests had supreme power, that whosoever disobeyed them should be put to death.
(Deu 17:12.) “Since, then, it was God’s will to endue the priests with so much authority and power, why therefore did he not guide them by his grace, that they might faithfully execute the office committed to them?”
Nor was Jeremiah alone moved and shaken by this trial, but all who then truly worshipped God. Small, indeed, was the number of the godly; but there was surely no one who was not astonished at such a spectacle as this.
Pashur was not the chief priest, though he was of the first order of priests; and it is probable that Immer, his father, was the high priest, and that he was his vicar, acting in his stead as the ruler of the Temple. (4) However this may have been, he was no doubt superior, not only to the Levites, but also to the other priests of his order. Now this person, being of the same order and family, rose up against Jeremiah, and not only condemned in words a fellow-priest, but treated him outrageously, for he smote the Prophet. This was unworthy of his station, and contrary to the rights of sacred fellowship; for if the cause of Jeremiah was bad, yet a priest ought to have pursued a milder course; he might have cast him into prison, that if found guilty, he might afterwards be condemned. But to smite him was not the act of a priest, but of a tyrant, of a ruffian, or of a furious man.
We may hence learn in what a disorder things were at that time; for in a well-ordered community the judge does not leap from his tribunal in order to strike a man, though he might deserve a hundred deaths, as regard ought to be had to what is lawful. Now, if a judge, whom God has armed with the sword, ought not thus to give vent to his wrath and without discretion use the sword, it is surely a thing wholly inconsistent with the office of a priest. Then the state of things must have been then in very great disorder, when a priest thus disgraced himself. And from his precipitant rage we may also gather that good men were then very few. He had been chosen to preside over the Temple; he must then have excelled others not only as to his station, but also in public esteem and in the possession of some kind of virtues. But we see how he was led away by the evil spirit.
These things we ought carefully to consider, for it happens sometimes that great commotions arise in the Church of God, and those who ought to be moderators are often carried away by a blind and, as it were, a furious zeal. We may then stumble, and our faith may wholly fail us, except such an example as this affords us aid, which shews clearly that the faithful were formerly tried and had their faith exercised by similar contests. It is not then uselessly said that Pashur smote Jeremiah Had he struck one of the common people, it would have been more endurable, though in that case it would have been an act wholly unworthy of his office; but when he treated insolently the servant of God, and one who had for a long time discharged the prophetic office, it was far less excusable. This circumstance, then, ought to be noticed by us, that the priest dared to strike the Prophet of God.
It then follows that Jeremiah was cast by him into prison But we must notice this, that he had heard the words of Jeremiah before he became infuriated against him. He ought, doubtless, to have been moved by such a prophecy; but he became mad and so audacious as to smite God’s Prophet. It hence appears how great is the stupidity of those who have once become so hardened as to despise God; for even the worst of men are terrified when God’s judgment is announced. But Pashur heard Jeremiah proclaiming the evil that was near at hand; and yet the denunciation had no other effect on him but to render him worse. As, then, he thus violently assailed God’s Prophet, after having heard his words, it is evident that he was blinded by a rage wholly diabolical. We also see that the despisers of God blend light with darkness, for Pashur covered his impiety with a cloak, and hence cast Jeremiah into prison; for in this way he shewed that he wished to know the state of the case, as he brought him out of prison the following day. Thus the ungodly ever try to make coverings for their impiety; but they never succeed. The hypocrisy of Pashur was very gross when he cast Jeremiah into prison, in order that he might afterwards call him to defend his cause, for he had already smitten him. This great insolence, then, took away every pretense for justice. It was therefore extremely frivolous for Pashur to have recourse afterwards to some form of trial for deciding the case.
The word מהפכת, mephicat, is rendered by some, fetter; and by others, stocks; and they think it to be a piece of wood, with one hole to confine the neck, and another the feet. But I know not whether this is suitable here, for Jeremiah says that it was in the higher gate of Benjamin. This certainly could not be properly said of fetters, or of chains, or of stocks. It then follows that it was a prison. (5) He mentions the gate of Benjamin, as it belonged to that tribe; for we know that a part of Jerusalem was inhabited by the Benjamites. They had two gates, and this was the higher gate towards the east. He says that it was opposite the house of Jehovah; for besides the court there were many small courts, as it is well known, around the Temple. It follows: —
(4) The account which Blayney gives is the most probable: that he was the first of his order. There were twenty-four courses of priests, as appointed by David, 1Ch 24:0; and the head of each course was for the time the ruler or governor of the Temple. These heads of the courses were no doubt the “chief priests” mentioned in the New Testament, for in fact there was only one chief priest. They were also called the “captains” of the Temple. “The chief overseer in the house of Jehovah” is the most suitable rendering. The whole verse might be rendered as follows, — “When Pashur, the son of Immer, the priest, while he was the chief overseer in the house of Jehovah, heard Jeremiah prophesying these words, then Pashur smote Jeremiah,” etc. So the Syriac, and so does Blayney connect the first with the second verse. The family of “Immer” formed the sixteenth course. See 1Ch 24:14. “The priest” refers to Pashur, and not to “Immer;” and it is so rendered by the Sept., Vulg., and the Arab., though not by the Syr. Immer was the name of the family. — Ed.
(5) The versions differ — “dungeon” is the Sept.; “stocks-nervum” is the Vulg.; and “circle,” or “circuit,” is the Syr.; but the Targ. has “prison.” The word occurs in two other places, in 1Ch 29:26, and in 2Ch 16:10, and is rendered “prison.” Venema renders it “the torturing prison,” taking the verb from which the word comes in a bad sense, as signifying to distort, and hence to torture. Symmachus favors this view, for he renders it “a place of torment — ζασανιστήριον,” and “a rack — στρεζλωτήριον.” The form of the expression is in favor of this idea, “and set him in the stocks,” or on the rack. And so in Jer 29:26, the rendering ought to be — “that thou shouldest set him on the stocks (or rack) and in prison” Of what kind was this instrument of torture it is not known. Prisons had especially three names — “the house of roundness ( הסהר);” “the house of confinement ( הכלא);” and “the house of the rack, or stocks, ( המהפכת).” See Gen 39:20; 1Kg 22:27; and 2Ch 16:10. But “the house” is not here torture itself. Had the prison been intended, the word “house,” as in 2Ch 16:10, would have been placed before it. It is at the same time probable that the prison was the place where the rack or the stocks were. — Ed
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES.1. Chronology of the Chapter. With chap. 20 the first section of this book closes. Probably this was Jeremiahs last public prophecy in Jehoiakims reign, and formed the concluding entry in the roll which was read in part before Jehoiakim, and which Jehoiakim cut with his penknife and cast into the fire (chap. Jer. 36:23). To that roll, which seems to have concluded with this emphatic prophecy as to the Babylonian Captivity (cf. Jer. 20:4 with Jer. 36:29), many like words were added besides (Jer. 36:32); and these added words were the chapters following this twentieth, about whose dates there is no uncertainty, for each prophecy bears a special heading assigning the occasion and date of its utterance. This prophecy occurred at the end of the third or beginning of the fourth year of Jehoiakim (see notes on chap. 18).
2. Contemporary ScripturesThe events came closely contiguous to the records in 2Ki. 24:1; 2Ch. 36:6.
3. National Affairs, and 4. Contemporaneous History (comp. notes on chap. 7). The capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar occurred early in the fourth year of Jehoiakims reign.
5. Geographical References.Jer. 20:2. The high gate of Benjamin. There was the City gate of Benjamin on the citys northern side, and towards the territory of Benjamin (Jer. 7:2, Jer. 37:13, Jer. 38:7); and there was the Temple gate of Benjamin, which is here describedwhich was in [not by] the house of the Lord. This latter was called the High gate because situate on an eminence, and to distinguish it from the gate in the city wall.
6. Personal Allusions.Jer. 20:1. Pashur the son of Immer the priest. Pashur the priest was head of the sixteenth course of the priests (1Ch. 24:14). Immer was one of the original governors of the Sanctuary, of whom there were twenty-four, sixteen sons of Eleazar, and eight sons of Ithamar (1Ch. 24:14). Pashur was chief governor, and from comparison of Jer. 29:25-26, with Jer. 52:24, it appears that the temple-governor occupied rank second to that of the high priest; was deputy high priest (cf. 2Ki. 25:18). Pashur was head of the twenty-four guards of the Temple, and had the right of apprehending any one committing what he thought an outrage within the precincts of the house of God; but the Sanhedrim alone had judicial power over those thus apprehended (comp. Jer. 26:8; Jer. 26:10; Jer. 26:16). From words in the sixth versethou hast prophesied liesit is evident that Pashur assumed prophetic functions; and most probably Pashurs friends (Jer. 20:5) formed a party in the Jewish state who clamoured for alliance with Egypt in order to resist the arms of Assyria, and of whom Pashur was the moving genius, indulging in sanguine predictions of security and success (vide chap. Jer. 18:18, and Jer. 5:31). Jer. 20:5. King of Babylon. Nabopalassar was now king of the Babylonians. (Vide preliminary note on Contemporary History to chap. 1)
7. No Natural History allusions in this chapter.
8. Manners and Customs.Jer. 20:2. Smote Jeremiah and put him in the stocks: Smoteprobably inflicting the legal forty stripes save one. Stocks, an instrument of torture, from , to twist or rack. The body was held in a crooked position, the neck, hands, and feet were secured, and much pain was suffered. This cruel instrument is first alluded to in 2Ch. 16:10, and there rendered prison-house.
9. Literary Criticisms.Jer. 20:3. Magor-missabib. (Vide Lit. Crit. on chap. Jer. 6:25.) Pashur , a compound word; , and ,probably meaning, though derivation is uncertain, security (or prosperity, joy) around. Jeremiah would be prone to play upon the meaning of the name he changed: the new name meant Terror on every side. Jeremiah uses this phrase in chap. Jer. 6:25, Jer. 20:3; Jer. 20:10, Jer. 46:5, Jer. 49:29; Lam. 2:22.
Jer. 20:5. Strength labours: Storesprovisions laid up in their magazines and granaries: and gainsfruits of industry, the profits or wealth of the community.
Jer. 20:7. Hast deceived: from . Used in Piel both in a good and bad sense; to persuade, rendered in Jer. 20:10 enticed. He was unwilling to undertake the prophetic office (chap. Jer. 1:7), but God had persuaded him with promises (Jer. 1:8; Jer. 1:17-19), which, however, Jeremiah had misapprehended. God promised no immunity from abuse but that he should prevail.
Daily: all the day long.
Jer. 20:8. For since I spake, I cried out, &c. For as often as I speak or cry, I must cry concerning violence and ill-treatment.Lange. Whenever I speak, I must shout; I must cry violence and spoil. The two words cried, cried, are not the same in the Hebrew: the first means to complain, the second to call out, proclaim. For as often as I speak I must complain; I call out violence and spoil.Speakers Com.
Word of the Lord was made: is made. Dailyall the day long.
Jer. 20:9. Then I said. But his word was. Better: And when I say I will not, &c.name, then it becometh in my heart, &c.
I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay. I weary myself to hold it in, but cannot (vide chap. Jer. 6:11).
Jer. 20:10. Read the verse thus. For I hear the whispering (detraction, Henderson) of many, fear on every side [Magor-missabib, again]; (saying) Report ye, and we will report him. All my familiars [Lit. the men of my peace; Keil, every man of my friendship] watch for my halting [my fallHenderson]. Perhaps they say he will be enticed, &c.
Jer. 20:11. A mighty terrible one: Rather, a formidable warrior.
Ashamed, for they shall not prosper, &c.: Rather, ashamed, because they have not acted wisely; with an everlasting reproach (disgrace) that shall never be forgotten.
Jer. 20:12. Opened my cause; On Thee have I rolled my cause, committed it (cf. Jer. 11:20).
HOMILETIC OUTLINES ON SECTIONS OF CHAPTER 20
Section
Jer. 20:1-6.
Persecution of the faithful prophet.
Section
Jer. 20:7-13.
Complaining prayer merging into godly confidence.
Section
Jer. 20:14-18.
An extravagant dirge over an unhappy life.
Section 16.PERSECUTION OF THE FAITHFUL PROPHET
I. Pashurs unjust displeasure against Jeremiah.
1. The impropriety of it. Pashur was a priest; and Jeremiah, being also of the priestly order, should have been protected by him. Moreover, the priests of Jehovah should have been prompt and zealous to second the work of a prophet of Jehovah.
2. The malignity of it. A mans foes are they of his own household. Compare the action of Zedekiah (the false priest, 1Ki. 22:24); and of those foul priests (Mat. 26:67-68). The greatest malignity to Gods prophets was found among those that professed sanctity and concern for God and His church. Pashur found his own sanguine prophecies hereby refuted, and was wroth. (See Personal Allusions.)
3. The illegality of it. Smote him, perhaps with the hand or staff of authority, as afterwards Paul was smitten (Act. 23:2). But Pashur had no right to administer justice (see note on verse under Personal Allusions). But rules of justice are set aside: The enemies of piety would never allow themselves to be governed by the laws of equity.
4. The cruelty of it. Put in stocks: and thus confined through the night into next day, exposed to public derision. The best men have met with the worst treatment. It may well rouse pious indignation to see such a man as Pashur on the bench, and such a man as Jeremiah in the stocks! It is well that there is another life after this, when persons and things will appear with another face.
II. Gods just displeasure against Pashur. Jeremiah suffered and threatened not; but when released, he came with a special message from Jehovah.
1. Did Pashur aim to make himself easy, by silencing one who told him his faults, and which endangered his reputation with the people? He shall not gain his point, for
(a.) Though the prophet should be silent, his own conscience shall make him uneasy. Magor-missabib. God can make a sinner a terror to himself (Jer. 20:4). Persons in deep melancholy also become a terror to all their friends about them.
(b.) His friends, in whom he put confidence and studied to oblige in persecuting Jeremiah, shall all fail him (Jer. 20:4).
(c.) The issue shall show his terror to be not causeless, for Divine vengeance awaited him (Jer. 20:6). Let persecutors read the doom of Pashur and tremble; tremble to repentance before they be made to tremble to their ruin.
2. Did he aim to make the people easy by stopping Jeremiahs warning prophecies? It appears from Jer. 20:6 that he set himself up as a prophet, and told the people they should have peace. Yet the word of God will have its course.
(a.) The country shall be ruined: I will give all Judah, &c. (Jer. 20:4).
(b.) The city shall be ruined (Jer. 20:5). For the king of Babylon shall (1) seize their military stores, the strength of the city; (2) carry off their wares and merchandise, their labours; (3) plunder their fine houses of their precious things; (4) rifle the exchequer, the jewels of the crown and all the treasures of the kings of Judah. In part taken from Matthew Henry.
See Addenda: PERSECUTION OF GODS SERVANTS.
Section 713.COMPLAINING PRAYER MERGING INTO GODLY CONFIDENCE
There are two interpretations of this outburst of intense emotion
1. It might have been the result of feelings wounded by the indignities of the public smiting and a night spent in the stocks.
2. It was more probably the outcry of mental agony occasioned by the seeming failure of his ministry to recal his nation from ungodliness and ruin.
It should be noticed that though Jeremiah bows before God crushed by distress of spirit, he betrays nothing of this before the people, but stands before the multitude with heroic valour, warning prince, priest, and people of the doom their sins invoked.
I. A painful misapprehension of his prophetic mission.
1. In reference to what God had done with him. He avows that Jehovah had
(a.) Persuaded him into His service by assurances which had failed. He misread Gods promise (chap. Jer. 1:8; Jer. 1:18).
(b.) Constrained him wholly against his will to a painful mission. His timid nature shrank from hardship.
(c.) Exposed him to derision by deferring the fulfilment of his predictions. Jeremiah was in too great haste for God to vindicate His word.
2. In reference to what he should do for God. He was tempted
(a.) Temporarily to hold back from further witness for God. Not mention His name.
(b.) Forcibly to suppress the prophetic spirit within him. But it proved a burning fire within his bones.
(c.) He even wearied himself with the silence he imposed upon himself: but the word of God was mightier than his resolutions.
II. An alarming experience of abuse from his people.
1. Scornful defamation of his preaching (Jer. 20:10). They seem to have summed up his preaching as being nothing but the reiteration of the wordsMagormissabib, i.e., Fear on every side, and derided him with it. He was a preacher of fear! The same appears from Jer. 20:8Whenever I spake I proclaimed violence and spoil. And the people laughed at him as a persistent croakerprophet of evil. They whispered among themselves against him, Here is Fear-on-every-side preaching again!
2. Virulent conspiracy against his person. They resolve to report his words to the authorities and the king, and so bring him into odium and punishment. Further, his familiars joined in the conspiracy, and while feigning to be men of his peace, yet sought occasion to betray him.
III. A triumphant assurance of Divine protection.
1. That Jehovah would defend him with terrible mightiness (Jer. 20:11). He knew that the Lord was personally with him: on his side, to protect him, to make his word good, to ultimately vindicate him against defamation and derision, and to smite terror into his antagonists.
2. That his persecutors would be defeated with terrible disgrace. Their impotent malice and crafty designs shall fail against Jeremiah; while their own overthrow shall involve them in greatest shame and perpetual distress.
IV. A confident surrender of his cause to God.
1. His inmost heart was opened fully to Him (Jer. 20:12).
(a.) God knew him thoroughly: saw all the thoughts and feelings which moved within him; could therefore judge him righteously.
(b.) To God he entrusted himself: rolled his cause on Him. He sought no vindication or help elsewhere.
(c.) God would right him with his traducers: Vengeance belongeth unto God.
2. His grateful soul poured itself forth in praise to Him (Jer. 20:13).
(a.) It was the triumph of faith over fear. His complaints are all silenced and turned into thanksgiving.
(b.) It rose from the realisation of experienced Providence: He hath delivered the soul of the poor, &c. Memory came in to his aid; and hope rose like the dawn upon the night-gloom of his despondency. Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him, who is the health of my countenance and my God.
Section 1418.A PASSIONATE DIRGE OVER AN UNHAPPY LIFE
In this sudden transition of trust to despair we see a revelation of the inner workings of Jeremiahs heart, consequent upon the treatment he received from his treacherous friends and cruel persecutors, and on the seeming failure of his prophecies and his own desertion by God whose prophet he was.
I. It is not to be denied that we have here a passionate outbreak of human infirmity. But this display
1. Proves that there has been no reserve practised by the prophets; and thus we see a portraiture of Jeremiah delineated in his true colours by his own hand. This also
2. Inspires us with confidence in the truth of the narrative; and also excites our sympathy with Jeremiah in his sufferings, which extorted such utterances from him.
Note, that as it was with Job (Jer. 3:3-25) so with Jeremiahhe was purified by suffering. After the passionate utterances in this chapter we see no more evidence of weakness or impatience in Jeremiah. On the contrary, the prophet, who now was weak and desponding, afterwards strengthened and encouraged others (see chap. Jer. 46:1-5).
II. Here also, from these impatient ejaculations of Jeremiah, we have providentially clear proof that the theory of some Jewish interpreters is groundless, by which Isaiahs magnificent and mysterious prophecy concerning the Messiah (chap. 53) is made to refer to Jeremiah.
1. How could one who was compassed with infirmity and betrayed into sin (as Jeremiah shows himself to have been) have been acceptedas these anti-Messianic theorists would have us believeas a vicarious atonement for the sins of the world?
2. In his sufferings, Jeremiah was a signal type of Christ: especially in the cruel and shameful usage he received from those to whom he preached, and whom he would have delivered from ruin had they listened to his preaching. But in all human types of Christ there are some blemishes which separate them immeasurably from the Divine Antitype.
3. Christ always excels where they most fail. Jeremiah fails in his impatience under persecution, in repining against God, and in murmuring at his own condition. There Christ excels. His meat was to do His Fathers will (Joh. 4:34); and, in the immediate prospect of suffering, His language was, Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him (Joh. 13:31; comp. Heb. 12:2).
III. Here we have evidence of the greater grace given after the Incarnation than had ever been vouchsafed to those who lived before it.
Two of the greatest saints and sufferers, Job and Jeremiahone the saint and suffer of the Patriarchal dispensation, the other the suffering prophet of the Mosaic economyare so perturbed by suffering that they curse the day of their birth.
But (as Chrysostom observes in Hom. 4 on the patience of Job) the apostles of Christ rejoiced in tribulation, and were thankful to God that they were counted worthy to suffer for His name.Arranged from Wordsworth.
HOMILIES AND COMMENTS ON VERSES OF CHAPTER 20
Jer. 20:4. Theme: THE WICKED, TERRIFIED AND TERRIFYING. For thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will make thee a terror to thyself and to all thy friends.
I. A guilty man may enjoy confidence, and inspire confidence in others. This is evident here. Unless so, it would not be needful for God to act to change confidence into terror.
1. Sinners live on in easy but transient security.
2. The friends of ungodly men are fortified in their self-confidence by boastful conduct of fellow-transgressors.
II. A guilty mans confidence may be turned into terror and amaze.
1. God can do it, does do it, will do it. He can make the most daring sinner a terror to himself, and will find a way to alarm him.
2. Conviction of sin arouses terror. Example: John Bunyan. See also his Christian before Sinai, in Pilgrims Progress.
3. Sudden peril of life or risk of worldly gains startle him to agonising apprehensions.
4. Deaths darkness and eternitys nearness will certainly appal him. How wilt thou do in the swellings of Jordan?
5. On the Judgment Day, what terror will seize the guilty. Rocks fall on us, and hide us, &c.
III. A guilty mans terror will alarm his friends.
1. A sinner whose hilarity and recklessness have changed into alarm for guilt and dread of doom, is like an apparition at the feast of worldly souls. Banquos ghost. His tremblings and terrors alarm them, communicating fear to their souls.
2. A sinners deathbed has often filled observers with awful fears for themselves.
See Addenda: THE WICKED A TERROR.
Comments
Wherein did his (Pashurs) punishment consist? Probably in this. He was one of the leading men who, in encouraging Jehoiakim to enter upon that course which ended in the ruin of Judah, had prophesied lies. When, then, he saw the dreadful slaughter of his countrymen,Jehoiakim put to death, his young son dragged into captivity, and the land stripped of all that was besthis conscience so condemned him as the guilty cause of such great misery, that in the agonies of remorse he became a terror to himself and his friends.Speakers Com.
Jer. 20:7. Theme: IS GOD A DECEIVER?
The word deceived should be enticed or persuaded. Comp. Gen. 9:27; Pro. 25:15; Hos. 2:14, in which last text the word is rendered allure. God can induce but never delude.
I. God has approved Himself to all His servants as a faithful Master. He has never decoyed them; never deserted them.
II. Servants of God may deceive themselves in His service by sanguine expectations.
1. Jeremiah misapprehended Gods words of promise and assurance. The words (chap. Jer. 1:10) were interpreted by him in a flattering sense. He expected general homage to be paid him as Gods messenger.
2. But he knew the condition of prophetic work in all ages. All Gods messengers before him had been persecuted, and he had no reason to look for a better lot.
3. Further, God emphatically stated that princes and priests would treat him ill. They shall fight against thee (chap. Jer. 1:19).
4. All Christian workers are distinctly forewarned of the troubles they will meet (Joh. 16:1-2).
III. The persuasions of God overpower our natural reluctance and fears. Thou wast stronger than I, and hast prevailed.
1. His pleas were refuted. He urged that he was under age, and unequal to the office. God took all reality out of his arguments by assuring him that He had sanctified him to this work, and by equipping him for the task (chap. Jer. 1:9).
2. His temerity was overruled. He was afraid of facing the authorities and contending with them. But God summoned him not to be dismayed at their faces, and made him a defenced city, &c.
Even so out of weakness God makes strong the weak things of the world to confound the mighty. He is able to make all grace abound. Thus He surprises us by making us able to do exceeding abundantly above all we think. Yet He never deceives or disappoints a soul.
Jer. 20:7. Theme: MOCKING AT THE PREACHER. I am in derision daily, every one mocketh me.
Two forms of this irritating continually assailed him.
I. Official ridicule.
1. They made jest of everything he did and said. They treated him as if he were a fool, good for nothing but to make sport. Thus he was
(a.) Continually,daily, literally all the day long.
(b.) Universally, Every one mocks me.
The greatest so far forget their own gravity, and the meanest so far forget mine.
Thus our Lord on the Cross was reviled both by priest and people.
2. His preaching was the special object of their derision (Jer. 20:8). That for which they should have honoured and respected him was the very thing for which they reviled and reproached him.
It is sad to think that though Divine Revelation be one of the greatest blessings and honours ever bestowed on the world, yet it has been very much turned to the reproach of the most zealous preachers and believers.
Two things they derided him for
(a.) The manner of his preaching: Since he spake, he cried out. He was too vigorous and loud in his preaching. Lively preachers are the scorn of careless unbelieving hearers.
(b.) The matter of his preaching: He cried, Violence and spoil. He reproved them for violence and spoil toward one another, and for this they ridiculed him as over-precise; and he prophesied of violence and spoil as the punishment of their sin, and for this they reviled him as over-credulous.
II. Personal reproach. Not merely did they laugh at his ministry, but they acted a more spiteful part, and with more subtlety.
1. They spread false reports of him (Jer. 20:10). They represented Jeremiah as instilling fears on every side, so to make them uneasy under the government, and disposed to rebellion.
Jeremiah, in his complaint, makes use of the same words that David (Psa. 31:13) had used before him, that it might be a comfort to him to think that other good men had suffered like abuses before him.
2. Flatterers watched his words for an occasion of accusation against him to the government. My familiars watched for my halting, &c. Just as the spies came to Christ feigning to be just men (Luk. 20:20). They hoped Jeremiah would be led on and enticed to say something which they might seize upon, and for which they could secure his condemnation before the king or Sanhedrim.
This malignant treachery found fullest illustration in Jeremiahs Divine Antitype, Jesus Christ, against whom they laid wait, and suborned men for the purpose to entangle Him in His talk that they might accuse Him to the governor (Mat. 22:15).Comp. Wordsworth and Matthew Henry.
See Addenda: DERIDING THE PREACHER.
Jer. 20:9. Theme: THE SOUL UNDER DISCOURAGEMENT.
We behold here the struggle between grace and corruption: or as Paul expresses it, the flesh lusting against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. And when we see how awfully an unhallowed temper prevailed over this good man Jeremiah, we cannot but exclaim: Lord, what is man that Thou art mindful of him, &c.
In the conflict here expressed we behold
I. The effects of discouragement on a pious soul.
1. In our labours for the good of others. Ministers are apt to complain that they have laboured in vain and spent their strength for nought; and under these feelings, either desert their post, or lament that they have not been more profitably employed.
Moses thus erred (Exo. 5:22-23). Joshua also after his entrance into Canaan (Jos. 7:7).
Parents likewise mourn over their children, masters over their servants, teachers over the poor they instruct, &c.
2. In our exertions for our own souls. Persons, when first enticed or persuaded to embrace the Gospel, fondly imagine that they will go forward in the divine life with ease. Conflicts come, and slow progress is made. Then they complain, my way is hid from the Lord, &c. (Isa. 40:27). Such apprehension is most enervating.
II. The effect of piety on a discouraged soul. Jeremiah attempted for a season to execute his rash determination, but could not persist, for the word of God was like a burning fire in his bones, so that he must declare it.
Thus will grace work in every soul even under deepest discouragements.
1. To shame our querulous impatience. When David had given vent to querulousness, he corrected himself (Psa. 73:12-16; Psa. 77:7-10). We complain of our non-success. Prophets and apostles have done so before us. We should wait (Heb. 2:3).
2. To revive our languid hopes. Grace will bring to our view Gods promises; assure us that His arm is not shortened, &c.
3. To resuscitate our drooping energies. Jeremiah was weary with forbearing, even more than with executing his mission. And if grace have its perfect work in us, so we shall be. Our labours, both ministerial and personal, will be renewed. God has said, Be not weary in well-doing, for in due season, &c. And depending on His word, we shall go forward, steadfast and immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord.
(a.) Expect discouragements in every part of your duty. They are Gods appointed means for trying our faith and love, and for increasing every divine grace in us.
(b.) Make them occasions for glorifying God the more. If we have fightings without and fears within, we must go the more earnestly to God, and rely the more firmly on His promised aid. Instead of sinking under discouragements, we must say: Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain.Simeon.
Jer. 20:12. Theme: GOD THE HEART-SEARCHER. See Homilies on chap. Jer. 11:20, Jer. 27:10.
Jer. 20:13. Theme: THE SONG OF REDEMPTION.
Immediately he had opened or committed his cause to God, he could sing for joy.
I. Faith grasped a fact as yet in the future. Jeremiahs outward circumstances were still disturbed and perilous. But he now realises Gods sufficiency and fidelity, even as before (Jer. 20:7) he had distrusted Him.
Faith turned his tremblings into triumphs.
So the soul when Christs sufficiency and faithfulness are apprehended. Lo! this is the Lord, we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.
II. Joy filled his soul over Gods gracious rescue. His soul had been poor; poor in courage, poor in faith, poor in grace.
Evil-doers had his soul in their hand.
But God had redeemed his soul from destruction.
III. Songs of praise silenced sighs of complaint. He found peace immediately he could leave his cause in faith to God.
Complaints are now exchanged for thanksgiving, when once the soul knows its Redeemer.
Gods loving-kindness and grace overwhelms the soul with rejoicing.
We may appeal to every soul for whom the redemption of Calvary has been effectively wrought by Christ, and which is offered to sinners without money and without priceSing unto the Lord, praise ye the Lord.
O for this love let rocks and hills
Their lasting silence break,
And all harmonious human tongues,
Their Saviours praises speak.
Jer. 20:14-18. Theme: IMPRECATIONS ON HIS BIRTH. See Sectional treatment, supra.
The Rev. John Owen, in editing Calvins Commentaries in this place, remarks
The greatest difficulty in this passage is its connection. That Jeremiah should have cursed his birthday is what can be accounted for as in the case of Job. Nature, even in the best of men, sometimes utters its voice. But how he came to do this immediately after having thanked God for his deliverance seems singular. The explanation of Calvin, that he relates what had passed in his mind, while he was confined by Pashur, is plausible, and has been adopted by Grotius, Henry, and others. Scott acknowledges the transition to be very extraordinary, but thinks that the Prophet describes what had passed through his own mind, and says that the experience of good men proves that such sudden changes occur. An experimental acquaintance with our own hearts, he says, and the variations of our passions under sharp trials, as encouraging or discouraging thoughts occur to our minds, will best enable us to understand it. This is probably the right view of the subject.
i. The Prophet teaches us here that he was not only opposed by enemies, but also distressed inwardly in his mind, so that he was carried away, contrary to reason and judgment, by turbulent emotions which even led him to give utterance to vile blasphemies.
ii. We may learn with what care ought every one of us to watch himself, lest we be carried away by a violent feeling, so as to become intemperate and unruly.
iii. Yet the origin of his seal was right. His complaint was not that he was afflicted with disease, &c., but because all his labour was lost which he spent for the well-being of his people, and because he found the truth of God loaded with calumnies and reproaches. When he saw the ungodly thus insolently resisting him, and that all religion was treated with ridicule, he felt deeply moved.
iv. Yet when we thus become weary of life, with all the light and blessings of God, it is because disdain reigns within us, or that we cannot with resignation bear reproaches, or that poverty is too grievous for us, &c. Often it is not that we (as with Jeremiah) are influenced with zeal for God.Calvin.
On Jer. 20:15. See Introduction. Part I.Parentage and Calling.
NOTICEABLE TOPIC IN CHAPTER 20
Topic: EXISTENCE REGRETTED.Cursed be the day wherein I was born (Jer. 20:14).
Job and Jeremiah were alike in wishing they had never been born. They were both men of sorrow. In the intensity of his grief Job exclaimed, Let the day perish wherein I was born; and Jeremiah in equal mental anguish cries, Cursed be the day, &c. Certainly this was
I. A preference alike irreligious and irrational.
1. Good men should not for a moment think that non-existence is preferable to life and being. They were both good men, children of God; and existence was therefore a blessing to be prized, not an evil to be mourned over. Had they been versed in the design and results of Divine dispensations, as was Paul, they would have said, Our light afflictions, which are but for a moment, &c. With such a destiny before them, instead of cursing the day of birth, they would have blessed it as the dawn of an eternal existence, to be hereafter crowned with a glory that fadeth not away.
2. Ungodly men may with some degree of reason prefer non-existence: because in trouble they have no Divine support, in death no good hope, in eternity no expectation but the penalty of sin. Such men, when the sorrows of death encompass them, or when ushered into the eternal world, have good reason to say, Cursed be the day wherein I was born.
II. Non-existence is preferable to existence unless existence possess more pleasure than pain.
1. If every ungodly man lived out threescore years and ten, and the whole was spent in pleasure, yet, as that period is but momentary as compared with his eternal existence, and as that existence is to be one of pain, he might curse the day of his birth.
2. Existence, eternal existence is a blessing to all unfallen ones, and also to such fallen ones as are redeemed by the death of Christ. It requires no stretch of imagination to suppose that both Job and Jeremiah are now praising and blessing God for that very day which in the time of their earthly sorrows they cursed.
3. But perpetuity of existence can be no blessing to the angels who kept not their first estate, nor to those of the human race who by impenitence and unbelief reject the great salvation, and bring upon themselves the double condemnationthe condemnation of the law and the condemnation of the gospel.
III. Hell and heaven are two great teachers; they teach lessons which are not learnt on earth, and wonderfully alter mens views of Divine dispensations and revealed truths.
1. Hell teachesthe folly of wickedness, the full enormity of sin in the penalty it has entailed, and leads all its victims amid the consequences of their depravity to curse the day wherein they were born.
2. Heaven teachesthe wisdom of holiness, the full benefits of redemption in the felicity it has secured, and leads all the ransomed to bless the day of their birth as the morn of their noontide of glory.
Here we know in part and can prophesy but in part. Fuller and wider disclosures are made when the spirit is ushered into that world.
Having thus seen that there are in some cases reasons for cursing the day of ones birth, let it be remembered that
IV. God is not willing that any should have occasion for preferring non-existence.
1. He has devised and carried out a costly plan by which the existence of fallen ones might be made an eternal blessing. This plan was published in Eden, foreshadowed in type, proclaimed by prophets, and consummated in the death of Jesus Christ. On the cross He announced It is finished.
2. Every man who now wishes for a glorious existence has only to look to Jesus and be saved. Myriads have looked, and a blessed immortality is their portion: myriads have refused to look, and a wretched immortality is their inheritance.
Life is a solemn thing. It has in it everlasting perpetuity; and so also has death.
It is not all of life to live,
Nor all of death to die.
Life and death are only the seed-time: a harvest follows, that of bliss or woe. Inspiration answers the inquiry, What harvest shall I reap? thusBe not deceived, God is not mocked; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap: he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.Arranged from Rev. D. Pledges Morning and Evening Walks with Jeremiah.
ADDENDA TO CHAPTER 20. ILLUSTRATIONS AND SUGGESTIVE EXTRACTS
Jer. 20:1-6. PERSECUTION OF GODS SERVANTS.
Smote Jeremiah: with his fist, as Zedekiah smote Micaiah (1Ki. 22:24), and as Bonner did Hawkes and other martyrs, pulling off part of their beards; or with a staff as our Saviour was struck (Mat. 26:67); and as that Popish bishop, degrading a martyr minister, struck him so hard with his crosier-staff as he was kneeling on the stairs at St. Pauls, that he fell down backwards and broke his head. Atqui lapidandi sunt hretici sacrarum literarum argumentis, saith Athanasius [Contra Arian]. But heretics are to be stoned with Scripture arguments; and men may a good deal sooner be cudgelled into a treaty than into a tenet.
Put him in the stocks: As they afterwards did Paul and Silas (Acts 16.); Clerinus the martyr, mentioned in Cyprians epistles; Mr. Philpot in the Bishop of Londons coal-house; and that good woman, who, suffering afterwards for the same cause, rejoiced much that her leg was put in the same hole of the stocks where Philpots leg had lain before.Trapp.
And when religious sects ran mad,
He held, in spite of all his learning,
That if a mans belief is bad,
It will not be improved by burning.
Praed.
Jer. 20:4. THE WICKED A TERROR.
Such terror befell Tullus Hostilius, king of Rome, who had for his gods Pavor and Pallor. Dignissimus sane qui deos suos semper haberet prsentes, saith Lactantius wittily; i.e., great pity but this man should ever have had his gods at hand, since he was so fond of them. Our Richard III. and Charles IX. of France, a pair of bloody princes, were Magor-missabibs in their generations, as terrible at length to themselves as they had been formerly to others; and therefore could never endure to be awakened in the night without music or some like diversion.Trapp.
Unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles: infected minds
To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets.Shakespeare.
Here, here it lies; a lump of lead by day;
And in my short, distracted, nightly slumbers,
The hag that rides my dreams.Dryden.
He that hides a dark soul and foul thoughts,
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun;
Himself is his own dungeon.Milton.
Horror and doubt distract
His troubled thoughts, and from the bottom stir
The hell within him; for within him hell
He brings, and round about him; nor from hell
One step, no more than from himself, can fly
By change of place.Byron.
Tiberius declared in the Senate that he suffered death daily.
Jer. 20:7. DERIDING THE PREACHER.
See the Life of John Wesley for instances.
The cynics said long ago of the Megarians, Better be their horse, dog, or pander than their teacher, for better should he be regarded.Trapp.
A modern rhyme puts the case thus
Tickle the people and make them grin,
Tickle them more and you will win;
Teach the people; youll neer grow rich,
But live like a beggar and die in a ditch.
Jer. 20:14. JEREMIAHS DISCOURAGEMENT.
What was the cause of this discouragement? He does not leave us in the dark as to this: he tells us that he heard the defaming of manyMy familiars watched for my halting, &c. This was well suited to dismay a man of Jeremiahs temper; but he again speedily comes back to his trust in God:But the Lord is with me.
It is possible that on some occasion Jeremiah had, under the influence of such feelings as he so often expresses, been tempted to soften or to suppress some part of a message entrusted to him, deeming it likely to excite that violent antagonism which was grievous to his peaceful temper. The man who had confessedly purposed not to speak at all, might think of withholding part of the words he was commanded to speak. This supposition would give added force to the injunction, which on one occasion he received:Speak all the words that I command thee to speak unto them. Diminish not a word. So here also he found that there was no discretion left to him.Kitto.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
C. The Arrest of the Prophet Jer. 19:14 to Jer. 20:6
TRANSLATION
(14) And Jeremiah went from Topheth where the LORD had sent him to prophesy and he stood in the court of the house of the LORD and spoke unto all the people. (15) Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I am about to bring against this city and against her cities all the evil which I have spoken concerning it for they have stiffened their neck that they might not hear My words. (1) Now Pashur the son of Immer, the priest who was chief overseer in the house of the LORD, heard Jeremiah prophesy these things. (2) Then Pashur smote Jeremiah the prophet and put him in the stocks which were in the upper Benjamin Gate which was in the house of the Lord. (3) And it came to pass the next morning that Pashur released Jeremiah from the stocks. And Jeremiah said unto him, The LORD has not called your name Pashur but Magormissabib. (4) For thus says the LORD: Behold, I am about to make you a terror to yourself and to all your friends and they shall fall by the sword of their enemies and your eyes shall see it. And all Judah I will give into the hand of the king of Babylon and he shall take them captive into Babylon or he shall smite them with the sword. (5) And I will give away all the wealth of this city and all the fruit of her labor and all her precious things: and all the treasures of the kings of Judah I will give into the hand of their enemies. They shall plunder them and take them and bring them to Babylon. (6) And you, Pashur, and all the inhabitants of your house shall go into captivity; and you shall go to Babylon and there you shall die and there you shall be buried both yourself and all your friends to whom you prophesied falsely.
COMMENTS
The prophet had pronounced his message of doom so courageously and boldly that no one dared to interrupt him or raise a hand against him. So he leaves the valley of Hinnom and returns to the Temple area to preach to the throngs there (Jer. 19:14). It is impossible to determine whether Jer. 19:15 is merely a summary of what Jeremiah said in the court of the Temple or whether on the other hand he had only begun to preach when he was interrupted. The former alternative seems more likely. In either case the message preached in the Temple court was one of judgment. Pashur the priest who was chief overseer in the house of the Lord heard that sermon (Jer. 20:1). Pashur was second in authority to the high priest (Jer. 29:26). His duty was to see that no unauthorized person entered the Temple area and that no disturbance was committed within the courts. Pashur smote Jeremiah which probably means that the prophet was scourged with forty stripes (Deu. 25:3). He then ordered that Jeremiah be put in the stocks. The exact nature of this instrument of torture is not clear but the Hebrew word suggests a device which distorts or twists the body, or forces it into a cramped posture. The stocks are mentioned again in Jer. 29:26. The Book of Chronicles refers to a house of stocks (2Ch. 16:10), so apparently the punishment was not uncommon. But in the case of Jeremiah the stocks were in public, in the upper Benjamin gate which was in the house of the Lord (Jer. 19:2). The tribe of Benjamin lay north of Jerusalem. Thus this gate was probably on the north side of the Temple. The phrase which was in the house of the Lord serves to distinguish this gate from the city gate of the same name (Jer. 37:13; Jer. 38:7). This is probably the same gate called by Ezekiel the higher gate (Jer. 9:2) which was built by king Jotham (2Ki. 15:35). It probably was one of the main gates leading from the Temple area to the city proper.
When Jeremiah was released from the stocks the next morning he had a special message for Pashur. The Lord has not called your name Pashur but Magor-missabib (Jer. 19:3). Pashurs new name means terror round about. This symbolic name signifies one who is surrounded by horror on all sides and who becomes an object of horror and fear to himself and to others. Pashur would live to see his friends slain by the sword and the rest of the men of Judah either slain or taken captive to Babylon (Jer. 19:4). All the wealth of the nation will be given by the Lord to the enemies of Judah and the national treasures will be taken to Babylon along with the captives (Jer. 19:5). Pashur himself and the members of his household would be taken to Babylon where they would all die and be buried. For a misguided patriot like Pashur the worst fate imaginable would be to die and be buried in a foreign land. It is not the personal mistreatment of Jeremiah that brought about this extreme prophecy of personal doom to Pashur. Rather it is the fact that he had prophesied lies (Jer. 19:6). What the nature of these lies were cannot be ascertained from the account.
Some have conjectured that Pashur was the leader of the pro-Egyptian party in Judah. Perhaps this would account for his fierce opposition to Jeremiah. His pro-Egyptian policy led to national and personal disaster and caused the terror which was about to come upon the land. In Jer. 29:26 Pashurs office is filled by a fellow named Zephaniah. This would suggest that Jeremiahs prophecy had already been fulfilled. No doubt Pashur was taken captive either in the deportation of 605 B.C. or in the deportation of 597 B.C. The latter is more likely.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
XX.
(1) Pashur the son of Immer.The description must be remembered as distinguishing him from the son of Melchiah of the same name in Jer. 21:1. We may probably identify him with the father of the Gedaliah named in Jer. 38:1 as among the princes that at a later date opposed the prophets work, and with the section of the priesthood, the sixteenth, named in 1Ch. 24:14, as headed in the time of David by Immer. The name here (like that of the sons of Korah) may indicate simply the fact that he belonged to this section; or, possibly, the name of the patriarch (so to speak) who gave its name to it may have re-appeared from time to time in the line of his descendants. The name of Pashur appears again, after the Captivity, in Ezr. 2:37-38.
Chief governor.Better, deputy-governor. The word for governor is Ngid, and this office was assigned to the high priest as the ruler of the house of God (1Ch. 9:11; 2Ch. 31:13). In the case of Zephaniah, who appears as Ngid in Jer. 29:26, it was given to him as the second priest (2Ki. 25:18; Jer. 52:14). Next in order to him was the Pakid, the deputy, or, perhaps, better, superintendent. Here Pashur is described by the combination of the two titles, possibly as implying that he was invested, though a deputy, with the full powers of the governor. By some commentators, however, the relation of the two words is inverted, the Ngid being added to the Pakid, to imply that Pashur was the chief warden or overseer. As such, on either view, the act and the words of Jeremiah came under his official notice. That such words should be spoken in the court of the Temple to the multitude assembled there was, we must believe, something new, and Pashur was resolved at any cost to prevent its repetition.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
THE OPPOSITION AND THE PUNISHMENT OF PASHUR, Jer 20:1-6.
1. Pashur Many individuals of this name are mentioned, but none can be certainly identified with this one. It is possible, and indeed probable, but by no means certain, that he is the one mentioned in Jer 38:1, as the father of Gedaliah. The Pashur of the following chapter is another person. This one seems to have stood at the head of the sixteenth course of priests, (1Ch 24:14,) called sons of Immer, who was their ancestor in David’s time. Of this house ten hundred and fifty-two men returned from the exile.
Chief governor The epithet “chief” implies that there were many. He was the temple governor, and in dignity ranked next to the high priest. See Jer 29:25-26; Jer 52:24.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Jeremiah’s Actions Produce A Violent Response From The Religious Authorities, Resulting In Jeremiah Prophesying What Would Happen To His Adversaries Because Of Their Behaviour ( Jer 20:1-6 ).
The response to Jeremiah’s words was instantaneous and violent. He was arrested by the Temple authorities, physically abused and put in ‘the stocks’, an instrument probably designed to cause extreme discomfiture. Then on the next day he was brought out of the stocks and stood before the authorities, no doubt in order to be called to account. But Jeremiah was not to be intimidated by this and boldly declared to his adversaries what YHWH intended to do to them
Jer 20:1
‘Now Pashhur, the son of Immer the priest, who was chief officer (paqid nagid – superintendent nagid) in the house of YHWH, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things.’
This Pashhur must be distinguished from the one in Jer 21:1. He was clearly of high authority in the Temple, and may have been the father of the Gedaliah spoken of in Jer 38:1 (one of the ‘princes’ (sarim) who opposed Jeremiah). ‘Immer’ may have been the name of Pashhur’s father or it may have been that of his priestly family (1Ch 24:14). The term ‘nagid’ was a typically Hebrew designation and had been used of the earliest kings of Israel (regularly translated ‘prince, ruler’), especially at their anointing or special ‘appointment’ (1Sa 9:16; 1Sa 10:1; 1Ki 1:35 with 39; 1Sa 13:14; 1Sa 25:30; 2Sa 6:21). It is used of the High Priest in 1Ch 9:11; 2Ch 31:13 as ‘nagid of the house of God’. Its use in the singular is, with only one exception, limited to Israelite dignitaries and its close connection either with anointing or official appointment seemingly indicated that the title was an expression of a special appointing and anointing by YHWH. (The only exception is when it was uniquely ‘borrowed’ by Ezekiel in sarcastically describing the King of Tyre as highly exalted and as an ‘anointed one’ (Jer 28:2; Jer 28:14) and thus as a pseudo-nagid. Its use in Dan 9:25-26 was almost certainly of an Israelite anointed ‘prince’ for elsewhere he uses nagid of Israelite princes and sarim or melek of foreign rulers). It thus here indicates a leading priest in the Temple, possibly second only to the High Priest. He was probably responsible for maintaining order in the Temple which would explain why he became personally involved in Jeremiah’s case..
Jer 20:2
‘Then Pashhur smote Jeremiah the prophet, and put him in the stocks which were in the upper gate of Benjamin, which was in the house of YHWH.’
This Pashhur publicly humiliated Jeremiah by ‘smiting’ him. The verb does not necessarily indicate a public beating, but may possibly include it. Indeed it may be argued that he examined Jeremiah (who was engaged in controversy with the other prophets) on the basis of Deu 25:1 and found him guilty and sentenced him to forty lashes. That would explain the mention of Jeremiah as ‘the prophet’. But however that may be it certainly does indicate at a minimum a deliberate act of violence with the intention of humiliation. It may simply have been a backhanded blow across the face intended to show the victim as in the wrong (compare what happened to Jesus at his appearance before Annas. The idea that it made Him appear to be in the wrong would explain why Jesus challenged it rather than turning the other cheek – Joh 18:22). Afterwards he was put in ‘the stocks’ (the same thing was done by Asa to another prophet – 2Ch 16:10 where the same word is translated prioson-house). The word is a rare one and indicates some position of confinement which also probably involved physical restraint and distortion. The idea would be to subject him to considerable discomfiture. It could have been an instrument of retainment something similar to stocks or it could have been a cell providing limited space like those in the walls of a castle which were so small that the occupant was kept in a cramped position. It was seemingly continually maintained as a kind of religious punishment for it was to be found ‘in the house of YHWH’. The excuse for such treatment would be that it was for ‘bringing men to their senses’, (although usually doing the opposite). The genuine object, however, was to cow them into submission.
‘Jeremiah the Prophet’. This is the first use of the term ‘prophet’ of Jeremiah. It may have been used here in order to bring out the appalling nature of Pashhur’s behaviour (he was mistreating a prophet of YHWH!) It may possibly be a sneering appellative given by Pashhur signifying ‘or so he calls himself’. Or as mentioned above he may have been answering a charge of being a false or disruly prophet.
Jer 20:3
‘And it came about on the next day, that Pashhur brought Jeremiah out of the stocks. Then Jeremiah said to him, “YHWH has not called your name Pashhur, but Magor-missabib.”
No doubt feeling that after a night in the stocks this ‘Jeremiah the Prophet’ would have learned his lesson Pashhur, on the following day, had him brought out from his miserable situation to be again arraigned before him. We are not told what occurred at the arraignment for what was considered as important was the use that Jeremiah made of it, for, no doubt to his horror and chagrin, Pashhur, who would have seen himself as the judge, discovered that it was as though he himself was on trial as Jeremiah pronounced judgment against him.
Jeremiah’s forthright opening words are significant. “YHWH has not called your name Pashhur, but Magor-missabib.” Jeremiah was pointing out to Pashhur that whatever his parents might have called him God had now officially called him “Magor-missabib (fear is round about).” This particular phrase meaning ‘fear is round about’ was seemingly a standard saying at the time, and is used by Jeremiah a number of times . In Jer 6:25 it indicates general uncertainty among the populace. In Jer 20:10 it indicates Jeremiah’s own position of apprehension in the face of persecution. In Jer 46:5 it indicates the terror of the Judean forces in the face of a rampant Egyptian army. In Jer 49:29 it refers to the Arabians fleeing in terror from Nebuchadnezzar. It is also found in Psa 31:13. In the Psalm it is used by the Psalmist at a time when the authorities took counsel against him and were scheming to take away his life. It was thus very appropriate in this case. The idea is therefore that Pashhur and his behaviour will be the catalyst which will result in terror of all kinds for Judah.
But we should note something further about this phrase. The idea of YHWH/God ‘calling your (his) name –’ occurs elsewhere only at times of high significance. It was used of the naming of Adam and Eve as ‘Adam’, that is as the head of the human race (Gen 5:2). It was used of the renaming of Jacob as ‘Israel’ (Gen 35:10). And it was used in Jer 11:16 of the renaming of Israel as Zayith-ra‘anan-yephe-peri-to’ar (an olive tree green, beautiful and with luscious fruit). Thus we may see this naming by YHWH of Pashhur as signifying an equally important turning point in Israel/Judah’s history, although this time a negative one. That YHWH should so officially name a leading Temple official as ‘fear is round about’ was the final indication that its end was near.
Jer 20:4
“For thus says YHWH, Behold, I will make you a terror to yourself, and to all your friends, and they will fall by the sword of their enemies, and your eyes will behold it, and I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will carry them captive to Babylon, and will slay them with the sword.”
By bearing that name ‘Fear is round about’ from then on, a name given by YHWH and therefore undiscardable, Pashhur was being made ‘a terror to himself and to his friends’. From then on all who saw him would be reminded of the judgment of Jeremiah and of YHWH that was coming and would shiver in apprehension. It was a reminder that soon, within his own lifetime (and he was probably getting on) they would fall by the sword of their enemies, and Judah would be given into the hands of the King of Babylon who would carry them into exile or slay them with the sword. This is the first specific indicator in Jeremiah of who the invaders would be. It is almost certainly referring to the first full scale invasion of 597 BC in the last days of Jehoiakim when the first major deportation took place of the cream of the inhabitants.
Jer 20:5
“Moreover I will give all the riches of this city, and all its gains, and all its precious things, yes, all the treasures of the kings of Judah will I give, into the hand of their enemies, and they will make them a prey, and take them, and carry them to Babylon.”
And with the people would also depart their wealth. All the riches of the city, and all its gains (mainly from trading), and all the precious things that it possessed, even all the treasures of the kings of Judah, would be given into the hands of the Babylonians who would take them ‘as a prey’ and as spoil. This had been destined from Hezekiah’s day and was only temporarily delayed by Josiah’s reforms (compare here Isa 39:6; 2Ki 22:19-20). But if it was only the first major deportation that was in mind then some of the Temple treasures would be allowed to remain (for they were taken in 587 BC) and the descriptions must not be applied too strictly.
Jer 20:6
“And you, Pashhur, and all who dwell in your house will go into captivity, and you will come to Babylon, and there you will die, and there will you be buried, you, and all your friends, to whom you have prophesied falsely.”
What was more, Pashhur himself and all his household including his family and servants, would go into captivity and would be taken to Babylon (in chains) and would die there and be buried along with all his friends. So much for the prophecies of deliverance, and the expectancy of a quick return emphasised by the false prophets (who were of course only recognised by the majority as false once their prophecies had failed). Thus Pashhur had made himself the symbol of all the terrors coming on Judah.
The ‘you’ in ‘to whom you have prophesied falsely’ probably indicates ‘you in the Temple’, referring to the Temple prophets under the Temple’s aegis rather than to Pashhur himself, with Pashhur and the priesthood taking full responsibility because they gave the prophecies their full backing. On the other hand it may be that Pashhur also claimed prophetic gifts.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
SECTION 1. An Overall Description Of Jeremiah’s Teaching Given In A Series Of Accumulated, Mainly Undated, Prophecies, Concluding With Jeremiah’s Own Summary Of His Ministry ( Jer 2:4 to Jer 25:38 ).
From this point onwards up to chapter 25 we have a new major section (a section in which MT and LXX are mainly similar) which records the overall teaching of Jeremiah, probably given mainly during the reigns of Josiah (Jer 3:6) and Jehoiakim, although leading up to the days of Zedekiah (Jer 21:1). While there are good reasons for not seeing these chapters as containing a series of specific discourses as some have suggested, nevertheless they can safely be seen as giving a general overall view of Jeremiah’s teaching over that period, and as having on the whole been put together earlier rather than later. The whole commences with the statement, ‘Hear you the word of YHWH O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel, thus says YHWH —.’ It is therefore directed to Israel as a whole, mainly as now contained in the land of Judah to which many northerners had fled for refuge. We may divide up the main subsections as follows, based partly on content, and partly on the opening introductory phrases:
1. ‘Hear you the word of YHWH, O house of Jacob and all the families of the house of Israel —’ (Jer 2:4). YHWH commences by presenting His complaint against Israel/Judah because they have failed to continue to respond to the love and faithfulness that He had demonstrated to them in the wilderness and in the years that followed, resulting by their fervent addiction to idolatry in their losing the water of life in exchange for empty cisterns. It ends with a plea for them to turn back to Him like an unfaithful wife returning to her husband. This would appear to be mainly his initial teaching in his earliest days, indicating even at that stage how far, in spite of Josiah’s reformation, the people as a whole were from truly obeying the covenant, but it also appears to contain teaching given in the days of Jehoiakim, for which see commentary (Jer 2:4 to Jer 3:5).
2. ‘Moreover YHWH said to me in the days of King Josiah –’ (Jer 3:6). This section follows up on section 1 with later teaching given in the days of Josiah, and some apparently in the days of Jehoiakim. He gives a solemn warning to Judah based on what had happened to the northern tribes (‘the ten tribes’) as a result of their behaviour towards YHWH, facing Judah up to the certainty of similar coming judgment if they do not amend their ways, a judgment that would come in the form of a ravaged land and exile for its people. This is, however, intermingled with a promise of final blessing and further pleas for them to return to YHWH, for that in the end is YHWH’s overall purpose. But the subsection at this time ends under a threat of soon coming judgment (Jer 3:6 to Jer 6:30).
3. ‘The word that came to Jeremiah from YHWH –’ (Jer 7:1). In this subsection Jeremiah admonishes the people about the false confidence that they have in the inviolability of the Temple, and in their sacrificial ritual, and warned that like Shiloh they could be destroyed. He accompanies his words with warnings that if they continued in their present disobedience, Judah would be dispersed and the country would be despoiled (Jer 7:1 to Jer 8:3). He therefore chides the people for their obstinacy in the face of all attempts at reformation (Jer 8:4 to Jer 9:21), and seeks to demonstrate to them what the path of true wisdom is, that they understand and know YHWH in His covenant love, justice and righteousness. In a fourfold comparison he then vividly brings out the folly of idolatry when contrasted with the greatness of YHWH. The section ends with the people knowing that they must be chastised, but hoping that YHWH’s full wrath will rather be poured out on their oppressors (Jer 9:22 to Jer 10:25).
4. ‘The word that came to Jeremiah from YHWH –’ (Jer 11:1). He now deprecates their disloyalty to the covenant, and demonstrates from examples the total corruption of the people, revealing that as a consequence their doom is irrevocably determined (Jer 11:1 to Jer 12:17). The section closes with a symbolic action which reveals the certainty of their expulsion from the land (13).
5. ‘The word that came from YHWH to Jeremiah –’ (Jer 14:1). “The word concerning the drought,” gives illustrative evidence confirming that the impending judgment of Judah cannot be turned aside by any prayers or entreaties, and that because of their sins Judah will be driven into exile. A promise of hope for the future when they will be restored to the land is, however, once more incorporated (Jer 16:14-15) although only with a view to stressing the general judgment (Jer 14:1 to Jer 17:4). The passage then closes with general explanations of what is at the root of the problem, and lays out cursings and blessings and demonstrates the way by which punishment might be avoided by a full response to the covenant as evidenced by observing the Sabbath (Jer 17:5-27).
6. ‘The word that came to Jeremiah from YHWH –’ (Jer 18:1). Chapters 18-19 then contain two oracles from God illustrated in terms of the Potter and his handiwork, which bring out on the one hand God’s willingness to offer mercy, and on the other the judgment that is about to come on Judah because of their continuance in sin and their refusal to respond to that offer. The consequence of this for Jeremiah, in chapter 20, is severe persecution, including physical blows and harsh imprisonment. This results in him complaining to YHWH in his distress, and cursing the day of his birth.
7. ‘The word that came to Jeremiah from YHWH –’ (Jer 21:1). This subsection, which is a kind of appendix to what has gone before, finally confirming the hopelessness of Jerusalem’s situation under Zedekiah. In response to an appeal from King Zedekiah concerning Judah’s hopes for the future Jeremiah warns that it is YHWH’s purpose that Judah be subject to Babylon (Jer 21:1-10). Meanwhile, having sent out a general call to the house of David to rule righteously and deal with oppression, he has stressed that no hope was to be nurtured of the restoration of either Shallum, the son of Josiah who had been carried off to Egypt, nor of Jehoiachin (Coniah), the son of Jehoiakim who had been carried off to Babylon. In fact no direct heir of Jehoiachin would sit upon the throne. And the reason that this was so was because all the current sons of David had refused to respond to his call to rule with justice and to stamp down on oppression. What had been required was to put right what was wrong in Judah, and reign in accordance with the requirements of the covenant. In this had lain any hope for the continuation of the Davidic monarchy. But because they had refused to do so only judgment could await them. Note in all this the emphasis on the monarchy as ‘sons of David’ (Jer 21:12; Jer 22:2-3). This is preparatory to the mention of the coming glorious son of David Who would one day come and reign in righteousness (Jer 23:3-8).
Jeremiah then heartily castigates the false shepherds of Judah who have brought Judah to the position that they are in and explains that for the present Judah’s sinful condition is such that all that they can expect is everlasting reproach and shame (Jer 23:9 ff). The subsection then closes (chapter 24) with the parable of the good and bad figs, the good representing the righteous remnant in exile who will one day return, the bad the people who have been left in Judah to await sword, pestilence, famine and exile.
8. ‘The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah –’ (Jer 25:1). This subsection contains Jeremiah’s own summary, given to the people in a sermon, describing what has gone before during the previous twenty three years of his ministry. It is also in preparation for what is to follow. He warns them that because they have not listened to YHWH’s voice the land must suffer for ‘seventy years’ in subjection to Babylon, and goes on to bring out that YHWH’s wrath will subsequently be visited on Babylon, and not only on them, but on ‘the whole world’. For YHWH will be dealing with the nations in judgment, something which will be expanded on in chapters 46-51. There is at this stage no mention of restoration, (except as hinted at in the seventy year limit to Babylon’s supremacy), and the chapter closes with a picture of the final desolation which is to come on Judah as a consequence of YHWH’s anger.
While the opening phrase ‘the word that came from YHWH to Jeremiah’ will appear again in Jer 30:1; Jer 32:1; Jer 34:8; Jer 35:1; Jer 40:1 it will only be after the sequence has been broken by other introductory phrases which link the word of YHWH with the activities of a particular king (e.g. Jer 25:1; Jer 26:1; Jer 27:1; Jer 28:1) where in each case the message that follows is limited in length. See also Jer 29:1 which introduces a letter from Jeremiah to the early exiles in Babylon. Looking at chapter 25 as the concluding chapter to the first part, this confirms a new approach from Jer 26:1 onwards, (apparent also in its content), while at the same time demonstrating that the prophecy must be seen as an overall unity.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Subsection 6). Lessons From The Potter and The Subsequent Persecution Of Jeremiah ( Jer 18:1 to Jer 20:18 ).
This subsection commences with the usual kind of formula, ‘The word that came to Jeremiah from YHWH –’ (Jer 18:1). Chapters 18-19 then contain two oracles from God illustrated in terms of the Potter and his handiwork, which bring out on the one hand God’s willingness to offer mercy, and on the other the judgment that is about to come on Judah because of their continuance in sin and their refusal to respond to that offer. The consequence of this for Jeremiah, in chapter 20, is severe persecution, including physical blows and harsh imprisonment. This results in him complaining to YHWH in his distress, and cursing the day of his birth.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
v. 1. Now, Pashur, the son of Immer, the priest, who was also chief governor in the house of the Lord, v. 2. Then Pashur, v. 3. And it came to pass on the morrow, v. 4. For thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will make thee a terror to thyself, v. 5. Moreover, I will deliver all the strength of this city, v. 6. And thou, Pashur, and all that dwell in thine house,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
EXPOSITION
Jer 20:1
The continuation of the preceding narrative. Pashur the son of Trainer. This man belonged to the sixteenth of the sacerdotal families or classes (1Ch 24:14). Another of the same name is referred to in Jer 21:1 (see note). The one here mentioned was “chief overseer” (there were several inferior overseers, 2Ch 31:13); the eminence of the position appears from the fact that Zephaniah, Pashur’s successor (Jer 29:26), is second only to the high priest (Jer 52:24). Heard that Jeremiah prophesied; rather, heard Jeremiah prophesying.
Jer 20:2
Pashur, being charged with the police of the temple, smites Jeremiah, i.e. causes stripes to be given him, and then orders him to be put into the stocks; literally, that which distortssome instrument of punishment which held the body in a bent or crooked position (comp. Jer 29:26). The “stocks” were sometimes kept in a special house (2Ch 16:10); these mentioned here, however, apparently stood in public, at the highor rather, uppergate of Benjamin, which was byor, atthe house of the Lord. The gate, then, was one of the temple gates, and is called “the upper” to distinguish it from one of the city gates which bore the same name (Jer 37:13; Jer 38:7). It is presumably the same which is called “the new gate of the Lord’s house” (Jer 26:10; Jer 36:10), as having been comparatively lately built (2Ki 15:35).
Jer 20:3
Symbolic change of name. Not Pashur, but Magor-missabib; i.e. terror on every side. There is probably no allusion to the (by no means obvious) etymology of Pashur. Jeremiah simply means to say that Pashur would one day become an object of general horror (see on verse 10).
Jer 20:5
The strength; rather, the stores. The labors; rather, the fruits of labor; i.e. the profits.
Jer 20:6
Comp. the prophecy against Shebna (Isa 22:18). Since we find, in Jer 29:26, Pashur’s office occupied by another, it is probable that the prediction was fulfilled by the captivity of Pashur with Jehoiachin. To whom thou hast prophesied lies (comp. Jer 14:13). Pashur, then, claimed to be a prophet.
Jer 20:7-13
A lyric passage, expressing the conflict in the prophet’s mind owing to the mockery and the slander which his preaching has brought upon him, and at the same time his confidence of victory through the protection of Jehovah; a suitable sequel to the narrative which goes before, even if not originally written to occupy this position (see general Introduction).
Jer 20:7
Thou hast deceived me, etc.; rather, thou didst entice me, and I let myself be enticed. Jeremiah refers to the hesitation he originally felt to accepting the prophetic office (Jer 1:1-19.). The verb does not mean “to deceive,” but “to entice” (so rendered in verse 10, Authorized Version), or “allure.” The same word is used in that remarkable narrative of “the spirit” who offered to “entice” (Authorized Version, to “persuade”) Ahab to “go up and fall at Ramoth-Gilead” (1Ki 22:21). In Ezekiel, too, the same case is supposed as possible of Jehovah’s “enticing” a prophet (Eze 15:1-8 :9). The expression implies that all events are, in some sense, caused by God, even those which are, or appear to be, injurious to the individual. Was Goethe thinking of this passage when he wrote the words, “Wen Gott betrugt, ist wohl betrogon?” Applying the words in a Christian sense, we may say (with F. W. Robertson) that God teaches us by our illusions. Thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed; rather, thou didst take hold on me, and didst prevail. The expression is like “Jehovah spake thus to me with a grasp of the hand” (Isa 8:11).
Jer 20:8
For since I spake, I cried out, etc.; rather, For as often as I speak, I must shout; I must cry, Violence and spoil; I can take up no other tone but that of indignant denunciation, no other theme but that of the acts of injustice constantly committed (not merely, nor indeed chiefly, against the prophet himself). Was made; rather, is made.
Jer 20:9
Then I said, etc.; rather, And when I say, I will not make mention of him, etc; then it becometh (i.e. I am conscious of a feeling) in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones; and I weary myself to hold it in, but cannot. The prophet has repeatedly been tempted to withdraw from the painful duty, but his other and higher self (comp. ‘Old Self and New Self’ in the ‘Lyra Apostolica’) overpowers these lower bayings for peace and quiet. The fire of the Divine wrath against sin burns so fiercely within him that he cannot help resuming his work.
Jer 20:10
For I heard, etc.; rather, For I have heard the whispering of many; there is terror on every side. Inform (say they), and let us inform against him. This gives us the reason for Ms momentary inclinations to silence. He was surrounded by bitter enemies, who were no longer content with malicious words, but urged each other on to lay an information against him with the authorities as a public criminal. The first clause agrees verbatim with part of Psa 31:13 (this is one of the psalms attributed, by a too bold conjecture, to Jeremiah). “There is terror on every side” (see above, Psa 31:3, and also note on Jer 6:25) means “everything about me inspires me with terror.” All my familiars is, literally, all the men of my peace; i.e. all those with whom I have been on terms of friendship (same phrase, Jer 38:22). Watched for my halting; i.e. either laid traps for me or waited for me to commit some error for them to take advantage of. The phrase, “my halting,” is borrowed (?) from Psa 35:15; Psa 38:18 (Hebrew). He will be enticed; viz. to say something on which a charge of treason can be based.
Jer 20:11
As a mighty terrible one; rather, as a formidable warrior. They shall not prevail. This was in fact, the Divine promise to Jeremiah at the outset of his ministry (Jer 1:19). For they shall not prosper; rather, because they have not pros-pored.
Jer 20:12
Repeated, with slight variations, from Jer 11:20.
Jer 20:13
In the confidence of faith Jeremiah sees himself already delivered. He writes in the style of the psalmists, who constantly pass from the language of prayer to that of fruition.
Jer 20:14-18
Jeremiah curses the day of his birth. The passage is a further development of the complaint in Jer 15:10, and stands in no connection with the consolatory close of the preceding passage. There is a very striking parallel in Job 3:3-12, and the question cannot be evaded, Which is the original? It is difficult to believe that Jeremiah copied from an earlier poem. Deep emotion expresses itself in language suggested by the moment; and, even after retouching his discourses, Jeremiah would leave much of the original expression. But impressions of this sort cannot be unreservedly trusted. The argument from parallel passages is only a subsidiary one in the determination of the date of books.
Jer 20:16
As the cities which the Lord overthrow. It is, so to speak, the “technical term” for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah which Jeremiah employs. So deeply imprinted was the tradition on the Hebrew mind, that a special word was appropriated to it, which at once called up thoughts of the awful justice of God (see Gen 19:25; Isa 1:7 (?); Isa 13:19; Amo 4:11; Deu 29:23 [22]; Jer 49:18; Jer 50:40). The cry the shouting. The cry of the besieged for help; the shouting of the suddenly appearing assailants (comp. Jer 15:8).
HOMILETICS
Jer 20:1-6
Pashur.
At length the smoldering opposition to Jeremiah breaks out into open persecution. Hitherto, though he has been answered by words (Jer 18:18) and threatened with violence, no overt act has been committed. Secret enemies have elaborated dark designs, which are alarming enough but come to no serious issue. But now violent hands are laid upon the prophet; and it is not an obscure band of illegal conspirators who contrive evil against him, but the official head of the temple guards formally arrests him and executes upon him the recognized punishment of a criminal. This action bears testimony to the excitement produced by the burning words of the discourse in the valley of Hinnom. So overawing were the utterances of the prophet that no one dared to touch him then; but when he confirmed them in the temple courts the circumstances were altered, and, either from alarm or from rage, Pashur, the chief of the temple police, laid hold of the prophet and brought him to severe punishment. The conduct of Pashur and the fate that is threatened him deserve our careful examination.
I. THE CONDUCT OF PASHUR.
1. Pashur was a priest and of high rank in the service of the temple of Jehovah. Such a man should have been able to recognize a true prophet of Jehovah as his fellow-servant. Yet he was first in persecuting him. Official religious positions are no guarantees for spiritual wisdom. But it is scandalous when the professed leaders of the Church are foremost in resisting the declaration of Divine truth and the execution of the will of God.
2. Pashur was a responsible officer of justice. Such a man should not have allowed himself to be carried away by a flood of popular indignation, influences of class jealousy, or impulses of personal spite, Judicial crimes are always the most atrocious crimes. They poison justice at its very Fountain, they abuse high trusts, they disorganize society, and all this in addition to the inherent wickedness of the acts, which is the same in all who commit them with similar motives.
3. Pashur replied to the words of prophecy with the arm of force. He could not answer Jeremiah, so he attempted to repress him. Unable to refute the arguments of the prophet, he endeavored to restrain the utterance of them. Here we recognize the folly, the injustice, and the cruelty of such persecution: the folly, for to silence a voice is not to destroy the unpleasant truth it declares; injustice, for nothing can be more unfair than to do violence to a man for uttering words which we cannot deny to be rote; and cruelty, for it is a man’s duty to make known what he believes to be important truths.
II. THE THREATENED FATE OF PASHUR. Jeremiah stood alone, unpopular and unprotected. Pashur was strong in the powers of office and supported by the sentiment of the country. Yet the prophet was more than a match for the officer. Sensitive and naturally retiring, Jeremiah was bold in the conviction of truth, the sense of duty, and the consciousness of the Divine presence. Pashur’s policy proved a failure. Jeremiah was not silenced by scourge and stocks. Either Pashur had too much sense of justice leg. to retain the prophet in prison, or he feared that such an action would be recognized as illegal and damage his position, or he thought the severe but brief corporal punishment of the prophet sufficient. Jeremiah was set at liberty on the day after he was arrested, and then, instead of cautiously measuring his language, he boldly threatened Pashur with a share of suffering in the coming calamity. This was peculiar. Pashur was not to experience the worst, but to witness it.
1. He was to be punished by fear. Tyrants are cowards. A long-enduring, harassing fear is more painful to bear than a short, sharp, visible trouble. Many evils are worse in prospect than in experience. Courage and active resistance may make the facing of danger easy, but to be haunted with vague terrors, powerless to do anything to avert them, lashed and stung by innumerable ideal and therefore intangible torments,this is torture. You can fight a foe of flesh and blood, but a fear is like a ghost. The blow aimed at it passes through it, and it remains still glaring at its victim till his blood freezes with horror. May God deliver us from the awful punishment of an eternal fear!
2. He was to see the words of the prophet verified by experience. He tried to silence the warning voice; he could not stay the approaching evil. They who have rejected warnings will be dismayed and confounded when they see them realized in facts.
3. He was to witness the calamity of his nation. Probably there was a genuine love of his country in this man. His attack on Jeremiah may have been influenced by a sincere desire for the national welfare. But if so he had put his country before his God. His punishment would come in the humiliation of his nation. Patriotism is no excuse for resisting the will of God. The godless patriot may be punished by seeing the troubles that are brought on his country through its irreligion.
Jer 20:7
Enticed and overpowered by God.
I. GOD ENTICES HIS SERVANTS. Jeremiah had been led to undertake the prophetic mission with assurances of success and victory (Jer 1:17-19), and he was surprised when he met only with contempt and apparent failure. So others have entered God’s service with much confidence in the joy and but little anticipation of the trouble it would bring. There is really nothing either false or unkind in this.
1. Nothing false; for
(1) though all the future trouble is not predicted, its approach is not denied; we are simply left in the dark in regard to it; and
(2) ultimately the servants of God will triumph, and the trouble will be all forgotten and swallowed up in victory. But if the darker experience were clearly revealed at first, it would throw such a shadow over the future that the ultimate triumph would be scarcely thought of, and thus a more false idea of the whole course of life would be produced than that which comes from hiding from us some of its darker scenes.
2. Nothing unkind. If the trouble must be faced it need not be anticipated (Mat 6:1-34 :84). If God hides approaching trouble from us he does not forget to provide against it. He takes the burden of it upon himself, so that when the trouble is revealed the grace to endure it is also revealed. Moreover, on the whole, the blessedness of the service of God vastly outweighs its distresses. If the alarm of the latter drove us from the service, the result would be loss to ourselves. It is, therefore, merciful in God to condescend to our weakness and thus lead us on through partial views of truth until we are strong enough to grasp the whole. Still, when the prospect of trouble is revealed it should be faced. Something of this must be considered by us or we may make an ignominious failure. Jeremiah was warned of opposition. Christ discouraged rash, heedless enthusiasm (Luk 9:57, Luk 9:58), and bade men count the cost of his service.
II. GOD OVERPOWERS HIS SERVANTS. Jeremiah complained that he was not only enticed but prevailed upon by God by force. “Thou art stronger than I.” God never forces a man’s will. But still he hedges a man in and uses such influences upon him that many of the experiences of his life may be ascribed to God’s supreme power rather than to the man’s spontaneous action. If these result in shame and apparent failure, as they often may, at first sight it seems as though God had been dealing harshly with his servant.
1. But we should remember that it is a blessed thing to suffer for God. It is an honor to be a true martyr to God’s will (Mat 5:10, Mat 5:11).
2. We should understand that good purposes are being effected through such suffering. It is not without its end. God is honoring us as he glorifies his Son, by making us the sacrifices for the accomplishment of a blessing to mankind.
3. We should believe that a great reward in heaven will compensate for the patient endurance of these brief earthly troubles. Without this the problem would be inexplicable. With it all wrongs will be righted.
Jer 20:9
The burning fire of inspiration.
I. THESE WORDS ARE A PROOF OF THE GENUINE INSPIRATION OF THE PROPHET. He is not thinking of convincing others of the fact of his inspiration, but simply pouring out the trouble of soul that it occasions. The ingenuousness of the utterance and the indirect allusion to the inspiration make them the more valuable. Then, the words of prophecy gained the prophet no power nor popularity, but only contempt and persecution It is impossible to stud the language of Jeremiah without feeling that he was overwhelmed with the consciousness of a Divine spiritual influence, while the dignity, vigor, and moral sublimity of his prophecies make it unreasonable to suppose that he was a self-deceived fanatic.
II. THESE WORDS ARE AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE POWERFUL INFLUENCE OF INSPIRATION. This was not a mere illumination; it was a power. The inspired prophet was not simply gifted with insight into truth; he was swayed by the might of it. He did not feel at liberty to deal with it as he pleased, to mediate on it by himself, to suppress it, to utter it only as his convenience was suited; it was his master, a hand laid heavily upon him, a fire burning in his bosom, that must come out. The same experience is felt by all men who have spiritual relations with truth. They do not hold truth; they find that truth holds them. That inspiration influences the will as well as the intellect is strikingly proved in the case of Balaam (Num 24:1-25.). The reason of this is found in the real presence of the Spirit of God. Revelation is by inspiration, and inspiration is the breathing of God’s Spirit into a man’s spirit, so that he becomes possessed by it. The tremendous importance of the truth revealed increases this compulsion of utterance. Jeremiah had revealed to him no barren, abstract dogmas, no trivial religious notions, no empty answers to curious prying questions of little practical moment, but terrible truths concerning his people and their highest interests. How could he hide such truths as we liars seen he had been entrusted with? If God speaks it must be to utter important words. The burden of them urges their custodian to declare them.
III. THESE WORDS ARE AN EVIDENCE OF THE PAINFUL EFFECTS OF INSPIRATION. No man need desire to be a prophet from motives of worldly ambition or selfish pleasure. The high privilege of inspiration carries with it danger, toil, anguish, terror. Prophecy has its Gethsemanes and its Golgothas. If its mission is faithfully carried out it leads to the cross. If this is faithlessly abandoned the prophet is consumed with inward fires. Inspiration is no substitute for mental labor, no excuse for intellectual indolence. On the contrary, it rouses the whole soul, quickens its energies, and works them to weariness. In so far as any of us are possessed in varying degrees by spiritual influences we shall find the Word of God a fire within us, which burns till we have discharged the minion it brings.
Jer 20:10, Jer 20:11
A prophet persecuted by spies.
I. THE PERSECUTION BY SPIES.
1. Consider the persons persecuting.
(1) They were mean and weak. Their names are not given; we know little of their characters and actions; yet the despicable conduct here ascribed to them proclaims them to have been of low and shallow natures. Only such can play the part of a spy. Yet these men could trouble Jeremiah. A spy can persecute a prophet. A gnat can sting a lion. Mean and despicable creatures that can do little good have considerable power of doing harm. This fact is humiliating to our common human nature, and it shows the great need of a Providence to restrain the outrages of wickedness which are so easily executed.
(2) They were numerous. The prophet stood alone beset on every side with malicious spies. How difficult to be faithful in that dreadful solitude of a crowd of unsympathizing persons!
(3) They were Jeremiah’s familiar acquaintances. Religious and political differences separate the best of friends. When a man’s own near acquaintances turn against him the very ground he stands upon seems to be breaking away from beneath his feet. Such men have peculiar power for harm, because
(a) they have been trusted and
(b) they know the weak places in a man’s armor.
2. Consider the character of the persecution. The persecution of spies must have been peculiarly harassing.
(1) It was not open. It is so much easier to meet a frank foe in the field than to cope with the secret devices of spies.
(2) It must have been tainted with untruth. The spy would hear enough to misunderstand, and would unconsciously misrepresent in the effort to make his report consistent and telling. The “whispering” would heighten the color of every tale as it passed from one to another.
(3) It was perpetual. The spies were always on the watch, ready to take advantage of the first unguarded moment.
(4) It was malicious. The spies were eager for Jeremiah’s halting, hoping to entice him to some mistake.
II. THE REFUGE FROM THIS PERSECUTION. Jeremiah found his refuge in God.
1. He could do so because he was innocent and because he was suffering in the service of God. How happy to be able thus fearlessly to challenge the arbitration of God between ourselves arid our detractors!
2. The help of God is sought because he knows all. He sees “the reins and the heart.” If the spy is watchful, with his prying looks capable of seeing only the surface of things and with only partial views, and listening only to catch up broken fragments of speech to distort and misrepresent, God is righteously watchful of all that his creatures say and do.
3. The help of God is trusted in because he is “a mighty terrible one.” “The God is a man of war.” The might and majesty of Godso terrible to the godlessare the refuge of his people. It should be remembered by all of us that God is actively concerned with human affairs, and in his providence, without requiring what we call “miracle,” can frustrate the devices of the wise and defeat the efforts of the strong.
Jer 20:13
Thanksgiving for future blessings.
I. WE MAY BE THANKFUL FOR BLESSINGS NOT YET RECEIVED. Jeremiah closes his prayer with praise. No sooner has he asked for God’s help than he feels so assured of receiving it that he anticipates it in imagination, and breaks forth into grateful song as though he were already enjoying it. This is a proof of genuine faith. Faith makes the absent seem near and the future appear present (Heb 11:1). It influences our whole beingthe imagination among other facultiesso that it enables us to conceive the good thing trusted for so vividly and so confidently that the thought of it affects the mind just as strongly as if we saw the object with our eyes and grasped it in our hands. Such an effect is a test of the earnestness and faith of prayer. Some people could not be more surprised than by receiving the exact answer to their prayers.
II. THE FULL DELIVERANCE FROM ALL HARM IS A FUTURE BLESSING FOR WHICH WE MAY BE GRATEFUL.
1. It is a future blessing. Jeremiah was not delivered immediately. His life was beset with danger to the end. After the time to which our text refers, he met with worse troubles than any that had hitherto befallen him. The Christian must not expect a sudden and perfect escape from all distress and temptation the moment he prays to God for he]p. Perfect deliverance can only come with the conquest of the last enemy, death. “Now is our salvation”our perfect deliverance”nearer than when we first believed” (Rom 13:11), but it is not yet enjoyed.
2. It is, nevertheless, a blessing for which we may be truly thankful at once. For it is positively assured to the Christian. The heir of a great inheritance may rejoice in his prospects, though for the present he is in want. But earthly pleasures of hope are checked by fears of possible disappointment. The buds may be nipped by frost; the promising young man may break down before achieving any great work. Nevertheless God is too powerful, as well as too faithful, to fail in fulfilling his promises. Therefore we should anticipate the praises of heaven on earth, sing the songs of Zion in the strange land, and enjoy the vision of the celestial city from Beulah heights though valleys of humiliation and waters of death may lie between.
III. IT IS A GOOD THING TO EXPRESS OUR GRATITUDE FOR FUTURE BLESSINGS.
1. All gratitude should find utterance in praise. The grateful heart should rouse the singing voice. Of all feelings thankfulness should be the last to be mute. We may pray for mercy in secret communion with God; we should utter praise as a public testimony to others and as an uncontrollable gladness that must relieve itself in song.
2. The utterance of praise for future blessings is an assurance of our faith. It will react upon us and strengthen faith. It will be a solace for the dark hours that may yet intervene before the enjoyment of the anticipated good.
Jer 20:14-18
Jeremiah cursing the day of his birth.
I. TROUBLE MAY LEAD A GOOD MAN TO THE VERGE OF DESPAIR. Jeremiah was a prophet, a good man, a man of faith, a man of prayer. Yet he cursed the day of his birth. Jeremiah was not without precedents for his conduct. Not to mention Jonah, whose character is by no means exemplary, the patient Job and the courageous Elijah had both regarded existence as a curse, and cried passionately for death. Jeremiah had great provocations to despair. His mission seemed to be a failure; his old friends had become spies in league with his inveterate foes; he stood alone, watched, maligned, hated, cruelly misjudged. We cannot be surprised that his patience broke down. Though impatience and a yielding to despair are proofs of weakness, they are far less culpable than unfaithfulness. Many would have quietly declined the tasks which Jeremiah manfully performed, though they led him to the verge of despair. It must be noted that, though the prophet cursed the day of his birth, he did not flee from the mission of his life; though he longed for death, he did not commit suicide. From his experience,
(1) the sorrowful may learn that deeper depths of sorrow have been traversed than any they are in, and yet the light has been reached on the further side;
(2) the desponding may see how good men have been near despair before them, and so be encouraged by knowing that their despondency is not a sin of fatal unbelief.
II. IT IS FOOLISH AND WRONG FOR A MAN TO CURSE THE DAY OF HIS BIRTH. He may be a good man who falls into despair, still his despair is a failing. This condition of Jeremiah must be distinguished from that of Simeon. Simeon was ready to depart when his life’s work was finished and at God’s time. His prayer was one of placid submission to the will of God (Luk 2:29). But Jeremiah had not finished his life’s work; life itself was regarded by him as an evil; his despair was contrary to a spirit of resignation to the Divine will Jeremiah’s language should also be distinguished from that of St. Paul when he expressed his longing to “depart and be with Christ” (Php 1:23). The apostle was inspired with a hope of heaven, the prophet moved only by a loathing of life; the apostle was willing patiently to remain and do his work, the prophet felt impatient of life.
1. Such conduct is foolish, for the whole value of life is thus judged by one hasty thought in a mood of gloom and distress. Life is too large and multifarious to be estimated in this way. There are recuperative energies in all of us beyond what we can imagine in our moments of weakness. Besides, if the present is dark, who knows what the future will produce?
2. Such conduct is wrong. We are not the judges of our own lives. To despair is to complain of the justice of God. The mistake of Jeremiah’s hasty impatience is apparent when we consider the value of his life. Jeremiah’s life worthless! Why, it was the most valuable life of the age. There may be persons of whom it can be said that it were better for those men if they had never been born. But these are not the men who are usually most ready to despair of their lives. The despondent may take courage from the mistake of Jeremiah, and know that when they think their lives most worthless they may really be of most service.
III. THE CHRISTIAN HAS STRONG INDUCEMENTS NOT TO CURSE THE DAY OF HIS BIRTH. Jeremiah lived before the light and grace of Christianity had been bestowed. We should be without excuse if, while enjoying higher advantages, we imitated his despair.
1. Christianity sheds light on the purpose of sorrow. This was a profound mystery to the Jew, Christ has shown us the blessedness of sorrow, the glory of the cross, the utility of sacrifice.
2. Christianity brings new grace to help in the endurance of sorrow. Christians have the example of the suffering Christ, the sympathy and healing of the great Physician and the new baptism of the Spirit, to help them to endure the baptism of sorrow.
3. Christianity reveals fresh gourd for confidence in God in the darkness of trouble. God is seen as our Father. His will must be wise and good. All life must be wisely ordered by him. Thus we are taught to bend submissively to the higher wilt that we cannot understand.
4. Christianity inspires hope in the final triumph over trouble. It lifts the veil from eternal things and makes known the “far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” It assures us that no true life can ultimately fail, that no true man lives in vain, that, though evil may vaunt itself in the present, ultimately truth and right shall triumph.
HOMILIES BY A.F. MUIR
Jer 20:1-3
The behavior of the wicked towards the truth.
I. THEY REGARD THE TRUTH AND ITS MINISTERS AS THEIR GREATEST ENEMIES. If Pashur had known better he would have refrained from such exhibitions of temper. The prophet would then have been accounted the greatest benefactor of his country. Not the soldier on the battlefield nor the statesman in the councils of empire could have rendered so signal a service as Jeremiah did in simply but persistently telling the truth. Much of what he said was patent to every honest observer. By saying what he did the prophet did not bring into existence that which did not exist before; and, if it really existed, it was better that it should be recognized and reckoned with. The evils he denounced were the real enemies of the country, and not those who pointed them out and suggested their reform. It is, however, unpleasant to the carnal mind to have its faults and sins exposed. With many the calamity is not that evil should be done, but that it should be found out.
II. THEY ARE NOT SCRUPULOUS AS TO THE MEANS THEY EMPLOY TO SILENCE THEM. He smote Jeremiah the prophet, and put him in the stocks.” These means of punishment were at hand, and he used them at once. It was legal power used illegally, or law employed to the detriment of righteousness. Passionate hatred is shown by the whole course of action. Could anything else be expected of those who tried to subvert righteousness? They must needs do it unrighteously. Even the condemnation of Christ was legal only in appearance.
III. THE BEHAVIOR OF THE OPPONENTS OF THE TRUTH IS FREQUENTLY CONDEMNED BY ITS OWN INCONSISTENCY AND VACILLATION. “It came to pass on the morrow, that Pashur brought forth Jeremiah out of the stocks.”
1. The course dictated by passion is seen to be impolitic and foolish.
2. The guilty intention is weakened by the outcries of conscience. It is this conscience which makes cowards of us allor heroes. Here it led to vacillation, which discredited the policy to which Pashur was already committed, and made its author ridiculous. This is one of the reasons why men can do nothing against the truth. It shines by its own light and confounds the machinations that have been wrought in darkness.
3. Truth has a powerful ally in the bosoms of its worst enemies.
IV. OPPOSITION TO THE TRUTH IS CERTAIN TO FAIL. “Then said Jeremiah unto him,” etc. (verse 3). The prophet is only the more vehement and enthusiastic. Ill-timed antagonism to his message has provoked him to coin a nickname for Pashur, which linked the impending judgment inseparably with his memory. It was a bad eminence richly deserved. He was to be the refutation of himself, to see all his predictions falsified, and to reap the curses of those he had deceived as they perished in their sins. How often in his disgraceful exile he must have wished he had let the messenger of God alone (Act 5:38, Act 5:39).M.
Jer 20:3-6
Magor-Missabib; or, the fate of a false prophet.
The person hero mentioned cannot with certainty be identified. He will the better serve as a type and representative of his kind. There is no age or country that has not had its Pashur.
I. THE INFLUENCE HE EXERCISED.
1. Its character. Absolute and despotic. At the suggestion of his own evil heart. Capable of destroying civil rights and character itself. The whole civil and sacred machinery of the laud was at his disposal. The public trusted him. The state of things condemned by Jeremiah it was his immediate interest to support, and in turn he could rely upon official support. He identifies himself with the ruling party and becomes its representative and mouthpiece. Vested rights, traditional religion, etc; are his watchwords, because he owes everything to them.
2. How it was acquired. Family connection”the son of Immer the priest.” Not by striving to reform abuses, but by fostering and upholding the status quo. He who was so oblivious to the wrongs of which the prophet spoke could not have been scrupulous as to the means by which he rose to position and influence. Oriental corruption and intrigue had doubtless had their part in securing his elevation. (“Pashur” probably means “extension,” “pride,” “eminence.”)
3. How it was employed. Hastily, on the passionate impulse of the moment. Without regard to the essential justice of the case. And when the error is discovered no true repentance or effort at amends is visible. Cf. the time-serving policy of Agrippa (Act 26:32).
II. THE CHARACTER AND DESTINY HE EARNED. By making himself the champion of apostle Judah, and insulting the prophet of God, he is sentenced to the same fate, but in a peculiar and aggravated degree.
1. It would be his fortune to be looked upon as the representative and embodiment of the system of falsehood which had ruined his country. He who prophesied falsely will be justly punished by such an association. Instead of saying, “It was Moloch or Astarte that deceived us,” the victims of the common disaster, will say,”It was the prophet of these false gods who led us astray.” How readily does personal influence acquire such a representative character! There are many evil forces and influences at work in society, the state, the Church, etc; which would cease to exist were it not for their accidental connection with some personage who becomes their advocate or their bulwark.
2. His character and influence would be exposed. The assurances he had given would one by one be falsified by the fulfillments of Jeremiah’s predictions. Instead of being honored and looked up to, he would become a loathing and a byword. He would outlive his credit, his self-esteem, and his happiness. Shunned by others, he would be unable to trust himself. Each fresh catastrophe would deepen his disgrace and remorse. A “terror round about” would be the name he would earn.
3. His exemption from immediate destruction would but enhance his punishment. Like the criminal obliged to stand in the dock and hear all the counts of his indictment made good by the evidence of witnesses, he should outlive the first effects of the national ruin, see all his statements falsified, bear the reproach of his own wicked lies, and yet linger on when life had ceased to be desirable. There is a grotesqueness about this punishment that would make it ludicrous were it not so sad and awful. A more severe punishment could hardly be conceived. And yet it is not more than Pashur deserved. Would that our modern “prophets of lies” could be compelled to witness the consequences of their advice and example! A modified degree of this experience has, indeed, been the sentence inflicted upon many a good man. But Christ takes up the entail of sin and breaks it. We may do better than to stand by and see the evil consequences of former folly; it is for us to strive to rectify them. So the past may be retrieved and the evil days redeemed by those who have been servants of sin “turning many to righteousness.”M.
Jer 20:7-18
The sorrow and joy of God’s servant.
There are many such photographs of the inner heart-life of God’s people. It is the touch of nature which brings them near to us. The words and work of Jeremiah become more living and influential when we witness his spiritual struggles.
I. THE SPIRITUAL NECESSITY OF HIS POSITION IS ALTERNATELY COMPLAINED OF AND ACQUIESCED IN. The saint cannot always continue amidst his highest experiences. There are ups and downs, not only of our actual outward circumstances, but of our inward spiritual states. Do not condemn Jeremiah until you are able to acquit yourself. The heavenly mind is not formed easily or at once. There is an inward cross m every true heart, upon which it must needs “die daily.” But “the powers of the world to come” ever tend to increase their hold upon the believer. This alternation of mood and feeling is a necessary accompaniment of spiritual growth. Some day the heart will be fixed. “The reproach of Christ” will then be esteemed “greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.” This is what we should strive afterinward oneness of heart and purpose with our Master.
II. HIS EXPERIENCE IS TRANSITIONAL.
1. From doubt to faith. (Verses 11, 12.)
2. From sorrow to joy. (Verse 13.)
3. One day the struggle will end in triumph.M.
HOMILIES BY S. CONWAY
Jer 20:9
Why God’s servants labor on.
“Then I said, I will not make mention,” etc. It was under no small provocation that Jeremiah uttered these words. It was in no fit of mere indolence or infidelity that he cried, “I will not make mention of God, nor speak anymore in his Name.” He had stretched out his hand, but the people to whom he was sent refused; he had called, but they would not answer. And this had been their wont persistently, until he was weary, utterly weary, and out of heart, and then it was he spoke as we read here and declared he would try no more. If any one be inclined to judge him harshly, let us but read the story of his lifea story most sad, yet glorious too, so far as the grace of God and the true honor of his servant are concerned; but yet a sad story, and one which, when we have read it, will most assuredly check all disposition to censure, with anything like severity, the deeply tried servant of God who in his utter weariness said he would speak no more in the Name of God. Now, all of us who are familiar with our Bibles or who know anything of the way in which those who labor for God often fail, will know that Jeremiah by no means stands alone in his sense of hopelessness and weariness in his work. We remember Moses (Exo 5:22; Num 11:11); and how Elijah faltered beneath his burden (1Ki 19:4); and John the Baptist (Mat 11:3); and even the holy Savior himself (Joh 12:29; Luk 22:42). Such is the stress which doing the will of God amongst wicked men puts upon the human spirit; no wonder that it well-nigh gives way. From the experience, then, of our Savior and of so many of his servants we must all of us who are his servants lay our account with manifold and often great discouragements, and yet more with being tried by the temptation on account of these discouragements to abandon our work altogether and to speak no more in the Name of the Lord. Now, where is the spirit that will resist this temptation, that will prevent the half-formed resolve to cease endeavor from being wholly formed and carried out? There is such a spirit. This strong temptation may be and has been resisted again and again. What is the secret of Christian constancy and steadfastness in the work of the Lord? We have the answer in this verse. However much any of God’s servants may be tempted, as Jeremiah was, to give up his work, he still will not do so if, as was the case with Jeremiah, “the Word of the Lord is in his heart as a burning fire shut up in his bones;” then he will be “weary with forbearing,” and he will find that he cannot stay. Even as Elihu (Job 27:18), who said, “I am full of matter,” etc.; and as Peter (Act 4:20), and Paul (Act 17:6; Act 18:5; 1Co 9:16); and our Savior (Luk 2:49; Luk 12:50). In all these utterances we have the expression of that spirit which alone can, bat surely will, bear up the servant of God amid all his difficulties and hold him steadfast to his duty in spite of every discouragement. But dropping all metaphor, let us inquire into this excellent spirit which renders such service to the tried and desponding soul. It does exist. The records of the mission work of the Church at home and abroad will furnish not a few instances of men and women whose hearts the Lord hath touched, and who, moved by this Divine impulse, have felt themselves constrained to be up and doing, to penetrate the spiritual darkness around them, and to resist the power of the devil everywhere present. Under the influence of this holy zeal, such servants of God have looked upon the heathen, the degraded, the vile, not with the natural eye alone. That revealed to them only a foul mass of vice and cruelty, sensuality and all human degradation. From such scenes and people nature turns away and would let them alone. But amid and beneath all this moral, spiritual, and physical repulsiveness, the ardent soul of God’s servant sees jewels which may be won for Christ, spirits which may be regenerated and restored. His eye looks fight on to what, through the grace of the gospel, these degraded ones may become; and absorbed, swallowed up by a holy Christ-like love, he determines to spend and be spent in bringing to bear on that mass of sin and evil the power of that gospel which has done so much already and which is “the power of God unto salvation unto every one that believeth. The Word of God has been in their heart as,” etc. There have been times in our history when we have known somewhat of this sacred impulse which fired the soul of the prophet Jeremiah. Have we not known seasons when the impulse was strong on us to say something for God? It has come when we have been preaching or teaching, and we have broken away from the calm, not to say cold, tone in which we have been going on, and have spoken to those before us words which have come up from the very depths of our soul, and we have seen in the countenances of our children or our congregation that they, too, were conscious that they were being spoken to in a manner other than usual, and that portion of the day’s lesson or the sermon has been remembered when all the rest has been forgotten. And sometimes this impossibility of keeping silence for God has come to us on the railway Journey, in the quiet walk with a friend or child, or in social converse, or in the casual talk with a stranger into whose society we may have been for a while thrown; and then we have felt we must say something for God, and it has been said feebly, weakly perhaps, but nevertheless the testimony has been borne, the endeavor has been made. God would not let us be silent; we could not stay from speaking; necessity was laid upon us. These are in their measure instances of the same Spirit as that which moved the prophets and apostles of old, though in a far less degree. But it is evident how well it would be for us all who bear Christ’s name to possess in far larger measure than we do this holy and irresistible impulse. The spur is what we too often need; how rarely the bridle! not the holding back, but the urging on. Whence, then, comes this sacred and mighty Spirit, under whose influence so many of the saints of God, even as the Son of God, have labored on in spite of all discouragement and suffering and wrong? It is evident, from the history of Jeremiah and of all other faithful servants of God, that the method by which God impelled them to their work was by bestowing on them such gifts as these
I. THE KNOWLEDGE OF SIN. For he who has this knows how appalling is the evil under which men live. To him this present world and its inhabitants present but one aspect, that of being under a yoke which no man can bear. He has seen the vision of sin, and it was a sight so terrible that he can never forget it. It haunts him, for he knew it was no dream of the night, but a dreadful reality of the day and of every day. It was no chimera, no fiction of his own imagination, but a real and awful power that has ruled men and still is ruling over men. What scenes of beauty it has destroyed! What fearful misery it evermore produces. There was the garden of Eden in all its loveliness, with every fair flower and noble tree, with luscious fruit and every herb fit for the food of man or beast; it was all beautiful, so beautiful that even God pronounced it “very good.” And as chief over this fair inheritance there were the first created of our race, in form and mind and soul harmonizing with the beauty and goodness that was all around them. How blest their condition! But the scene changes. We see no longer the garden of Eden, but a weary land bearing thorns and briars; we see, too, haggard and careworn people bending in sore agony over the murdered corpse of their child, murdered by his own brother, their eldest born. What hath wrought this change? An enemy, without doubt, but what enemy? It is sinthe heart of man in rebellion against God. The Bible is full of scenes like thesemisery, shame, ruin, death, all, all the work of sin. And sin reigns yet, as he to whom God has given to see the vision of sin knows full well. Who can recount its doings? Who can describe the woes it causes? What ocean would be vast enough to receive the tears it has made to flow? What colors dark enough to depict the moral and spiritual evil it has engendered? And then the sorrows of the souls that are lost, the doom of the accursed of Godthe antitype of that which Jesus describes as the “fire that is never quenched, and the worm that never dies.” It is the vision of this,the appalling evil, past, present, and most of all to come,that has risen up before the soul of him who, beholding those around him under its dominion, finds himself utterly unable to forbear telling them of the Word of the Lord to the end that they may be saved. No wonder that, in view of these dread calamities, “the Word of the Lord was in his heart;” etc.
II. But a further knowledge has been given to him to contribute to this same result. Were the vision of sin all, utter and dreadful despair would be alone left to him; but it is not all. Along with the knowledge of sin there is given to him THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE GOSPEL in the Word of the Lord. It is brought home to his soul, by evidence he cannot question, that the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is the sure remedy for all human ill. He has a deep conviction that trust in the Redeemer, reliance on his atoning death and sacrifice, will bring peace to the conscience, purity to the mind, strength to the will, hope to the heart, and final and eternal acceptance in the presence of God. Very much of what it can do for the soul in this life he knows it has done for him, and he has seen it do yet more for others. He sees, not only the need of such great salvation as God has provided in Christ Jesus for guilty and miserable man, but also the fitness and adaptation and the actual power of this grace of God. Such is his conviction concerning the Word of the Lord, the gospel of the grace of God; and, thus persuaded of its power to bless and save mankind, he hears on all sides, and coming up from all depths of sorrow and sin, the imperative summons to him to tell of this Savior and this salvation, and by no means to keep silence. From every hospital and asylum where the victims of vice and sin are reaping what they have sown; from every prison cell; from every place where the ruined in health, in fortune, in character, and in soul are dragging out the remainder of their wretched life; from every gallows-tree; from every impenitent’s grave; and from the sinner’s hell;there comes the solemn adjuration which the apostle so keenly felt, “Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel!” And not the sins alone, though they most, but the sorrows of mankind also, utter forth the same appeal. For the gospel of the Savior is a healing balm to the sick at heart, oil and wine to the wounded spirit; it is the gospel of consolation, of hope, and of peace to the sorrowing myriads of mankind. Feeling all this, how can it be otherwise that “the Word of the Lord is in his heart as,” etc.?
III. But there is one other gift needed to the full possession of that Divine Spirit which finds expression in our text. It is THE KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST. By this is meant, not merely an acquaintance with and belief in the truths concerning our Lord’s nature and work, nor even simply such belief in him as will save the soul, but such knowledge of him as is involved in deep love to him and sympathy with those objects on which his heart is set. To know Christ as your own loving Savior, who has died for you, redeemed and pardoned and accepted you, and given you an inheritance amongst his own; to know him by oft and earnest communion with him, by toil and suffering for him;this is that knowledge of Christ which, when added on to that other knowledge of sin and of the gospel of which we have already spoken, will lead to that irresistible desire to serve him which his true servants have so often felt and shown. The love of Christ must be the constraining motive, and then there will come love and labor for the souls for whom Christ died. I do not know that it is possible for us to have a deep regard and concern for those whom we have never seen or known unless we see in each individual member of mankind one of the brethren or sisters of Christ, part of Christ’s body, one of his members, he being the Head of all. If this be believed, then we see that the soul of each of these men and women, though they may be of different clime and color, and be altogether strange and perhaps repulsive to us, still, the soul of each of them is as precious to Christ as our own, and as capable of honoring and as ready to honor him as was our own. This love of Christ will lead to the love of Christ in all men, for indeed he is in all men, and this will beget a Divine charity which will be ever a mighty motive to seek their good. Then shall we possess the mind which was in him who wept over Jerusalem and prayed for his very murderers. Then shall we willingly bear disappointment, reproach, loss, or aught other ill which may come to us as we toil on in our Master’s service. Here, then, in this deep knowledge of sin, of the gospel, and of Christ, have we the secret of that burning zeal which consumed the heart of Jeremiah and of others like minded to him. May God, of his mercy, give to all who labor in his cause this holy and quenchless zeal! Laboring under such impulse, let come what will to us in this world as the result of our toil, we will still labor on. Blessed Lord Jesus Christ, let thy Word be in our hearts as a burning fire, so that when tempted to forbear making mention of thee and speaking any more in thy Name, we may be weary of such forbearing and feel we cannot stay.C.
Jer 20:14-18
Is life worth living?
Here is one who evidently thought it was not. How bitterly he grieves over the fact that he was ever brought into existence! It is an illustration, as has been pointed out, of the maddening force of suffering.. It drives a man to the use of wild language. For great sufferings generate great passions in the soul. They rouse the whole man into action. And these great passions thus roused often become irrepressible. Many men of no ordinary meekness and self-control are overborne at such timesJeremiah, Job, Moses, Elijah; and then they express themselves in unmeasured terms. It is as a flood broken loose. Its rushing, foaming waters pour along, and over all that lies in their path. Hence it is that the prophet here, not content with cursing the day of his birth, utters wild execrations on the messenger that announced it to his father. Thus passionately does he protest against the misery and misfortune of his life. Nor has he been alone in such dark thoughts concerning life. Cf. Job 3:1-26; where the patriarch, in almost identical language, deplores the fact of his birth. And Moses prayed that God would kill him out of hand (Num 11:15); and Elijah (1Ki 19:4). And there have been a whole host of men who have in the most emphatic way affirmed their belief that life is not worth living by refusing to live it any longerSaul, Ahithophel, Judas, and the suicides of all ages declare this. And many more who have not given this dread proof of their sincerity have yet maintained the same. Sophocles said, “Not to be born is best in every way. Once born, by far the better lot is then at once to go back whence we came.” Goethe, as he drew near his end, notwithstanding that all men regarded his career as one which had been highly favored and very enviable, is reported to have said, “They have called me a child of fortune, nor have I any wish to complain of the course of my life. Yet it has been nothing but sorrow and labor; and I may truly say that in seventy-five years I have not had four weeks of true comfort. It was the constant rolling of a stone that was always to be lifted anew. When I look back upon my earlier and middle life and consider how few are those left who were young with me, I am reminded of a summer visit to a watering-place. On arriving one makes the acquaintance of those who have already been some time there and leave the week following. This loss is painful. Now one becomes attached to the second generation, with which one lives for a time and becomes intimately connected. But this also passes away and leaves us solitary with the third, which arrives shortly before our own departure, and with which we have no desire to have much intercourse.” And the gloomy musings of Hamlet, “To be or not to be, that is the question,” is another example, which-has been followed by the whole tribe of those who are called pessimists, of representing life as a curse rather than a blessing. And we cannot deny that there are many now whose lot in life is so sad, that, if we looked only at the present, we could not vindicate the justice and still less the goodness of God in regard to them. And the terrible lottery that life is, a lottery in which the blanks far outnumber the prizes, goes far to account for the apathetic indifference with which the deaths of such myriads of children are regarded. If all parents knew for certain that the lot of their children would be bright or mainly so, how much mole jealously would their lives be guarded and avenged! And there are many men who, whilst they stammer out some kind of thanksgiving for their “preservation and all the blessings of this life,” fail utterly to feel thankful for their “creation.” They would much rather not have been. So that there can be no doubt that there is a larger and it is to be feared an increasing number of people who are desperately or despairingly asking the question which stands at the head of this homily, and which this passionate protest of the prophet against his birth has suggested. But how is all this? Let us therefore inquire
I. WHAT ARE THE CAUSES OF SUCH CHEERLESS THINKING AND SPEAKING? We reply:
1. Temperament has a great deal to do with it. Some are born with a sunny, bright, cheerful disposition; let them go down on their knees and give God thanks for it, for it is a better gift to them, more surely secures their happiness, than thousands of gold and silver. But others are born with a temperament the very reverse-pessimists from their mothers’ womb, always seeing the dark side of things, melancholy, foreboding, complaining. It Is a positive disease, and calls for mingled pity and careful discipline.
2. But more often still it is, the continued and sore pressure of sorrow. So was it with Job and here with Jeremiah. And it is still the bitter disappointments, the miserable failures, “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” trouble upon trouble,these are prolific sources of the sad views of life of which we speak.
3. But most of all, sinmoral evilis the real cause. The “philosophy of melancholy” finds its true parentage there. It is this which causes that unrest and torment of soul, that hiding of the face of God and uplifting of the scourge of conscience, which throws all life into shadow and blots out the sun from the heavens. It is this which leads it to be said of and felt by a man, that it had been better for him that he had never been born.
II. WHAT IS THE TRUTH ON THE MATTER? Such conclusion as that of the pessimist never can be right, for our deepest moral instincts teach us that, if life were more of a curse than a blessing, he who is the God of mercy and righteousness would never have given it; and that if it were better for a man that he had not been born, he would not have been born. Life must be a blessing or it would not be given.
1. Universal instinct says so. See how men cling to life. The law of self-preservation is the first law of nature.
2. The summing up of the hours in which we have enjoyed peace and satisfaction, and of those which have been darkened by pain and distress, would probably in all lives show a vast balance on the side of the former. Let any one honestly make the calculation for themselves.
3. The laws of life all tend to produce happiness; “In keeping of God’s commandments there is great reward.”
4. Good men who may have held dark views of life have done so “in haste,” as Psa 31:22 and Psa 116:11; or through looking at one point of their lives only (cf. the joyous praise of Psa 116:13; what a contrast and contradiction to the verses that follow!); or in ignorance of the truths and consolations which the gospel has introduced. Thus was it with Job and the Old Testament saints generally, and, of course, with all pagan nations.
5. Evil men are not to be credited. They have themselves poisoned life’s springs, and whilst they speak truly enough concerning their own life, they are not competent witnesses as to what all life is.
6. Then “it is the Lord that hath made us, and not we ourselves,” and because of this all lands are bidden “be joyful in the Lord” (Psalm c.). Now, how could this be if life were not worth living?
7. The future which Christ has prepared. Let that be taken into view and quoestio coedit. Life is but the porch way to that which is life indeedthe eternal life. Our afflictions, therefore, which here we suffer are light, and “but for a moment,” and so, “not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed.”
(1) Then, “Sursum corda,” “Lift up your hearts;” “Be joyful in the Lord,” because he hath made us.
(2) Be reticent of such thoughts and words as these of Jeremiah. How far short he falls of the apostles of our Lord! They rejoiced in tribulations. Jeremiah had better not have so spoken; better have copied him who said, “If I speak thus I shall offend against the generation of thy children.”
(3) Pray to be kept from temptation so to speak or even think, for such temptation is hard to overcome.C.
HOMILIES BY J. WAITE
Jer 20:9
A burning fire within.
The mental condition of the prophet here recalls the beginning of his ministry. Just as he then shrank from taking its responsibility upon him, so now he is ready to throw it up in despair. His life seems to him altogether a failure. He is a disappointed and defeated man. He will “make mention of the Lord no more, nor speak any longer in his Name.” Many an earnest ministering spirit has felt like this, overborne by the force of the world’s evil, impatient of the slow progress of the kingdom of truth and righteousness. But the prophet cannot so easily throw up his work. God, as at the beginning, is “stronger than he,” and holds him firmly in his grasp; holds him to his office and ministry by the force, not so much of outward circumstance as of a spiritual persuasion, by the strong necessity of an inward law. “His Word was in my heart as a burning fire,” etc. Note here
I. THE INHERENT PROPERTY OF THE WORD OF GOD AS A LIVING POWER IN THE SOULS OF MEN. “A burning fire” (see also Jer 23:29). All Divine truth possesses a quality that may justly be thus represented. The Law that came By Moses was a “fiery Law,” of which the thunders and lightnings of Sinai were the appropriate associations (Deu 32:2). And even the inspiration of gospel truth was fitly symbolized by “cloven tongues of fire” (Act 2:3). There is not only light but heat, not only a flame but fire. The moral effects are manifest.
1. Melting. Icy coldness, hard indifference, stubborn self-will, impenitence, etc.all these are softened by the fire of God when it really enters into the soul. A tender sensibility is thus created that prepares it to receive all Divine impressions.
2. Kindling. Heaven-tending affections are awakened by it that did not exist before. Latent germs of nobler and better feeling are quickened into new life. There is no limit to the holy energies that may be developed in our nature by the inspiration of the truth of God. In this good sense we may say, “Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!”
3. Consuming. It destroys everything in us that is destructible. All that is false, selfish, sensualall that is “of the earth, earthy”has in it the elements of dissolution and decay, and cannot resist the purging, purifying force of Divine truth. The dross is consumed that the precious gold may come forth in all its beauty and purity. The solid grain is quickened into fruitful life, the chaff is burnt up as with unquenchable fire.
II. THE OBLIGATION IT IMPOSES. “I was weary with forbearing,” etc. (see Jer 6:11). The soul of the prophet was acted upon by a force that overcame, not only the weakness of his fears, but the strength of his self-will and of every motive that would induce him to relinquish his work. Every earnest, heroic servant of truth is sensible of this inward constraint. It is the constraint
(1) of a Divine call,
(2) of a masterful conscience,
(3) of conscious power to benefit others,
(4) of an instinctive impulse to communicate the good one’s own soul possesses.
St. Paul stands before us as a conspicuous example of this when he says, “For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to glory of: for necessity is laid upon me,” etc. (1Co 9:16). There is no clearer mark of a noble, Christ-like nature than submission to such a constraint as this.W.
HOMILIES BY D. YOUNG
Jer 20:1-6
A changed name and a dreadful doom.
The change here, from Pashur to Magor-Missabib, reminds us of other divinely indicated changes of name in Scripture; e.g. from Abram to Abraham, from Jacob to Israel, from Simon to Peter, from Zacharias to John. These changes, however, were indicative of advancement and honor; were suggestive of the rise out of nature into grace. But here is a name which becomes at once the memorial of great wickedness and of the sure judgment following upon it.
I. THE NAME BEFORE THE CHANGE. Whatever doubt there may be as to the precise signification of the name Pashur, it seems quite clear that the very meaning of the word had in it something peculiarly honorable. The man himself belonged to a privileged order and held an office of influence and honor; and the name must have been given to him because of something auspicious in the circumstances of his birth. An honorable name is an advantage to its bearer, and to a certain extent also a challenge. He who bears it may so live that in the end there will be the greatest contrast between the name and the character. A less suggestive name, one less provocative of contrasts, might have saved Pashur from the new and portentous name which, once given, would never be forgotten. We are bound to consider well the associations which will gradually gather around the name we happen to bear. Now, at least, the particular name has very little signification in itself; but the longer we bear it the more significant it becomes to all who know us. Every time it is mentioned it brings to mind, more or less, our character. Even on prudential considerations one must ever become increasingly careful of what he does, for a single act may obliterate all the associations of respect and confidence which belong to his name. Instead of becoming, what every one may become, the object of respect and confidence to at least a few, he may end in being an object of execration far and wide.
II. WHAT BROUGHT THE CHANGE. His treatment of Jeremiah. His treatment of him, bear in mind, as a prophet. We feel that Jeremiah was not put in prison on even a plausible allegation that he was an evildoer. That he was a false prophet was the only possible charge to lay against him. Now, Pashur must have known that he himself was a false prophet, speaking as God’s truth what was only the fabrication of his own self-willed and deceitful heart. If Jeremiah was speaking falsehood, Pashur’s duty was to convince him of error, and show the people that he was either a fanatic or a mere impostor. We are not allowed to suppose that what Pashur did he did from some excusable outbreak of zeal on behalf of the building of which he was custodian. A great punishment from the hand of God always argues a correspondingly great offence. It is not so amongst men; there may be a great punishment and a very small offence; sometimes, indeed, no offence at all, measured by the highest law. But when God punishes severely it lets in light upon the character of him whom he punishes. We know that Pashur must have been a bad man; we know it as well as if all his iniquity had been detailed in the most forcible language.
III. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CHANGE. We have not information enough to give us the exact meaning of Pashur; and one might almost think this was meant to heighten the certainty as to the meaning of Magor-Missabib. At present Pashur was in a position of comparative security. If security can be claimed for anything in this world, it seems sometimes to belong to such as hold official positions. But with regard to Pashur all depended on the continuance of Jerusalem. The Lord’s house where he was governor was to be destroyed, and then where would he be? Hitherto Pashur has been a nameless unit, involved, but not peculiarly involved, in the general doom. But now he has a prediction all to himself. Henceforth he will be known, must be known, as the man whom Jeremiah threatened with this new and dreadful name. Evidently the name stuck. Some speakers and writers have had this power of giving names that stick. It is not an enviable one, and has often been cruelly used. But God, on whose lips it will always be rightly used, can make it to serve good purposes. The best proof that the name stuck is seen in this, that the prophet’s enemies tried straightway to fix the name on him (verse 10). But everything depends on who gives a name. Jeremiah’s enemies might speak of terror, but they could not terrify. God both spoke of terror and in due time brought the terrifying realities around the doomed man. There was nothing at present, and might not be for some time, to show what was coming. But God can wait. We have no doubt that in due time Pashur was forced to the confession that the name was fully justified.Y.
Jer 20:7-9
A conflict not to be avoided.
The heart of the prophet is here revealed to us as the scene of a bitter conflict between two sets of motives; one set originating with the vehement will of God, the other in the utterly unsympathizing dispositions of men. The prophet makes us feel that it is utterly insufficient to describe his work simply as difficult. It is done amid a continuity of reproaches, some of which a less sensitive man might not have felt, but which were peculiarly irritating to a man of Jeremiah’s sensibilities. Generally it may be observed that God did not send thick-skinned men to be his prophets.
I. THE DIVINELY PRODUCED CONVICTION UNDER THE FORCE OF WHICH HE BEGAN THIS WORK. The people might say, “You speak irritating words to us, and you must not complain if we speak irritating words to you. Those who live in glass houses must not throw stones.” Thus it is well for the prophet to assert most emphatically, as he does in verse 7, that he spoke from a divinely produced conviction of duty. God impressedas God alone can impress-certain irresistible considerations on his mind. Not only was he persuaded, but it was God who had persuaded him. The reasons for his prophetic action were not such as he had sought out and discovered for himself. God put them before him in their proper aspect, order, and totality,
II. THE FIRST PAINFUL RESULT OF FIDELITY TO GOD. Perhaps in the youthful confidence with which he began his prophecies he would anticipate that since God had so clearly sent him, the people would as trustfully and obediently receive him. But not all the genuineness of a Divine message can commend it any more to the selfish man who naturally hates to be disturbed and threatened. The prophet intimates that the reception he met with was daily, universal, invariable. He seemed to be ordained to stir up the nests and dens and hiding-places of every noxious being amongst men. He who goes among hornets and scorpions must not complain if he has to suffer great agonies from their venomous sting. We are sure, indeed, that the prophet must have had some sympathizers, but the treatment which caused him such agony would also have the effect of making friends keep silent, lest they might be the next to suffer. It is no strange thing that men should become resentful and savage under the home-thrusts of spiritual truth. Men who love evil resent even the gentlest approaches of God in trying to take that evil away.
III. THE EARLIER RESULT PRODUCED BY THIS INTOLERABLE TREATMENT IN JEREMIAH‘S OWN MIND. It is easy to criticize the prophet, and say that he should not have been so much affected by all these hard words. But it was just the multitude of them that made them intolerable. A man would be cowardly to complain of being stung now and then; but if he is to be exposed to stinging insects every hour of the day, that is an altogether different matter. God made one of the terrible plagues of Egypt out of multitudes of tiny creatures, such as, individually, counted for almost nothing. Let us not, then, talk condemningly of this proposed repression of the prophetic message. He had reached a crisis in which, we may well believe, Jehovah, who sent him, was peculiarly near to him. May we not reverently say that even as Jesus reached the inexpressible culmination of his mental agony in Gethsemane, so the prophets, in their lesser measure, may have had crises, not unlike that of Gethsemane, when the forces arrayed against them seemed more than they could possibly resist? Profound should our feeling be that it may become a very hard thing to bear faithful testimony for God in an ungodly world.
IV. THE FINAL RESULT. The risk of unfaithfulness is put beyond Jeremiah’s control. He is put between two great “cannots.” He cannot bear the reproaches of the people. That on the one hand. But, on the other hand, he finds that he cannot keep unexpressed the message of Jehovah. God takes his Word into his own keeping. The pain of prophesying, great as it was, was less than the pain of withholding the prophecy. It is not fill we come to deal with God that we learn the real meaning of the word” intolerable.” Iris ever a mark of God’s true servants, that in times when there is great need of testimony they cannot keep silent. Better to burn at the stake than to have one’s true, inner life burnt up in resisting God. Paul is a grand example of a man who was forced to speak by the fire within. He could not be silent; he could not temporize, compromise, or postpone. Luther is another instance. Those destitute of the fire in their hearts cannot understand those who have it; and therefore it is the very height of ignorant audacity to censure it. Nothing is more to be desired, whatever pain it may bring with it, than that we should have God’s truth as a living and growing fire in our hearts; and in order to do this, we must be careful not to quench it in the beginnings of its risings within us.Y.
Jer 20:10-13
The name Magor-Missabib wrongly applied.
I. THE HOPES OF JEREMIAH‘S ENEMIES. We have seen in the preceding passage (Jer 20:7-9) how the prophet ‘was incessantly exposed to exceedingly irritating taunts from his enemies; and how the pain of these taunts in a measure tempted him to try if he could not escape the pain by ceasing to prophesy. Jehovah perfectly preserved him from this danger. The prophetic fire within him, divinely kindled and sustained, was too strong to be thus extinguished. It grew more and more, and the very taunts of the ungodly became as fuel to make it burn more fiercely. But this very faithfulness of the prophet only increased his danger as an object of persecution. His enemies will themselves begin to feel in danger from this continual reference to their evil doings. Mere mockery has itself a tendency to go further. Bengel, referring to the development of the persecuting spirit, as illustrated in the apostolic days, says, “The world begins with ridicule; then afterwards it proceeds to questioning; to threats; to imprisoning; to inflicting stripes; to murder“ (see ‘Gnomon’ on Act 2:13). Jeremiah has already been for a night in prison, and he knows not how soon a longer and worse imprisonment may come. He hears threatenings on every hand. The name Magor-Missabib that, by Divine direction, he has applied to Pashur, is retorted on him, as being, in the opinion of his enemies, a name eminently appropriate to his present circumstances. So far as the human elements were concerned, his chances of safety appeared very poor indeed, His enemies are numerous and crafty; and, sharpened by self-interest, they needed no exhortation to be watchful. Those who compare these confessions of the prophet at different times with the experiences of Jesus at the hands of his enemies, will notice a remarkable parallelism. What Jesus said with respect to the scribes and Pharisees is peculiarly forcible when considered in the light of Jeremiah’s trials: “Ye are the children of them which killed the prophets” (Mat 23:31).
II. THE SUFFICIENCY OF JEREMIAH‘S PROTECTION. Here is the man of strong faith, and of a speech full of confidence and calmness. ‘He may well be depressed; beset as he is with so much malice, brought into close contact with the worst wickedness of the h-man heart. But, on the other hand, he has this for his comfort, that, the closer wicked men come to him, the closer he finds himself to God. This is the service the wicked render to the witnesses of God, that, the more they persecute them, the more they press them towards the great Helper. The ungodly little dream of the service they render in this respect. So far as abiding results are concerned, the spirit of intolerance has done the direct contrary of what it was intended to do. The purposes of evil -might have been better served if the Church of Christ had had an easier time of it in the beginning. He who is potentially the mighty, terrible One in the midst of his people, needs the opposition of the wicked in order that all his power to defend his people may be known. This, indeed, is one of the lessons taught by the sufferings of Jesus even to death. Darkness was to get its hour and its power, that so the Light of the world might be more fully glorified. Never was it more emphatically true than when Jesus was laid in the grave, that Jehovah was with him as a mighty, terrible One. We look with the natural eye, and we see a cold corpse apparently gone the way of all flesh; we look with the eye of faith, and we discern One Standing by who at the appointed hour will raise that corpse, and make it the channel of manifestations of life such as were not possible before.Y.
Jer 20:14-18
The prophet cursing the day of his birth.
It is very perplexing to find these words following so closely upon the confidences expressed in Jer 20:11-13. And yet the perplexity is to some extent removed when we recollect how largely man is the creature of his moods. That he is bright and confident today may not hinder him from being in the depths of despair tomorrow. It is well for us to see how low a real and faithful prophet of God can sink. One is reminded at once of the similar words put into the mouth of Job. We have advantages, however, in considering this expression of Jeremiah which we lack in considering the similar expression of Job. Of Job we know nothing except as the subject of one of the sublimest poems in the world. What substance of fact may have suggested the poem it is beyond our powers to determine. But Jeremiah stands before us unquestionably a real man, a prominent character in the highway of history.
I. THE FEELING THAT UNDERLIES THIS TERRIBLE IMPRECATION. The form of the imprecation is not to be too much regarded. The same feeling will be very differently expressed in different languages and among different races. What Jeremiah means is made clear in verse 18. Just at this particular time it seems to him that life has been nothing but one huge failure. He has no heart to accept suggestions such as might mitigate his gloom. He will not even allow that life has had any other possibilities than those of failure and shame, and therefore the congratulations attending his birth were misplaced. The more we look into his language here, the more we see that it was very wild and foolish. The important matter is that, in approaching the consideration of these words, we should have a distinct impression of how recklessly even a good man may talk. A recollection of Jeremiah’s utterance here will keep us from wondering that there should be so much of foolish and impious talk in the world.
II. THE FACT WAS AS FAR AS POSSIBLE FROM CORRESPONDING TO THE FEELING. We look at Jeremiah’s career as a whole, and at the permanent value of his prophesies, and then we see how little moods and feelings count for just by themselves. We gain nothing by saying of any man that it might have been better for him if he had never been born. It is true that Jesus spoke thus of Judas, but we are not at liberty to say what he says; and besides, he was speaking in the language of necessary hyperbole, in order to emphasize the dreadful wickedness of the traitor. The safe ground for us to take is that entrance upon human life in this world is a good thing. Even with all the trials of life, the position of a human being in this world is a noble one, and his possibilities for the future are beyond imagination. While it is right that we should have the deepest compassion for the deformed, the defective, the infirm, we must also recollect that it is better to be the most deformed of human beings than the shapeliest and healthiest of brutes. In face of all the present afflictions of human nature, one thought should be sufficient to brighten them all, namely, the thought of how perfectly comprehensive is the renewing power of God. Within its grasp it comprehends the most imperfect and distorted of human organizations. Jeremiah was making the huge blunder of looking at things entirely from the point of view of his own feelings, and his present feelings. His actions were better than his words. Speaking out of his own feelings, he talked great folly and falsehood; speaking as the prophet of God, his utterances were those of wisdom and truth. The fact was that of no one belonging to his generation could it be more truly said than of him that his birth was a good thing; good for the nation, good for himself, good for the glory and service of Jehovah. We must not bemoan existence because there is suffering in it. Suffering may be very protracted and intense, and yet life be full of blessing. Jesus had to suffer more than any man. He shrank from the approach of death with a sensitiveness which we cannot conceive, who have in us the mortal taint by reason of indwelling sin. Nothing reconciled him to the thought of all he had thus to endure save that it was the clear will of God. What was Jeremiah’s mental suffering compared with that of Jesus? Anal yet, though the life of Jesus was to be one of peculiar and unparalleled sufferings, his birth had angels to announce and celebrate it.Y.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
Jer 20:1. Now Pashur, the son of Immer Pashur was not the immediate son of Immer, but of Melchiah, as it is expressly mentioned in 1Ch 9:12 and hereafter, chap. Jer 21:1. Immer was one of his predecessors, and head of the sixteenth sacerdotal class; 1Ch 24:14. Pashur was not high-priest, as some of the ancients have thought, but captain or overseer of the temple. In this capacity, he had power to arrest and put in prison the false prophets, and those who caused any disturbance in the temple. This appears from what Shemaiah afterwards is said to have written to Zephaniah, the son of Maaseiah, who had the same post under king Zedekiah, as Pashur, chap. Jer 29:25-27 namely, that the Lord had appointed him head or overseer of his house, in the place of Jehoiada, that he might arrest and imprison all who reigned themselves to be men inspired, and prophets. Under the reign of Josiah, Hilkiah exercised the high-priesthood; 2Ki 22:4; 2Ki 22:8; 2Ki 22:10; 2Ki 23:4; 2Ki 23:24. 2Ch 24:14 so that Pashur was not high-priest. In the temple, as in the palace of a great prime, there were the same officers, the same order, the same service in proportion, as was observed in the court of the kings of Judah. The overseer of the temple is the same with those who are so often called chief-priests in the Gospel. Mat 26:47; Mat 26:75. Luk 22:4; Luk 22:71. This chapter is a continuation of the foregoing. Pashur thought that Jeremiah’s discourse, which spoke too plainly of the overthrow of Jerusalem, and of the miseries which should befal it, deserved that he should be arrested and put in irons, to hinder him from speaking thus freely; and accordingly he treats him as they treated the false prophets. See Calmet.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
2. THE OPPOSITION AND PUNISHMENT OF PASHUR
Jer 19:14 to Jer 20:6
14Then came Jeremiah [back] from Tophet, whither the Lord [Jehovah] had sent him to prophesy; and he stood in the court of the Lords [Jehovahs] house; and 15said to all the people, Thus saith the Lord of hosts [Jehovah Zebaoth], the God of Israel: Behold, I will bring upon this city and upon all her towns all the evil that I have pronounced against it, because they have hardened their necks, that they might not hear my words.
1XX. Now Pashur, the son of Immer the priest, who was also chief governor10 in the house of the Lord, heard [that] Jeremiah prophesied [prophesy] these things. 2Then Pashur smote Jeremiah the prophet, and put him in the stocks [prison] that were [was] in the high gate of Benjamin, [the Benjamin-gate, the upper] which was 3by [in] the house of the Lord [Jehovah]. And it came to pass on the morrow that Pashur brought forth Jeremiah out of the stocks [prison]. Then said Jeremiah unto him, The Lord [Jehovah] hath not called thy name Pashur, but Magor-missabib, 4[Terror round about]. For thus saith the Lord [Jehovah], Behold, I will make thee [give thee up] a [to] terror to [for] thyself and to [for] all thy friends: and they shall fall by the sword of their enemies and thine eyes shall behold it: and I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall carry them5captive into Babylon, and shall slay them with the sword. Moreover I will deliver all the strength [store]11 of this city, and all the labours [gains] thereof, and all the precious things thereof, and all the treasures of the kings of Judah will I give into the hand of their enemies, which shall spoil them, and take them, and carry them to6Babylon. And thou, Pashur, and all that dwell in thine house shall go into captivity: and thou shalt come to Babylon, and there thou shalt die, and shalt be buried there, thou, and all thy friends, to whom thou hast prophesied lies.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
The prophet betakes himself back from Tophet into the temple, and probably repeats there his predictions of calamity (Jer 19:14-15). For this he is struck by Pashur, the governor of the temple, and committed to prison for the night (Jer 20:1-2). Released from this confinement in the morning, Jeremiah announces to Pashur that the Lord has changed his name to Magor-missabib, for he will be given up, a prey to the torments of mortal anguish, his friends shall be slain before his eyes, Judah carried away to Babylon, all its treasures plundered; he himself shall survive all this, and die and be buried in Babylon, the prophet of lies in the midst of those whom he has deceived (Jer 19:4-6).
Jer 19:14-15. Then came Jeremiah my words. As these words are closely connected with the previous context , Jer 19:14, corresponds to . In antithesis to however has always the meaning of return. Comp. Num 27:17; Deu 28:6; 1Ch 11:2; Psa 121:8; Psa 126:6.
Jer 19:15. Thus saith, etc. It is incredible that Jeremiah spoke only these few words in the temple. He would then have said nothing new, and have given no motive to the evidently increased anger of the temple-governor. We must therefore refer all that I have pronounced specially to the words spoken in Tophet, and assume a repetition of these words, in order that the reference might be understood.I will bring. Comp. 2Sa 5:2; Mic 1:15, etc. Olsh., 38, c.; 208, d.All her towns. Comp. Jos 10:37; Jos 10:39; Jos 13:17; Jer 34:1; Zec 7:7.Hardened, etc. Comp. Jer 17:23; Jer 7:26.That they might not hear. Comp. Jer 16:12; Jer 18:10; Jer 42:13.
Jer 20:1-6. Now Pashurheard prophesied lies. According to Ezr 2:38; Ezr 10:22; Neh 7:41, there was a course of priests of the name Pashur. Not of this, however, but of the course named as that of Immer in these passages (comp. 1Ch 24:14) was the Pashur of the text. He is not mentioned elsewhere. For though the name frequently occurs (Jer 21:1; Jer 38:1; 1Ch 9:12; Neh 10:3; Neh 11:12), none of the individuals designated by it can be regarded as identical with this Pashur. It is at most possible that the father of Gedaliah mentioned in Jer 38:1 may be the same. Comp. Hitzig. ad loc.Chief governor. The expression involves that there were several overseers (comp. Joseph. Antiqq., X. 8, 5). Without doubt the temple-watch (comp. Winer, R.-W.-B, Art., Tempel at the end) was under the orders of the governor. From a comparison of Jer 29:25-26, with Jer 52:24, it seems that the temple-governor took the second rank to the high-priest. As the head of the temple-police, Pashur now puts Jeremiah into the . The expression occurs besides only in Jer 29:26; 2Ch 16:10. It is without doubt a contrivance for shutting up in crooked position (. Symm. ). Comp. Act 16:24.Gate of Benjamin, etc. From Jer 37:13; Jer 38:7, it is evident that there was a city-gate which led into the territory of the tribe of Benjamin, and was therefore called the gate of Benjamin. The one mentioned in the text is expressly distinguished from this as a temple-gate. The same name intimates identity of cause. We must then look for this temple-gate also in the direction of Benjamin, i.e., to the north. The upper gate corresponds to the upper court, forming one of the entrances to it. Whether this upper gate of Benjamin is the same with the new gate, leading to the upper court (Jer 36:10; Jer 26:10) which, according to 2Ki 15:35, was built by Jotham, is questionable. Comp. Eze 8:3; Eze 14:5; Eze 9:2.Not called Pashur, Jer 20:3. The signification of the name Pashur is very obscure. Most commentators derive the word from the Arabic pasaha=amplius fuit, and circumcirca. Hence Fuerst: extensionaround. Others from , Lev 13:5; Lev 13:7, and , Josh. 29:22, as though the widely extended authority of the man, making all pale (comp. Neumann), were indicated. Ewald renders Joy ( or from , Mal. 3:20) around (as though were pronounced ). Meier: Spirit of the free ( as in Job 35:15=extension, high spirit, pride;=the noble, the free). Hitzig and Graf cannot dispute that Jeremiah had the etymology, obscure as it is to us, in view, for how otherwise can we explain the choice of the name which he gave to the priest? It is certainly natural that Pashur should have some meaning opposed to that of the name Magor-missabib. It is noteworthy that the explanation afterwards given in Jer 20:4, sqq., corresponds exactly to this name, in so far as Pashur seems to be always surrounded by terrors, but never himself brought to extremity, for he is to die and be buried in Babylon (Jer 20:6). In this sense the words thine eyes shall see, are especially important. For by these the position of a man is designated, who is not himself reached by the most terrible calamity, but is compelled continually to behold how this comes upon others, and therefore does not escape the torture of anxiety. I would therefore neither render thee, after as distributive (Jer 19:13), nor would I allow it to depend on the latter, but on , terror:I give thee up to fear for thyself and thy friends. This is to be the specific punishment of Pashur, that he is not visited by death itself, but by the constant fear of death.To whom thou hast prophesied lies. From these concluding words we learn that Pashur was active, not merely as a priest, but also as prophet. But his prophetic office was assumed and false; and his behaviour toward Jeremiah may, in part at least, be thus accounted for.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. On Jer 18:2. What is the prophet of God to learn in the house of the potter? How shall this be his Bible or his school? But God chooses the foolish things to confound human wisdom (1Co 1:27). Cramer. [An orator would never choose such an instance for the purpose of making an impression on his audience; still less for the purpose of exhibiting his own skill and liveliness. It must be for business, not for amusement, that such a process is observed.What we want in every occupation is some means of preserving the continuity of our thoughts, some resistance to the influences which are continually distracting and dissipating them. But it is especially the student of the events of his own time, of the laws which regulate them, of the issues which are to proceed from them, who has need to be reminded that he is not studying a number of loose disconnected phenomena, but is tracing a principle under different aspects and through different manifestations. A sensible illustration, if we would condescend to avail ourselves of it, would often save us from much vagueness and unreality, as well as from hasty and unsatisfactory conclusions. Maurice.S. R. A.]
2. On Jer 18:6 sqq. Omne simile claudicat. Man is not clay, though he is made of clay (Gen 2:7). Consequently in Jer 20:8; Jer 20:10 the moral conditions are mentioned, which by virtue of his personality and freedom must be fulfilled on the part of man, in order that the divine transformation to good or bad may take place. If the clay is spoiled on the wheel, it cannot help it. It is probably only the potters fault. Nothing then is here symbolized but the omnipotence of God, by virtue of which He can in any given case suppress whole kingdoms and nations, and transform them with the same ease and rapidity as the potter rolls up the spoiled vessel into a ball of clay, and immediately gives it a new form. It would be well for all to convince themselves, by witnessing the process, of the wonderful ease with which the potter forms the clay on the wheel.
3. On Jer 18:6-10. Cogitet unusquisque peccata sua, et modo illa emendet, cum tempus est. Sit fructuosus dolor, non sit sterilis pnitudo. Tanquam hoc dicit Deus, ecce indicavi sententiam, sed nondum protuli. Prdixi non fixi. Quid times, quia dixi? Si mutaveris, mutatur. Nam scriptum est, quod pniteat Deum. Numquid quomodo hominem sic pnitet Deum? Nam dictum est: si pnituerit vos de peccatis vestris, pnitebit me de omnibus malis, qu facturus eram vobis. Numquid quasi errantem pnitet Deum? Sed pnitentia dicitur in Deo mutatio sententi. Non est iniqua, sed justa. Quare justa? Mutatus est reus, mutavit judex sententiam. Noli terreri. Sententia mutata est, non justitia. Justitia integra manet, quia mutato debet parcere, quia justus est. Quomodo pertinaci non parcit, sic mutato parcit. Augustin, Sermo 109. De Tem ad medium.
4. On Jer 18:6-10. Comminationes Dei non intelligend sunt absolute, sed cum exceptione pnitenti et conditione impnitenti. Promissiones itidem non sunt absolute sed circumscript cum conditione obedienti, tum exceptione crucis. God stipulates everywhere for the cross. Comp. Deuteronomy 28. Frster.
5. On Jer 18:6-10. Prscientia et prdictio Dei non injicit absolutam eventus necessitatem rebus prscitis ac prdictis. Frster.
6. On Jer 18:8. O felix pnitentium humilitas! Quam potens es apud omnipotentem. Bernard of Clairvaux.
[On Jer 18:8-10. I apprehend that we shall learn some day that the call to individual repentance, and the promise of individual reformation, has been feeble at one time, productive of turbulent, violent, transitory effects at another, because it has not been part of a call to national repentance, because it has not been connected with a promise of national reformation. We may appeal to men by the terrors of a future state; we may use all the machinery of revivalists to awaken them to a concern for their souls; we may produce in that way a class of religious men who pursue an object which other men do not pursue (scarcely a lass selfish, often not a less outward object):who leave the world to take its own course;who, when they mingle in it, as in time they must do for the sake of business and gain, adopt again its own maxims, and become less righteous than other men in common affairs, because they consider religion too fine a thing to be brought from the clouds to the earth, while yet they do not recognise a lower principle as binding on them. But we must speak again the ancient language, that God has made a covenant with the nation, and that all citizens are subjects of an unseen and righteous King, if we would have a hearty, inward repentance, which will really bring us back to God; which will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and of the children to the fathers; which will go down to the roots of our life, changing it from a self-seeking life into a life of humility and love and cheerful obedience; which will bear fruit upwards, giving nobleness to our policy and literature and art, to the daily routine of what we shall no more dare to call our secular existence. Maurice.S. R. A.]
7. On Jer 18:10. God writes as it were a reflection in our heart of that which we have to furnish to Him. For God is disposed towards us as we are disposed towards Him. If we do well, He does well to us; if we love Him, He loves us in return; if we forsake Him, He for sakes us. Psa 18:26. Cramer. [Sin is the great mischief maker between God and a people; it forfeits the benefits of His promises, and spoils the success of their prayers. It defeats His kind intentions concerning them (Hos 7:1), and baffles their pleasing expectations from Him. It ruins their comforts, prolongs their grievances, brings them into straits, and retards their deliverances. Isa 49:1-2. HenryS. R. A.]
8. On Jer 18:12. Freedom of the Spirit! Who will allow himself to be brought into bondage by the gloomy words of that singular man, Jeremiah? Every one must be able to live according to his own way of thinking. Diedrich, The prophet Jeremiah and Ezekiel briefly expounded. 1863, S. 59.This is the watchword of impiety in all times. If in truth everyone bears the divinity within him, then it is justified. But since every man bears within him only a , a divine germ or spark, a point of connection for the objectively divine, and at the same time a point of connection for the diabolical, it is a hellish deception when one supposes he must follow his ingenium. For the question is, whether the voice from within is the voice of God or the voice of the devil. Here it is necessary to try ourselves and to open an entrance to the divine sun of life, so that the divine life-germ in us may be strengthened, and enabled to maintain its true authority.
9. On Jer 18:14. On the summits of the high mountains, even in tropical countries, the snow does not entirely melt, and therefore the mighty cool springs at their feet never dry up. With those men only does the pure white snow of divine knowledge and godly fear never melt, whose heads are elevated above the steam and vapor of earthly cares and passions, into the pure clear air of heaven. And they it is, from whose bodies flow streams of living water (Joh 7:38).
10. On Jer 18:18. Consult the treatise of Luther: How a minister should behave when his office is despised?
11. On Jer 18:18. (Come and let us smite him with the tongue, etc.). It is indeed uncertain whether this is said by the preachers or by the whole people; but this is certain, that such actions are performed daily by those teachers, who know no other way of stopping the mouth of a servant of Jesus. And not give heed to any of his words. This is au pis aller. If we can do him no harm, we will stop our ears, and he shall not convince us. Zinzendorf.
12. On Jer 18:19. (Give heed to me, O Lord). This takes place in two ways. A teacher is looked at by the eye which is as flames of fire. He is also guided by the same eye, which looks on all lands, to strengthen those whose hearts are towards the Lord. No child can rest more securely in the cradle, while the nurse is looking for any fly that might disturb it, than a servant of the Lord can, to whom God gives heed. Zinzendorf.
13. On Jer 18:20. It is a pleasing remembrance, when a teacher considers that he has been able to avert divine judgments from his people. It is also an undeniable duty. The spirit of Job, Moses, Jeremiah, Ezra, Nehemiah, Paul in this respect is the true spirit of Jesus Christ. He is a miserable shepherd who can give up his sheep and look on with dry eyes, while the fold is being devastated. Not to mention that teachers are now-a-days, by the salaries which they receive from their congregations, brought into the relation of servitude, and besides the regular obligation of the head are laid under indebtedness, as hospitals and other institutions, to pray for their founders. They give themselves the name of intercessors and thus bind themselves anew to this otherwise universal duty of all teachers. Zinzendorf. But when the servant of God receives odium pro labore, persecutio pro intercessione, this is the worlds gratitude and gratuity. Frster.
14. On Jer 18:21-23. With regard to this prayer against his enemies Calvin remarks, this vehemence, as it was dictated by the Holy Spirit, is not to be condemned, nor ought it to be made an example of, for it was peculiar to the Prophet to know that they were reprobates. For the prophet, he says, was (1) endued with the spirit of wisdom and judgment, and (2) zeal also for Gods glory so ruled in his heart, that the feelings of the flesh were wholly subdued, or at least brought under subjection; and farther, he pleaded not a private cause.As all these things fall not to our lot, we ought not indiscriminately to imitate Jeremiah in this prayer: for that would then apply to us which Christ said to His disciples, Ye know not what spirit governs you (Luk 9:55). In general the older Comm. agree in this. Oecolampadius says tersely: Subscribit sententi divin. Frster also says that originally such a prayer is not allowed, but that to the prophet, who by the divine inspiration was certain of the obstinata et plane insanabilis malitia of his hearers, it was permitted as singulare et extraordinarium aliquid. The Hirschberger Bibel also explains the words as a consignment to the divine judgment, since God Himself has several times refused to hear prayer in their behalf (Jer 14:13-14), and they themselves could not endure it (Jer 20:18). Vide Neumann II. S. 15.Seb. Schmidt says plainly, Licet hominibus impiis et persecutoribus imprecari malum, modo ejusmodi imprecationes non fiant ex privata vindicta, et conditionat sint ad constantem eorum impietatem. Nisi enim ejusmodi imprecationes etiam piis essent licit, propheta non imprecatus esset persecutoribus gravissimam pnam hanc. I believe that it is above all to be observed that Jeremiah does not announce these words (Jer 20:18-18) as the word of Jehovah. It is a prayer to the Lord, like Jer 20:7-18. That which was remarked on Jer 20:14-18, on the Old Testament character of the prayer, applies here also and in a higher degree. For here as there we may set a good share of the harshness to the account of the rhetoric. The standard of judgment may be found in Mat 5:43. Many ancient Comm. ex. gr. Jerome, who regard the suffering prophet as a type of the suffering Saviour, point out the contrast between this prayer of Jeremiahs against his enemies and the prayer of Christ for His enemies (Luk 23:34). The only parallel adduced from the New Testament is 2Ti 4:4. But there it is (according to the correct reading of Tischendorf) not (Text. Rec., Knapp).
15. On Jer 19:1. If man were only a Platonic , and did not dwell in the flesh, but were pure spirit and soul, as the Schwenkfelder dreamed a man might be, he would not need such visible signs.But because man consists of body and soul, God uses, together with the Holy Ghost, the word and Sacrament and other signs. Cramer.
16. On Jer 19:6-9. . Herodotus. Vide Frster, S. 106.
17. On Jer 19:10-11. What is more easily broken in pieces than an earthen vessel? Equally easy is it for the hand of the Almighty to break in pieces the kingdoms of men. And if He spared not the kingdom of Judah, whose king was a son of David and the people the chosen nation, shall He spare the kingdoms of the heathen, none of which can point to any prophecy in its behalf, like that which we read in 2Sa 7:16? Comp. Dan 2:21; Dan 4:14; Dan 4:22; Dan 4:29; Dan 5:21; Sir 10:4; Sir 10:8; Sir 10:10; Sir 10:14.
18. On Jer 19:11-13. This prophecy was not completely fulfilled by the destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. For Jerusalem was restored after this destruction. The second destruction, by the Romans, must then be regarded as the definitive fulfillment. Comp. Jerome ad loc.Tophet was used by the inhabitants of Jerusalem for idolatrous purposes. In consequence, the fires of Tophet set Jerusalem on fire, and again the corpses which filled Jerusalem extended even to Tophet, and by reciprocal calamity Tophet became like Jerusalem and Jerusalem like Tophet.
19. On Jer 20:1-2. . Honores mutant mores. Frster. Quod hic fuit tormentum, illic erit ornamentum. Augustin.
20. On Jer 20:3-6. Mark, who is the stronger here: Pashur or Jeremiah? For 1. Jeremiah overcomes his sufferings by patience, 2. He is firm in opposition to his enemy and does not allow himself to be terrified by his tyranny, but rebukes him to his face for his sins and lies. Cramer.
21. On Jer 20:3-6. Pashurs punishment consists in this, that he will participate in the terrible affliction and be a witness of it, without being able to die.He is a type of the wandering Jew.
22. On Jer 20:7-12. The prophet could say with a good conscience that he had not pressed into this office. It was his greatest comfort that the Lord had persuaded and overpowered him, when resisting, and that afterwards the fire within kindled by the Lord compelled him to speak. Thus he at last becomes so joyful, that in the midst of his sufferings he sings a hymn on his deliverance.
Lord Jesus, for Thy work divine,
The glory is not ours, but Thine;
Therefore we pray Thee stand by those,
Who calmly on Thy word repose.
23. On Jer 20:14-18. When the saints stumble this serves to us; 1. for doctrine: we see that no man is justified by his own merits; 2. for , i. e. for the refutation of those, who suppose that there are ; 3. for , if we follow Ambrose, who called to the emperor Theodosius: Si Davidem imitatus es peccantem, imitare etiam pnitentem; 4. for , that he who stands take heed that he do not fall; 5. for , that he who has fallen may after their pattern rise again. Frster.
24. On Jer 20:17-18. The question is, Does a man do right in wishing himself dead? Answer: He who from impatience wishes himself dead like Job, Elijah, Jonah, Tobias, and here Jeremiah, does wrong, and this is a piece of carnal impatience. But when we think of the wicked world and the dangerous times in which we live and on the other hand of the future joy and glory, and therefore desire with Simeon and Paul to be released, we are not to be blamed. Cramer.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
1. The 18th homily of Origen has for its text Jer 18:1-16 and Jer 20:1-7. The 19th has Jer 20:7-12.
2. On Jer 18:1-11. Comfort and warning, implied in the fact that the threatenings and promises of the Lord are given only conditionally: 1. The comfort consists in this, that the threatened calamities may be averted by timely repentance. 2. The warning in this, that the promises may be annulled by apostasy.
3. On Jer 18:7-10. Comp. the Homiletical on Jer 17:5-8.
4. On Jer 18:7-11. How we should be moved by Gods judgments and goodness: that each, 1. Should turn from his wickedness; 2. should reform his heart and life. Kapff, Passion, Easter and Revival Sermons. 1866.
5. [On Jer 18:12. The sin, danger and unreasonableness of despair. The devils chief artifices are to produce either false security and presumption or despair. Despair Isaiah 1. sinful, (a) in itself, (b) because it is the parent of other sins, as is seen in the cases of Cain, Saul, and Judges 2. It is dangerous. 3. It is groundless, because (a) we still enjoy life and the means of grace, (b) of the long-suffering character of God, (c) of the universality of the scheme of redemption, (d) of the person, character and invitations of Christ, (e) of many instances of final salvation. Payson.S. R. A.]
6. On Jer 18:18-20. Text for a Sermon on the Anniversary of the Reformation. Opposition of the office which has apparent authority to that which has true authority; 1. The basis of the opposition: the assertion of the infallibility of the former office. 2. The mode of the opposition; (a) in not being willing to hear, (b) in the attempt to destroy the latter by violence. 3. The result of the opposition is nugatory, for (a) the Lord hears the voice of the opposers to judge them, (b) He gives heed to His servants to protect them.
7. On Jer 20:7-13. The trial and comfort of a true minister of the Word; 1. The trial: (a) scorn and derision; (b) actual persecution. 2. The comfort: (a) the Lord put him in office and maintains him in it; (b) that the Lord will interpose for His servants and. thus, (1) help His cause to victory, and (2) save their persons.
Footnotes:
[10]Jer 19:1. . The construction is like , , Comp. Naegelsb. Gr., 72 and 66.
[11]Jer 19:5.copia, store. Comp. Pro 15:6; Pro 27:24; Isa 33:6; Eze 22:25.
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
We have here an interesting Chapter. The man of God is smitten and put into the stocks, for preaching God’s truth. The governor that commanded this is threatened with judgment for it. The Prophet mourns in the close of the Chapter over his calamities.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Reader! pause over this account. Recollect how Jeremiah was called to the prophet’s office: Chap. 1:5. Recollect the long and painful office he had now exercised, and the universal disregard he found to all his preaching: and then behold how sadly he was requited! When you have duly pondered these things, call to mind that more or less, these are the marks of a faithful minister in God’s sanctuary in all ages. Num 16:3 ; Act 23:1-2 . Nay, look to Jesus under the same, Joh 18:22-23 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
The Deceptions of God
Jer 20:7
I. There are times when we are ready to say that God deceives us. Think of the ideals of our childhood. It is one of the sweet illusions of the child that father or mother has neither fault nor flaw.
1. Think again of the deceptions of the senses. If there is one thing that seems above dispute, it is that this earth of ours is fixed and firm.
2. Think once again of how God fulfils His promises. One thing certain is that when Abraham was called from Ur, he was promised the land of Canaan for his own. The strange thing is that to his dying hour Abraham did not own one rood of Palestine. It is a signal tribute to the splendour of Abraham’s faith that not in his darkest hour did he doubt God.
3. Think once again of how life deceives us. It is when men compare all that the years have brought with the glad and golden promise of the morning. It is then that they are tempted, not in bitterness, but in the melancholy which Jeremiah knew so well, to cry, ‘O Lord, if this be life, Thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived’.
4. Then think for a moment of the Christian calling: ‘Come unto Me, and I will give you rest’. And we come, for we are weary and it is rest we want, and immediately we are summoned out to war. ‘Fight the good fight of faith; put on thine armour; show thyself a good soldier of Jesus Christ.’
II. There are loving purposes in this so-called deception.
1. Sometimes this is one of the ways of God for strengthening and educating character. He leaves us, not because He is false, nor because He has broken the promise of His help, but because, like a mother with her little child, He is teaching us to stand upon our feet.
2. It is one of God’s ways to make us happy, and God is at infinite pains to make us happy. There are dreams so sweet that He will not rudely waken us; the time for that is coming by and by. Our hopes are not less ministers of happiness because they may never be fully realized.
3. It is one of God’s ways to make us valiant, and to stir and rouse us to our best endeavour. I think, for example, of that first hope of Christendom that the second coming of the Lord was near at hand: Without that burning hope do you think they could ever have suffered and been strong? So does God strengthen us by what He hides not less divinely than by what He shows.
This so-called deception is one of the ways of God to lead us on. Do you think that we would ever have the heart to travel if we were not beset by stratagems of mercy? So does God lead us through the ideals of childhood, and the hopes of youth, and the letter of the promise, till at last the husk is broken in our grasp, and we find with a strange joy the hidden kernel.
G. H. Morrison, The Wings of the Morning, p. 288.
References. XX. 7-13. A. Ramsay, Studies in Jeremiah, p. 25. XX. 9. W. Sanday, Inspiration, p. 124. XXI. 12. C. Gore, Christian World Pulpit, vol. 1. 1896, p. 296.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
Pathetic Experiences
Jer 20:10-18
In these verses we have two distinct aspects of human experience. Even supposing, as some critics do, that there is some dislocation as to their exact sequence, still we have a disparity which we ourselves can attest as being real and not imaginary. Within this brief section Jeremiah is on the hill-top and in the deepest valley of spiritual dejection. It may be that Jer 20:14 and onward should have come in connection with the previous paragraph, should have continued or gone before Jer 20:7 . But that does not touch the reality of the case; we are not now dealing with literal criticism, but with a very tragical and solemn experience.
How much depends upon circumstances for man’s estimate of life! That estimate varies with climate, with incidents of a very trivial nature, and with much that is only superficial and transitory. A man’s health will affect his whole view of life, will give him a new philosophy of things, will bring down the brightest mind to fear, doubt, dejection, almost despair. Find a man who is well, robust, quite ardent in health, and ask him what life is: and it is a lofty sky, a green landscape, a daily prosperity, a continual victory to live is to be blessed. Ask a man who is very ill, who has no physical energy, pith, or confidence, and his view of life is that this is a vale of tears, that there is more darkness than light in life, and more misery than joy in the world. He does not speak from his higher faculties; he speaks from a basis of circumstances which may change tomorrow, and then his whole philosophy and his whole theology will change along with it. Life is one thing to the successful man, and another to the man whose life is one continual series of defeats and disappointments. It is well, therefore, that all men should have a touch of failure, and spend a night or two now and then in deepest darkness that cannot be relieved: such experience teaches sympathy, develops the noblest faculties, brings into beneficent exercise many generous emotions, and in the morning, after a long night’s struggle with doubt, there may be tears in the eyes; but those tears denote the end of weakness and the beginning of strength. The sun has much to do with our theology, and can cause us to fall into dejection or rise into triumph. The sun changes our civilisation, tells us what we shall wear and what we shall not wear, and will always have his own way. Reasoning goes no distance with the sun. Summer comes with its philosophy of life, and turns upside down all the counsels of winter; and winter in its turn comes and puts to confusion all the mellow, genial, happy, songful views and experiences of summer. The year is not one season, but four, and we must pass through all the four before we can know what the year is. So with life: we must be with Jeremiah on the mountain-top, or with him in the deep valley; we must join his song, and fall into the solemn utterance of his sorrow, before we can know what the whole gamut of life is. They are little, narrow, selfish, and wholly insufficient, who have only lived on one side of the hill.
How religiously triumphant is Jeremiah in Jer 20:11 :
“But the Lord is with me as a mighty terrible one: therefore my persecutors shall stumble, and they shall not prevail: they shall be greatly ashamed; for they shall not prosper: their everlasting confusion shall never be forgotten.”
Then how profoundly despondent this same man is in Jer 20:14-15 :
“Cursed be the day wherein I was born: let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed. Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, A man child is born unto thee; making him very glad.”
This cannot be the same voice. We should doubt it if we had not experience of a kindred scope and quality ourselves. The game fountain can send forth praises and curses; the same heart marvellously expresses the consistency of its feeling in its very variety. We may sometimes doubt the piety that is monotonous: may it not be monotonous because it is mechanical? All the wheels move regularly; they are all lubricated at certain times, and the whole motion is fluent, noiseless. In such circumstances it may not be unlawful to doubt the vitality of the piety. Machinery does not suffer consciously. Life is suffering, life is death, and death is birth. How seldom we find any man who can understand any other two men when those two men express a total difference of experience. Each man has his own foot-rule by which he measures the case that comes before him; each man has his ready calculator to which he turns to see what one sum multiplied by another sum comes to. But how difficult to distinguish minute differences! How easy to discriminate broadly, but how difficult to come to close quarters, to microscopic ministries, to fibrous examinations, to all the finest analyses of thought and feeling and condition, so that each shall have a portion of meat in due season, and each shall feel that the table was spread for him. Here we have a man in two absolutely contrary states of experience. He is not the only man who represented contrariety in moral and spiritual feeling and condition. We must not be cast down with sorrow overmuch. Some who are melancholy are not forsaken of God; there is something physically wrong with them. Some who suppose they have committed the unpardonable sin may only have committed some sin against what are called the laws of nature or the laws of health, or they may be suffering in a physical hell which has been created for them by thoughtless or vicious progenitors. The night side should always be recognised. Men should speak of the night, for the night is a reality: but they should not forget to say that the morning cometh; and though the night hasten upon its heels, night shall fail in the race, and morning shall go alone on its eternal passage. There is enough to justify a certain measure of despondency.
Consider the vanity of life, and by its vanity understand its brevity, its uncertainty, its fickleness. We have no gift of time, we have no assurance of continuance; we have a thousand yesterdays, we have not one tomorrow. Then how things disappoint us that were going to make us glad! The flowers have been blighted, or the insects have fallen upon them, or the cold wind has chilled them, and they have never come to fall fruition or bloom or beauty; and the child that was going to comfort us in our old age died first, as if frightened by some ghost invisible to us. Then the collisions of life, its continual competitions and rivalries and jealousies; its mutual criticisms, its backbitings and slanderings; its censures, deserved and undeserved: who can stand the rush and tumult of this life? Who has not sometimes longed to lay it down and begin some better, sunnier state of existence? Who has wholly escaped sighing, weariness, yearning that means, This is not our rest; there must be a city to complete this, a city which brings to completeness of significance and joy all the symbols and hints which make this present life-stage so bewildering? And the sufferings of life, who shall number them? not the great sufferings that are published, not the great woes that draw the attention even of the whole household to us in tender regard; but sufferings we never mention, spiritual sufferings, yea, even physical sufferings; sufferings that we dare not mention, sufferings that would be laughed at by unsympathetic contempt but still sufferings. Add all these elements and possibilities together, and then say who has not sometimes been almost anxious to “shuffle off this mortal coil,” and pass into the liberty of rest.
Only they who are in spiritual service, only pastors who have won the friendship of a thousand hearts, can really tell how much melancholy there is in the world. The most of people never escape the limits of private individuality, so that they do not know what is passing around them; but the pastor who has the touch of sympathy, and who has evidently the ear of attention, hears and knows by numberless means whisperings, open communications, letters well attested, and whole volumes of family history how much misery there is in the world. We know to whom to tell the tale of our grief. Men do not care to whisper their confidences to the unheeding rock; but let them find a man who is akin to their souls, and who can listen in a way that amounts to a reply, then how they will pour into his ear the sad and saddening story, and get out of their very speech some hope at least of mitigation. Some men are not to be consulted upon anything, because they know nothing but the sky of their own little life, the horizon of their own contracted outlook, and they cannot understand any other kind of nature than their own. Jesus Christ understands us all. We can all tell Jesus, as the disciples did, what has happened. He can listen to each of us as if his interest were entranced and enthralled. He knows every quiver of the life, every throb of the heart, every palpitation of fear, and every shout of joy. Withhold nothing from him. You can tell him all, and when you have ended you will find that you may begin life again. In your hope is his answer.
Judged by the grave being the end of things, we may well be despondent. If life ends in death, as we understand that term death, then it is a failure in many serious respects. Now Christianity would improve upon this estimate of life, even if the grave were its goal. Christianity has a wonderful message to our melancholy. Christianity would say to us, If it could be proved that all life is a gallop to the grave, still life might be made beautiful, useful, valuable, and precious beyond all possible possessions. There is much selfishness in Christian piety so miscalled. What does some people’s religion amount to but a sighing for heaven, a sighing for rest, for some form of luxury? They are always saying what it will be to escape life and earth, and time and sense, and pass into the invisible and the eternal. It is all selfishness and vanity; it is not piety; it has nothing to do with the Spirit of Christ. We should be as pure, generous, industrious, faithful, if tomorrow’s sun is to set upon our grave, from which there is no resurrection of any kind. That is what Christianity would teach us. Christianity says, A noble life is worth living, even for its effect upon itself, and its influence upon others. Your mother is not dead; yea, though there be nothing beyond the grave, the good woman is not dead; she is with you in memory and inspiration and influence and secret benediction, and many a time you recover yourself from dejection and fear by a remembrance of her chivalry: how then can she be quite dead? Besides, even if the grave ended all things as to human consciousness, we are making a contribution to the general advancement of mankind. That is unselfishness. But tell persons that there is nothing beyond, that they must find the reward in the virtue, the heaven in the goodness, and they will say they want something in both hands, something they can lay hold upon, a very tangible and real and most visible heaven. That is selfishness. It is not piety, it is not even aspiration; it is self-consciousness and preparation for selfish enjoyment. Why not treat the soul as we treat the body in these respects? Herein we convict ourselves, and answer our own foolish logic; for we know that the body will not survive many days, yet how wise men care for it, how they nourish and cherish it, how they subject it to wise discipline! Know ye not that your bodies may drop to pieces tomorrow? Yes, says the student of health, that may be so, but today I must care for my body as if it were going to live for ever; my body has an effect upon other bodies, and by my discipline and self-control and regularity, by my temperance and my proper development, I am helping on the good of society. That is piety, though it may not be uttered in the church; that is the large religion; that is the religion of Jesus Christ, which is not seeking some golden-paved Jerusalem for itself, but is doing justly, loving mercy, walking humbly with God, that the soul itself may be comforted, and the souls of others may be blessed.
See how it is with regard to this matter of the body. This analogon I will not part with, for it sustains a larger argument. We know that the body in a few years will be in the grave, and yet we cleanse it, and sustain it, and discipline it, as if it were to live for ever on the earth. That is wisdom. Even if the soul were to die with the body and be buried in the same grave, why not attend to it with the same diligence, with the same constancy and hopefulness? why not find pleasure in discipline? why not find advancement in self-suppression? Now you may change the point of view, and proceed upon an argument that grows because of the admission which has been made with regard to the body. Christianity says that the soul is to survive, that the spirit is not to be extinguished; that through processes known in connection with the name of Christ, and the mighty energy of God the Holy Ghost, it is to live for ever. It so, how much more attention, how much more discipline, how much more zealous, tender, and exacting care should be bestowed upon its development! We do this for the body, and the body dies; it may die immediately: why not do the same for the soul, even if it were to go into annihilation the moment the body falls? But if the soul is not to go into annihilation at that time, but is to bid farewell to the flesh that it may pass on to a nobler tenancy, how much more does it deserve patience, and care, and watchfulness in its development!
Jeremiah has a word that is practical:
“All my familiars watched for my halting, saying, Peradventure he will be enticed, and we shall prevail against him, and we shall take our revenge on him” ( Jer 20:10 ).
“All my familiars watched for my halting”: the original word does not mean my innermost friends, for true friendship can never be guilty of such treason, but the Hebrew word means, The men of my peace; the men who used to accost me on the highway with, “Is it peace?” the men who salaamed me out of civility, but who never really cared for me in their souls: these men, behind their painted masks, watched for my halting; they all watched. Some men take pleasure when other men fall. What is the answer to all this watching of others? It is a clear, plain, simple, useful answer: Watch yourselves; be sober, be vigilant, for your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour. It is not enough that others watch you watch yourselves; be critical about yourselves; be severe with yourselves; penetrate the motive of every action, and say: Is it healthy? Is it honest? Is it such as could bear the criticism of God? Dare we take up this motive and look at it when the sun burns upon it in its revealing glory? If a man so watch himself he need not mind who else watches him. He will follow the advice of the Lord Jesus advice which amounts to a solemn command: “What I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.” Watch the secret places; watch the out-of-the-way doors, the postern gates, the places that are supposed to be secure against the approach of the burglar; be very careful about all these, and then the result may be left with God. He who does not watch will be worsted in the fray. He who does not watch cannot pray. He who watches others and does not watch himself is a fool.
Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker
Jer 20:1 Now Pashur the son of Immer the priest, who [was] also chief governor in the house of the LORD, heard that Jeremiah prophesied these things.
Ver. 1. Now Pashur the son of Immer, ] i.e., One of the posterity of Immer, after many generations. See 1Ch 24:14 .
Who was also chief governor.
Heard that Jeremiah prophesied these things.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Jeremiah Chapter 20
This (Jer 20 ) draws out the persecution of Pashur the son of Immer the priest, chief governor in the house of Jehovah, who smote Jeremiah and put his feet in the stocks. But the prophet on the morrow gave his adversary, from Jehovah, the name of Magor-missabib (i.e. fear round about), with a still more precise menace of speedy judgment on all Judah, and the strength of the city, and the treasures of the kings, which should go to Babylon. (Ver. 1-5. ) “And thou, Pashur, and all that dwell in thine house shall go into captivity: and thou shalt come to Babylon, and there thou shalt die, and shalt be buried there, thou, and all thy friends, to whom thou hast prophesied lies.”
The rest of this section is of deep interest, where the prophet bemoans his sad testimony and shows how truly the treasure was in an earthen vessel, that the excellency of the power might be of God and not of men. After all his inward conflicts, the result is his own fresh confidence in Jehovah. “But the Lord is with me as a mighty terrible one: therefore my persecutors shall stumble, and they shall not prevail: they shall be greatly ashamed; for they shall not prosper: their everlasting confusion shall never be forgotten. But, O Lord of hosts, that triest the righteous, and seest the reins and the heart, let me see thy vengeance on them: for unto thee have I opened my cause. Sing unto the Lord, praise ye the Lord; for he hath delivered the soul of the poor from the hand of the evildoers.” Even then however the chapter (ver. 14-18) closes with cursing the day of his birth and the messenger who congratulated his father on such a child, the prophet of woe for Israel. Certainly prophecy came not at any time by the will of man, but holy men spake as borne along by the Holy Ghost.
Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Jer 20:1-6
1When Pashhur the priest, the son of Immer, who was chief officer in the house of the LORD, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things, 2Pashhur had Jeremiah the prophet beaten and put him in the stocks that were at the upper Benjamin Gate, which was by the house of the LORD. 3On the next day, when Pashhur released Jeremiah from the stocks, Jeremiah said to him, Pashhur is not the name the LORD has called you, but rather Magor-missabib. 4For thus says the LORD, ‘Behold, I am going to make you a terror to yourself and to all your friends; and while your eyes look on, they will fall by the sword of their enemies. So I will give over all Judah to the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will carry them away as exiles to Babylon and will slay them with the sword. 5I will also give over all the wealth of this city, all its produce and all its costly things; even all the treasures of the kings of Judah I will give over to the hand of their enemies, and they will plunder them, take them away and bring them to Babylon. 6And you, Pashhur, and all who live in your house will go into captivity; and you will enter Babylon, and there you will die and there you will be buried, you and all your friends to whom you have falsely prophesied.’
Jer 20:1 Pashhur There are several people in the OT with this name.
1. In this text a priest whose task was to maintain order in the temple (cf. Jer 29:26)
2. Another priest in Jeremiah’s day, but with a different father, Jer 21:1; Jer 38:1; Neh 11:12.
3. Another person in Jer 38:1 (two Pashhurs in this verse).
4. Head of a post-exilic family, Ezr 2:38; Ezr 10:22; Neh 7:41; Neh 10:3; Neh 11:12.
KB 980 quotes two authors who speculate that Pashhur is an Egyptian name (cf. JPSOA marginal note), son of Horus. If so, this is a strange name for a priest of YHWH (possibly part of a pro-Egyptian faction). Most scholars simply say the meaning is unknown.
Jeremiah renames him terror on every side, cf. Jer 20:3-6.
heard Jeremiah prophesying these things This goes back to Jeremiah 18 or 19, or both.
Jer 20:2 Although YHWH promised to protect Jeremiah (cf. Jer 1:18-19), it did not mean he would not emotionally and physically suffer!
beaten Probably in the fashion of Deu 25:2-3. Jeremiah would have been labeled a wicked man (i.e., false prophet, cf. Deu 13:1-5).
stocks This word (BDB 246) refers to wooden bars with holes in them for the hands, feet, and neck. These holes were spread widely apart to increase pain and discomfort. The pain was both physical and mental! In 2Ch 16:10 a false prophet was put in them (or it). Jeremiah was being treated as a false prophet. This is what bothered him so badly!
The JPSOA translates this word as cell and sees it as a small room of confinement. The LXX also has dungeon, but stocks in a footnote.
Jer 20:4-6 These verses describe the terror (BDB 159 II).
1. his friends will die by the invaders’ (i.e., Babylon), sword, while you watch
2. Judah’s remaining population will be exiled to Babylon
3. all the wealth of Jerusalem (including the temple) will be carried to Babylon
4. Pashhur and his family will be exiled and die in Babylon
Jer 20:4 hand See Special Topic: Hand .
Jer 20:6 you have falsely prophesied Exactly how this priestly temple official prophesied is uncertain. But he would bear the curse of Deu 13:1-5 for it! The false prophecy was related to the stability of the temple and Jerusalem (possibly quoting Isaiah’s message to Hezekiah, i.e., Isaiah 36-39). It was a message of hope and faith, but at this point in time, it was not YHWH’s message (cf. Jer 14:14-16)!
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
Pashur = most noble. The first person named in this book, beside Jeremiah. Not the Pashur of Jer 21. This incident is in the third year of Jehoiakim, just before Nebuchadnezzar comes for the first time. Jer 21is in the latter part of Zedekiah’s reign, nineteen years later.
Immer. The ancestor of the sixteenth order of priests (1Ch 24:14).
the priest: i.e. Immer.
chief governor: i.e. Pashur.
the LORD. Hebrew. Jehovah.
prophesied = was prophesying.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter 20
Now Pashur ( Jer 20:1 ).
And the name means “prosperity all around.”
Now Pashur the son of Immer the priest, who was also chief governor in the house of the LORD, heard that Jeremiah had prophesied these things. Then Pashur smote Jeremiah the prophet, and put him in the stocks that were in the high gate of Benjamin, which was by the house of the LORD ( Jer 20:1-2 ).
So Jeremiah is now shut up in the stocks by this fellow whose name means “prosperity all over the place,” you know. Prosperity all around. And he puts Jeremiah, smites him, puts him in the stocks.
And it came to pass on the morrow, that Pashur brought forth Jeremiah out of the stocks. Then said Jeremiah unto him, The LORD hath not called thy name Pashur ( Jer 20:3 ),
God doesn’t call you “prosperity all about.” But God calls you “terror all around.” And so,
For thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will make thee a terror to thyself, and to all your friends: and they shall fall by the sword of their enemies, and thine eyes shall behold it: and I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall carry them captive unto Babylon, and shall slay them with the sword. Moreover I will deliver all the strength of this city, and all the labors thereof, and all the precious things thereof, and all the treasures of the kings of Judah will I give into the hand of their enemies, which shall spoil them, and take them, and carry them to Babylon ( Jer 20:4-5 ).
So Jeremiah, really, being in the stocks didn’t really quiet him. He just really prophesies unto Pashur the evil that is going to come. His own captivity and that of his friends and all of the treasures carried away to Babylon.
And thou, Pashur, and all that dwell in your house shall go into captivity: and you shall come to Babylon, and there you will die, and shalt be buried there, you, and all your friends, to whom you have prophesied lies ( Jer 20:6 ).
Now Jeremiah cries out to the Lord.
O LORD, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived: thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed: I am in derision daily, every one mocks me. For since I spake, I cried out, I cried violence and spoil; because the word of the LORD was made a reproach unto me, and a derision, daily ( Jer 20:7-8 ).
Now, he laid it on to Pashur, but now he’s talking to God saying, “God, you know, here I’ve been prophesying and they threw me in jail. Speaking in Your name I got put in the stocks. Lord, what’s going on here? And is that any way to treat Your servants and those who are prophesying in Your name?” And so he’s really upset.
Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name ( Jer 20:9 ).
Lord, I’m through. Here’s my resignation. I’m finished. Thrown in jail and put in the stocks and all, because I’m speaking Your Word. Going to treat me like that, I’m through, Lord. I’ve had it. Not going to speak again in Your name. That’s all. Treat me like that.
But his word was in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary trying to hold it back, and I could not stay ( Jer 20:9 ).
Oh, God’s Word it’s just burning. I couldn’t keep quiet. It’s just something that was there. God’s Word just burning like a fire and I just couldn’t keep back.
For I heard the defaming of many, fear was on every side. Report, say they, and we will report it. And all of my friends watched for my halting, they said, Peradventure he will be enticed, and we shall prevail against him, and we shall take our revenge on him. But the LORD is with me as a mighty terrible one: therefore my persecutors shall stumble ( Jer 20:10-11 ),
They’re watching for me to stumble, but they’re going to stumble because the Lord is with me.
and they shall not prevail: they shall be greatly ashamed; for they shall not prosper: their everlasting confusion shall never be forgotten. But, O LORD of hosts, that tried the righteous, and seest the reins and the hearts, let me see thy vengeance on them: for unto thee have I opened my cause. Sing unto the LORD, praise ye the LORD: for he hath delivered the soul of the poor from the hand of evildoers ( Jer 20:11-13 ).
So he lapses again into a worship of the Lord as he talks to the Lord about these people that are plotting against him and God has said, you remember, “I the Lord search the hearts, try the reins.” And he says, “Okay, Lord, search our hearts, try the reins and wipe them out, because You can see what they’re doing. They’re evildoers. So let me see your vengeance on them. Sing unto the Lord, praise ye the Lord: for He has delivered the soul of the poor from the hand of the evildoers.” Now, as I told you, he’s a melancholy because he goes from this, “Praise the Lord, He’s delivered,” and right down to the bottom.
Cursed be the day wherein I was born: let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed. Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, You’ve had a boy; making my father very glad. And let that man be as the cities which the LORD overthrew, and repented not: and let him hear the cry of the morning, and the shouting at noontide; because he did not slay me when I was born; or that my mother might have been my grave, and her womb to be always great with me ( Jer 20:14-17 ).
In other words, had she never brought me forth, had I just been stillborn, died or something, or still in her womb, God, curse the day that I ever came out of the womb and started this whole routine.
Why did I come forth out of the womb to see labor and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame? ( Jer 20:14-18 )
Isn’t that amazing how he can go from just this high, “Oh, praise the Lord, He’s done glorious things and all. Cursed be the day I was born.” You know, it’s amazing how easily Satan can rob us of our joy. How little it takes to rob us of our joy in the Lord. I can start thinking about what the Lord has done and just get so high. If I’m thinking about God’s goodness and God’s blessing and all that God has done, I just get rejoicing in the Lord. I start singing. I make up songs of praise and love to Him. And I just get carried away. “Oh Lord, You’re so good. I love You. It’s just been real, Lord. I can’t believe what You’re doing.” I just get so happy and excited in the Lord and the things of the Lord. And I’m going down the street just so excited, worshipping the Lord. And some nut for no apparent reason throws on his brakes right in front of me, you know. And I have to swerve and throw on my brakes and swing around to miss him. “You, idiot,” you know. And from this glorious spiritual high to this fleshly monster in just such a quick time. It’s amazing how quickly we can go from these high spiritual plateaus right down into the depths of despair.
He goes from the praising God right into the, “cursed be the day I was born.” Be careful. Don’t let Satan rob your joy from you. Realize that he’s out to do it. Be on guard. Rejoice in the Lord always. Let your heart rejoice in Him. Bring forth praises unto Him for His goodness and His blessings and His mercy and His grace. And when Satan throws these stumbling blocks in the path to bring you down into the flesh, don’t allow it.
A while back going through the market, happy as can be, rejoicing in the Lord, He’s so good, He’s blessed me so much. I had a neat thick, top sirloin steak in the basket and I thought, “Lord, You’ve given me money to purchase this steak. I’m going to go home and barbecue it. Oh Lord, You are so good to me. I can remember the day when I could never afford a steak like this. And now, Lord, here I am, blessed of Thee. You’re so good to me, Lord.” And I was just going around the store rejoicing, praising the Lord. Came up to the line, just standing there, happy in the Lord. Just waiting my turn, you know. “Oh, Lord, You’re so good.” And this little fat guy with a cigar came crowding into the line right in front of me. Pushed his way in. And I thought, “Why you, rude little character.” And I was ready to just grab him by the collar, turn him around and say, “Who do you think you are? Don’t you see I’m standing waiting in line? You get behind me!” And that cigar! I wanted to just push it right down his throat. And I was just seething, and the Spirit spoke to me and said, “Oh, such great love, such great rejoicing, such great joy in the Lord all dissipated over a stinking cigar.” I said, “No way, I’m not going to lose my joy over this rude little character.” I’m going to take another swing around the store. I didn’t have anything more to get, but I went around the store again just to get back in the right frame of mind so the guy will be out of the store by the time I got back to the checking stand. I know my limits and I know what I can handle. But up and down a few more aisles and getting the perspectives again back in the Lord. I came back to the check stand. He was gone and I had a great victory and a good steak and a time of praise.
But oh, how easily we can lose that praising and rejoicing in the Lord. How quickly Satan can throw a snare out there. And man, I’m trapped. And that consciousness of God, that joy and rejoicing is taken and I feel all of this anger and bitterness and all. He knows where to hit us. He knows how to get us. But let’s not let him do it. Let’s keep the right perspective. Take another swing around the block or around the store or whatever you have to do in order to maintain that glorious joy and praise and rejoicing in Him.
Poor Jeremiah. “I’ll sing unto the Lord. Praise the Lord, for He has delivered the soul of the poor and all. Oh, cursed be the day I was born.” I don’t know what happened between those two verses, but something really came in and wiped him out. Put him down in the bottom of the barrel.
Shall we pray.
Father, we thank You for the joy that we can experience in Christ Jesus as we think about the hope that is ours. That eternal life that You have given to us by our simply believing and trusting in Him. That inheritance that is incorruptible and undefiled that You’ve reserved in heaven for us. Your keeping power, Lord, whereby You keep and strengthen us day by day. Oh Lord, truly we are blessed. Blessed to live in this land. Blessed with freedoms to worship Thee. Blessed with Thy Word that we might know Thee. Blessed on every side above all nations of the earth. O God, help us to remember the blessings, the good things that You have done. And may we give praise and thanks unto You continually for Your goodness. God, keep our hearts in the right place. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
May the Lord be with you and bless you this week. May He watch over your lives and keep you in His love. May you abound in the love of Jesus Christ. May there just be that rich, flowing forth in and from your life as God works in you His perfect work of love and grace. May God grant that you have just a special week of enjoying the goodness and the fullness of God and His love. In Jesus’ name. “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Jer 20:1-6
Jer 20:1-6
JEREMIAH IMPRISONED
This brings us near the end of Jeremiah’s tragic ministry to Apostate Judah at a time nearing the very end of that ministry of warning and vain calls for the repentance and reform of the people. There are two division of the chapter. First, there is the episode of Jeremiah’s imprisonment and the symbolical name that God fastened upon his oppressor (Jer 20:1-6), and then there is the fifth and final one of the so-called Confessions or Personal Laments of Jeremiah. Ash and others see two laments in these verses, giving six in all; but, to this writer, it appears that the two actually constitute only one lament, there being no valid reason for dividing them. Keil and many of the older commentators also see the passage as a single paragraph (Jer 20:7-18).
Jer 20:1-6
JEREMIAH AND PASHHUR
Now Pashhur, the son of Immer the priest, who was chief officer in the house of Jehovah, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things. Then Pashhur smote Jeremiah the prophet, and put him in the stocks that were in the upper gate of Benjamin, which was in the house of Jehovah. And it came to pass on the morrow, that Pashhur brought forth Jeremiah out of the stocks. Then said Jeremiah unto him, Jehovah hath not called thy name Pashhur, but Magor-missabib. For thus saith Jehovah, Behold, I will make thee a terror to thyself, and to all thy friends; and they shall fall by the sword of their enemies, and thine eyes shall behold it; and I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall carry them captive to Babylon, and shall slay them with the sword. Moreover I will give all the riches of this city, and all the gains thereof, and all the precious things thereof, yea, all the treasures of the kings of Judah will I give into the hand of their enemies; and they shall make them a prey, and take them, and carry them to Babylon. And thou, Pashhur, and all that dwell in thy house shall go into captivity; and thou shalt come to Babylon, and there thou shalt die, and there shalt thou be buried, thou, and all thy friends, to whom thou hast prophesied falsely.
Pashhur, the son of Immer… chief officer…
(Jer 20:1). Many scholars including Dummelow and Barnes believed that Pashhur was the father of Gedaliah (Jer 38:1). There was another Pashhur (Jer 21:1), but he belonged to the fifth course (shift) of priests belonging to the sons of Melchiah; this Pashhur belonged to the sixteenth course and was the son of Immer. Both of these families were strongly represented in the returnees from Babylon (Ezr 2:27; Ezr 2:38).
There were a number of priests who held the office of “an overseer” of the temple; but the Pashhur mentioned here was “the chief officer,” meaning that he had charge of all the overseers. The man was of high authority, the deputy High Priest in fact, an office that made him second only to the governor of the temple. He was evidently pro-Egyptian, believing that an alliance with Egypt would provide the security Israel so desperately needed at that time. Jeremiah’s stern prophecies were a threat to Pashhur’s position; and the drastic action against Jeremiah was designed to support Pashhur’s evil policy which, of course, he backed up with false prophecies (Jer 20:6).
Since Pashhur’s false prophecies of peace and security were contradicted by the warnings of Jeremiah, Ash’s speculation that, “Jeremiah was thrown into prison as a false prophet,” is probably correct.
Pashhur smote Jeremiah the prophet. put him in the stocks … in the upper gate of Benjamin …..
(Jer 20:2). The NIV renders part of these words as, had Jeremiah beaten. Many expositors think that Pashhur ordered Jeremiah to be beaten with ‘forty stripes save one,’ as in Deu 25:3.
And put him in the stocks…
(Jer 20:2). The terrible instrument of punishment identified in these words was designed for torture, not merely for restraint, and their function was to inflict cruel and inhuman torture upon the hapless victim.
In the upper gate of Benjamin…
(Jer 20:2). Some have described this gate as probably the most frequented gate in the city. It is here called the upper gate to distinguish it from another gate of the same name in the city wall, which opened toward the tribe of Benjamin in the North.
Pashhur smote Jeremiah the prophet…
(Jer 20:2). The words Jeremiah the prophet have not appeared previously in this whole prophecy: and, The words are thus used here to indicate that Pashhur’s conduct was a violation of the respect due the prophetic office. This is one of the saddest scenes in the Old Testament. We have this crooked false prophet Pashhur, beating and torturing God’s true prophet.
Halley described the stocks into which Jeremiah was cast as, “A wooden frame in which the feet, neck and hands were fastened so as to hold the body in a cramped and painful position. It was this torture that drew from Jeremiah his outburst of remonstrance with God in Jer 20:7-18.”
Magor-missabib…
(Jer 20:3). If Pashhur had thought to silence Jeremiah, he quickly learned better. With his first breath after release, Jeremiah announced the new name that God had named upon Pashhur, i.e., Terror on Every Side. Furthermore, the name was backed up with specific prophecies revealing, for the first time in Jeremiah, the name of the kingdom where the captivity would take place, the prophecy that many would be slain, that the king and his household, along with Pashhur and his household, would be among the captives deported to Babylon, and that they would die there and be buffed there. In due time, all of this was literally and circumstantially fulfilled. Indeed, Pashhur, who was destined to live with his false prophecies must have been hated and despised by all of his intimates and close friends. Pashhur was one who prophesied falsely (cf. Jer 14:14) that famine and sword would never overtake Judah. Jeremiah revealed that for such lies he would now be punished.
Wiseman evidently believed that Pashhur was a prophet, stating that “He was (a) a priest and (b) a prophet.” However, we do not believe that he was ever a legitimate prophet.
Thou hast prophesied falsely…
(Jer 20:6). From these words it is evident that Pashhur assumed prophetic functions. Most probably, he and his friends formed a political party in Jerusalem clamoring for an alliance with Egypt. Yes indeed, Pashhur claimed to be a prophet; But he had falsely assumed the prophetic office; and for that he was worthy of death.
JEREMIAH’S FINAL LAMENT
Some find two confessions or laments in this passage, but we can discover only one. The only basis for making two out of it is the unexpected appearance of the reassuring verses (Jer 20:11-13), but we believe the latter verses (Jer 20:14-18) are also built around and related to Jer 20:11-13, giving only one confession and lament in this chapter. We shall assign further reasons for this understanding of the chapter in the discussion under Jer 20:13-14.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
The story of the persecution which this action stirred up against him follows. Pashur heard the prophecy, and, smiting the prophet, arrested and imprisoned him. On the following day Jeremiah, being brought out of the stocks, repeated his prophecy of judgment, singling out Pashur for special attention, declaring that on him would fall most severe punishment.
In the midst of this persecution and suffering, the prophet poured out his soul in the presence of Jehovah. Conscious that he had been compelled to declare these things, he complained that he had been the laughingstock of the people, and that the word of Jehovah had made him a reproach. He had declared that he would not mention Jehovah, nor speak any more in His name; but the word had become a burning fire, and he had been compelled to utter it. The tempestuous condition of his mind is seen in that after the complaint there was a sudden outburst of confidence in which he declared that Jehovah was with him, that his enemies should not prevail, and called for a song of praise because of deliverance.
This, however, was immediately followed by an outburst of fear, which stood in strange contrast to his former confidence. He cursed the day of his birth and lamented the continuity of his life. This reveals to us how terrible were the sufferings through which this man passed.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
Widespread Corruption
Jer 5:1-6; Jer 19:1-15; Jer 20:1-18; Jer 21:1-14; Jer 22:1-30; Jer 23:1-40; Jer 24:1-10; Jer 25:1-38; Jer 26:1-24; Jer 27:1-22; Jer 28:1-17; Jer 29:1-32; Jer 30:1-24; Jer 31:1-40
Diogenes, the cynic, was discovered one day in Athens in broad daylight, lantern in hand, looking for something. When someone remonstrated with him, he said that he needed all the light possible to enable him to find an honest man. Something like that is in the prophets thought. God was prepared to spare Jerusalem on lower terms than even Sodom, and yet He was driven to destroy her. Both poor and rich had alike broken the yoke and burst the bonds. The description of the onset of the Chaldeans is very graphic. They settle down upon the land as a flock of locusts, but still the Chosen People refuse to connect their punishment with their sin. It never occurred to the Chosen People that the failure of the rain, the withering of their crops, and the assault of their foes, were all connected with their sin. There is nothing unusual in this obtuseness for as we read the history of our own times, men are equally inapt at connecting national disaster with national sin.
How good it would be if the national cry of today were that of Jer 5:24 : Let us now fear before the Lord our God! Notice the delightful metaphor of Jer 5:22. When God would stay the wild ocean wave a barrier of sand will suffice. The martyrs were as sand grains but wild persecutions were quenched by their heroic patience.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
CHAPTER TEN
PASHUR’S NEW NAME AND THE PROPHET’S COMPLAINT
(Chap. 20)
With callous indifference, not so much actual persecution, our prophet thus far has had to cope. He is now to experience physical suffering at the hands of one from whom, above many others, better things might have been expected.
Pashur, a priest and chief governor in the house of the Lord, resents the faithful preaching of Jeremiah, and seeks to put a stop to it by forcible means. Scripture is silent elsewhere as to this man, although several other persons by the same name are mentioned in this book. Here we are only told that he was the son of Immer; that is, he belonged to the sixteenth course of the priesthood (1Ch 24:14).
He heard that “Jeremiah prophesied these things,” and he resolved to make a public example of him. We are told that he smote the prophet, “and put him in the stocks that were in the high gate of Benjamin, which was by the house of the Lord” (Jer 20:1-2). He was thus ignominiously exposed to the taunts of the vulgar multitude. For a part of a day and a night he seems to have been left in this position; then, on the morrow, his persecutor “brought forth Jeremiah out of the stocks.” (Jer 20:3)
The degradation and suffering had in no wise daunted the man of GOD. Naturally, as we have seen, a timid, backward man, he is now bold as a lion, in accordance with the promise made to him by the Lord when he began his ministry.
The man who has so often wept over the stony-hearted men of Judah and Jerusalem has now no fears for himself, nor yet any soft words for the renegade priest. Abruptly he declares, “The Lord hath not called thy name Pashur, but Magormissabib” (Jer 20:3).
Pashur is commonly said to mean “prosperity.” He should never prosper more, for he had lifted up his hand against the Lord’s anointed and rejected His Word. Magormissabib means “terror” (or fear) “on every side.” Such should be his future condition. A terror to himself and to all his friends, living in abject fear for his own life from day to day, this should be his reward till carried away in captivity to Babylon; and there he must die and be buried in the land of the uncircumcised.
We read not of any reply on the part of the false priest. The power of Jeremiah’s words must have struck deep, however much he hated him; so he seems to have dismissed him from his presence.
And now we find the man who could be so bold before the despiser of the word of the Lord, in brokenness and even fear before the Lord. He was no stoic. He felt most keenly the reproach of his position.
From verse 7 to the end of the chapter (Jer 20:7-18) we have a kind of soliloquy. He pours out first his complaints, then his praises, and again his remonstrances, into the ears of the Lord of Hosts. O Lord, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived: Thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed: I am in derision daily, everyone mocketh me.” (Jer 20:7) He did not court persecution and taunts: on the contrary, it stung him to the quick to be thus despised, and to find his messages derided. But the Lord had persuaded him. He believed; therefore had he spoken.
His preaching from the beginning had been of violence and spoil; hence the word of the Lord was made a reproach unto him, and a derision daily (Jer 20:8). Had he prophesied smooth things and given utterance to sentiments calculated to soothe the people in their sin, he would have been held in honor and esteem. But this could not be, for he had to proclaim the words given him by the Lord.
So painful was it to his sensitive nature to meet with reproach and rejection everywhere, that he had made up his mind not to prophesy further. “Then I said, I will not make mention of Him, nor speak any more in His name.” This, however, was for him an impossibility. “His word,” he says, “was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay” (Jer 20:9).
“Woe is me,” declared the apostle of the Gentiles, “if I preach not the gospel.” (1Co 9:16)
Men sent forth by GOD with a message from Himself are unable to be at rest if that message is unproclaimed. How different this is to the perfunctory service of multitudes of modern clergy-men! “A burning fire” (Jer 20:9) must have vent, and if the Word of GOD be thus surging up in one’s breast he simply must preach. To seek to imitate this is but folly. Any spiritual person, and many utterly godless ones, can readily detect the difference between giving forth that which has been implanted in the inmost soul by the Holy Spirit, and the mere vapourings of a wrought-up sermon.
The very “defaming of many on every side” (Jer 20:10) but served to cast Jeremiah the more on GOD, and nerve him, if we may so speak, in the conflict for the truth he proclaimed.
Those who professed friendship for him, his “familiars,” (Jer 20:10) watched for his halting, and hoped he might be enticed, that they might be avenged on him. Fear was round about as he had declared to Pashur. But he could say, “The Lord is with me as a mighty terrible one: therefore my persecutors shall stumble, and they shall not prevail: they shall be greatly ashamed; for they shall not prosper” (the reference here is clearly to the name Pashur): “their everlasting confusion shall never be forgotten” (Jer 20:11).
Therefore to the Lord of Hosts, the One that tries the righteous and sees the reins and the heart, he commits his cause, and pleads that he may see the divine vengeance upon the enemies of Judah’s peace. Strong in faith, he counts the things that are not as though they had already come to pass, and cries in his exaltation of spirit: “Sing unto the Lord, praise ye the Lord: for He hath delivered the soul of the poor from the hand of evildoers” (Jer 20:13). It is not “He will deliver,” but faith says, “He hath delivered.” (Jer 20:13)
Who would suppose that the same man would be in this truly blessed state of soul at one moment, and perhaps immediately afterwards be plunged into the abyss of the few remaining verses?
Ah, it is an experience common to most of the children of GOD.
– While faith is in exercise, all is bright.
– When self is looked to, all becomes dark.
In the verses we have been considering, the Lord has been before the prophet’s soul. In those to follow, it is with himself he is occupied. The result is a sudden depression of his spirit, akin to that of Job when “he opened his mouth and cursed his day” (Job 3:1). In fact, one can scarcely resist the conclusion that Jeremiah was quite conversant with the book that relates the ways of the Lord with the chief of the land of Uz. By comparing the entire third chapter of Job with these five verses, it will be seen how much alike are the complaints of each of these devoted men.
Our prophet curses the day of his birth and the man who bore the news to his father that a man child had been born unto him. He wishes he had been slain from the womb, or that he might never have been born. “Wherefore,” he asks in despair, “came I forth out of the womb to see labour and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?” (Jer 20:18)
It is the breaking down of a weak and tender heart when the eye has been turned for the time from the GOD of his salvation. He who knows the deepest feelings of the soul estimated all aright, and in the balances of the sanctuary weighed the grief of His stricken servant.
~ end of chapter 10 ~
Fuente: Commentaries on the New Testament and Prophets
CHAPTER 20
Pashur.-Jeremiahs Perplexity and Complaint
1. Pashur and Jeremiah (Jer 20:1-6)
2. Jeremiahs great perplexity and complaint (Jer 20:7-18)
Jer 20:1-6. A great scene now follows the message in connection with the broken bottle. The great Pashur, the chief governor in the house of the LORD had heard of the message. He smites Jeremiah and puts him in the stocks, which must have been some form of cruel torture by which the victim was rendered helpless, besides being exposed to the vulgarity of the people who passed by and would taunt him. In this position Jeremiah remained all night before the high gate of Benjamin. In the morning he was released. He then speaks as only an inspired prophet can speak. His name Pashur (which means most noble) should now be Magor-missabib, which means terror on every side. The awful fate of Pashur and his own is predicted. He is dumb, perhaps even then terror-stricken, as he looks into the flashing eyes of the man of God and listens to the fiery words.
Jer 20:7-18. What follows now is a most passionate outburst, revealing an unspeakable emotion of the soul, as perhaps nowhere else in the prophetic Scriptures. Even critics acknowledge this as one of the most powerful and impressive passages in the whole of the prophetic literature, a passage which takes us, as no other, not only into the depths of the prophets soul, but into the secrets of his prophetic consciousness. LORD, he cries, Thou has deceived me, and I was deceived. The Revised Version has translated it, Thou has persuaded m, but that is not correct. He acknowledges himself deceived, or enticed. He is troubled with doubt. He speaks of his great trials. He is a laughing stock–he is a reproach and a derision all the day. He tried to stop mentioning Him and not to speak any more in His name; but he tried to turn back upon his commission. But then the fire burned within him; his conscience became as a burning fire. He had heard defaming, his best friends had said We will denounce him. They thought of taking revenge on him.
But suddenly faith is victorious. He must have remembered the words of the Lord in connection with his commission, For I am with thee saith the LORD, to deliver thee (chapter 1). And so he cries out, The LORD is with me. He prays to see His vengeance on his enemies, for unto Him he had revealed His cause. And then the singing! Sing unto the LORD, praise ye the LORD; for He has delivered the soul of the needy from the hand of the evil-doers. Such is the experience of the godly remnant in fears an doubts, troubled on all sides, fleeing to Jehovah, till the singing times come, when He appears for their deliverance and the hallelujahs will sweep the earth and the heavens.
But his grief overwhelms him. Perhaps he thought again of all the sneers and mockeries, of all the harsh words, the unfaithful friends and the physical pain he endured. He is occupied with himself and the soul struggle begins anew and culminates in a near collapse. He curses, as Job did, the day in which he was born.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
Immer: 1Ch 24:14, Ezr 2:37, Ezr 2:38, Neh 7:40, Neh 7:41
chief: 2Ki 25:18, 2Ch 35:8, Act 4:1, Act 5:24
Reciprocal: Jer 1:19 – And they Jer 11:21 – thou Jer 18:21 – deliver Jer 26:8 – the priests Jer 29:26 – officers Jer 37:15 – the princes Amo 7:10 – the priest Act 4:17 – let
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Jer 20:1. All material buildings require the services of someone or more to oversee them, who might be classed as a janitor of the higher class. Having such a work it is clear as to how this chief overseer, Pashur, overheard the remarks of Jeremiah.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Jer 20:1. Pashur the son of Immer Pashur was not the immediate son of Immer, but of Melchiah, as is expressly mentioned 1Ch 9:12, and hereafter, Jer 21:1. Immer was one of his predecessors, and head of the sixteenth sacerdotal class, 1Ch 24:14. Pashur was not high-priest, as some of the ancients have thought, but only captain, or overseer of the temple. In this capacity he had power to arrest and put in prison the false prophets, and those who caused any disturbance in the temple. This matter is further explained, by Blaney, thus: The priests being distributed, by David, into twenty-four courses, under as many heads of families, and each of these courses officiating by turns in the temple service; the heads of each course were governors of the sanctuary; or, according to our translation, of the house of God. The meaning then will be, that these heads of the courses had not only the chief ordering of the service of the sanctuary, but were invested also with authority, at least within the precincts of the temple, to maintain peace and good order there. These persons I consider as being the same with those who in the New Testament are styled , chief priests, being next in dignity and power to the high-priest. Pashur, it seems, was the head of the course of Immer. So that, if the course of Immer was at that time upon duty, Pashur was at the same time the acting ruler or commander in the temple. And this I conceive to be implied in the words here used, , implying his authority to command, and , that he was then in the exercise of it; and by virtue of that authority he took upon him to punish Jeremiah as a disturber of the peace. I have given this officer, or magistrate, (namely, in his translation,) the military title of commanding officer, because it was usual to consider the temple as a kind of garrison, held by high-priests under military subordination. And for this reason, no doubt, we find him called by the name of , captain of the temple, Act 4:1; Act 5:24; Act 5:26. In Luk 22:52, captains, , are spoken of, in the plural number; which may perhaps be thus accounted for. As on the great festivals, not only the priests of the ordinary course, but the whole body of priests, were called upon to assist in the sacrifices; so on account of the multitudes that flocked to the temple at these times, the guards were also necessarily doubled, and, of course, a greater number of captains were on constant duty; and many, if not all these, came to assist in apprehending Jesus, as on a service which might be esteemed hazardous, on account of the number of his disciples.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Jer 20:3. The Lord hath not called thy name Pashur, which signifies security or increase; but Magormissabib, a terror on every side, or terrors of a captivity. Pashur believed the prophet, yet put him in the stocks for preaching! His new name is compound, and very expressive. Gor in Hebrew designates migration to another country. Some men obtain new names for illustrious virtues, and some new names for deplorable crimes.
Jer 20:9. Then I said, I will not make mention of him, nor speak any more in his name. He assigns reasons. I was daily in derision. I was exposed to a cloud of obloquy, and evil reports. Futile reasons! What, Jeremiah, wilt thou retire and leave the gods of Syria masters of the field. What, retire, and let the false prophets shout for joy. What, retire, and bring reproach on thy Lord, as if he had deceived thee by promising to make thee a pillar of iron and steel. What, retire, when the whole army of Assyria are coming up to thy support. What, retire like the old prophet of Bethel, whose lamp was gone out. What, retire, and leave the remnant in Jerusalem without a pastor. What, retire, when the Messiahs voice is sounding in thine ears, Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my strength. Oh it is a sweet voice to disconsolate ministers, when the Redeemer shall say, Thou hast laboured, and hast not fainted.
Jer 20:14. Cursed be the day wherein I was born. Jeremiah quotes here the words of Job, chap. 3., which the ancient critics understand as a hyperbole of the heart; for when David said in his elegy on Saul and Jonathan, Let there be no rain, nor dew, on the mountains of Gilboa, he certainly did not mean literally so. Why should Job literally curse the man who brought his father the news of his birth, to be as the cities of Sodom, which the Lord overthrew. Chrysostom, in his fourth homily on the patience of Job, magnifies the superior grace of the gospel, which enabled the christian martyrs to bear tortures, and to die rejoicing and praying for their enemies.
REFLECTIONS.
What a chequered chapter is thisa chapter of courage, of conflict, of song, of anguish and depression. Jeremiah had courage, as an ambassador of the Lord, to deliver the terrors of Jehovah. He even delivered them at the kings gate, and softened not the message of his God.
The effects of this sermon on Pashur the priest, Pashur the captain of the temple, and Pashur the flattering prophet, were terrible. To hear the true prophet give the lie to all his soft words, and in the face of the temple, roused the demon that slumbered in his heart. He was transported with fury; he struck Jeremiah on the mouth, he dragged him to the stocks, and would have stained the sanctuary with his blood, as had been done to Zachariah, only he feared the consequences.
The punishment instantly followed. Pashur and his priestly house were made the first examples of the truth of prophecy, to pine away in Babylon, with the doleful name of Magormissabib hanging over their heads.
Jeremiah, it would seem, like Paul and Silas in the stocks, sung praises to God, who gave him the victory in the fight. But alas, his spirits sunk again into the sentiments of Job, when he saw himself surrounded with misery and woe. Seeing the bitterness of the past, and nothing but bitterness for years to come, he cursed the day of his birth. This was the extreme of anguish, and blame-worthy; for he had a God who could make darkness light before him.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Jer 19:1 to Jer 20:6. The Earthenware Flask; Jeremiah in the Stocks.This section seems to be editorially grouped with the last because of the further reference to pottery; the original prophecy may have been expanded in Jer 19:3-9 by a later writer. It seems more natural to date these incidents after the Temple-sermon (Jer 19:7) rather than before it; in either case, in the early years of Jehoiakim. Jeremiah is to take representatives of Judah to the Valley of Hinnom (Jer 7:31), by the gate of potsherds (mg.; i.e. where these were thrown away), that he may warn them of the punishment about to come for their introduction of alien worship, their injustice, and their sacrifice of children by fire. A new name shall be given to the valley (Jer 7:32) to denote the coming slaughter, appalling (Jer 18:16) to behold. As a symbol of this destruction, the prophet is to break the flask he has bought; deaths shall be so numerous that burials will take place even in the defiled valley (2Ki 23:10) for want of room (Jer 19:11 mg.), and the city itself shall be defiled, because of its Babylonian cults (Jer 32:29). Jeremiah repeats his warning in the Temple (Jer 19:14 f.), with the result that the responsible officer put him in the stocks. To this official Jeremiah gives a symbolic name (Jer 20:3), denoting the terror of his fate and that of his friends at the hands of the Babylonians.
Jer 19:4. estranged this place: i.e. Jerusalem, by the worship of other gods.the blood of innocents: Jer 2:34, 2Ki 21:16; 2Ki 24:4.
Jer 19:5. Omit, with LXX, for burnt-offerings unto Baal, since these offerings were made to Molech, Jer 32:35, i.e. probably to Yahweh under this name; cf. Jer 7:31 and the note.
Jer 19:6. Topheth, see on Jer 7:31.
Jer 19:7. make void: playing on the Hebrew word for flask; cf. mg.
Jer 19:8. plagues: strokes or wounds.
Jer 19:9. cf. Deu 28:53. On the breaking of the flask, cf. Thomson, p. 641; for the significance of such symbolism, see the note on Jer 13:1.
Jer 19:13. The use of the Oriental roof is described in Thomson, p. 42.
Jer 20:2. See Jer 29:26, Act 16:24; a more modern parallel in Braithwaite, The Beginnings of Quakerism, p. 197.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
When Pashhur, who was the leading priest responsible for the oversight of the temple, heard Jeremiah’s words, he ordered him beaten and imprisoned in stocks that stood near the Benjamin Gate. This gate was evidently the new gate into the inner temple courtyard that King Jotham had constructed (cf. 2Ki 15:35). It provided an entrance from the north, in which direction the tribal territory of Benjamin lay. Consequently many people would have seen Jeremiah there.
"The ’stocks,’ where the prophet was confined, were intended not only for restraint but also for torture. The stocks, which were used for false prophets (cf. 2Ch 16:10), held the feet, hands, and neck so that the body was almost doubled up (cf. Jer 29:26). The Hebrew word for ’stocks’ (mahpeketh) means ’causing distortion.’" [Note: Feinberg, p. 500. See also The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, s.v. "Stocks," by M. Greenberg.]
Ironically, this overseer in God’s temple, evidently the man in charge of preserving order in the courtyard, was taking action against God’s overseer of the nations, Jeremiah (cf. Jer 1:10). This is the first recorded act of violence done to Jeremiah. It reminds us of the captain of the temple guard who, years later, similarly imprisoned Peter and John (Act 4:1-3).
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
CHAPTER XIII
JEREMIAH UNDER PERSECUTION
Jer 20:1-18
THE prophet has now to endure something more than a scornful rejection of his message. “And Pashchur ben Immer the priest” (he was chief officer in the house of Iahvah) “heard Jeremiah prophesying these words. And Pashchur smote Jeremiah the prophet and put him in the stocks, which were in the upper gate of Benjamin in the house of Iahvah.” Like the priest of Bethel, who abruptly put an end to the preaching of Amos in the royal sanctuary, Pashchur suddenly interferes, apparently before Jeremiah has finished his address to the people; and enraged at the tenour of his words, he causes him-“Jeremiah the prophet,” as it is significantly added, to indicate the sacrilege of the act-to be beaten in the cruel Eastern manner on the soles of the feet, inflicting probably the full number of forty blows permitted by the Law (Deuteronomy), and then leaving him in his agony of mind and body, fast bound in “the stocks.” For the remainder of that day and all night long the prophet sat there in the gate, at first exposed to the taunts and jeers of his adversaries and the rabble of their followers, and as the weary hours slowly crept on, becoming painfully cramped in his limbs by the barbarous machine which held his hands and feet near together, and bent his body double. This cruel punishment seems to have been the customary mode of dealing with such as were accounted false prophets by the authorities. It was the treatment which Hanani endured in return for his warning to king Asa, {2Ch 16:10} some three centuries earlier than Jeremiahs time; and a few years later in our prophets history, an attempt was made to enforce it again in his case. {Jer 29:26} Thus, like the holy apostles of our Lord, was Jeremiah “counted worthy to suffer shame” for the Name in which he spoke; {Act 5:40-41} and like Paul and Silas at Philippi, after enduring “many stripes” his feet were “made fast in the stocks”. {Act 16:23-24} The message of Jeremiah was a message of judgment, that of the apostles was a message of forgiveness; and both met with the same response from a world whose heart was estranged from God. The heart that loves its own way is only at ease when it can forget God. Any reminder of His Presence, of His perpetual activity in mercy and judgment, is unwelcome, and makes its authors odious. From the outset, transgressors of the Divine law have sought to hide “among the trees of the garden”-in the engrossing pursuits and pleasures of life-from the Presence of God.
Pashchurs object was not to destroy Jeremiah, but to break his spirit, and discredit him with the multitude, and so silence him forever. But in this expectation he was as signally disappointed as his successor was in the case of St. Peter. {Act 5:24; Act 5:29} Now as then, Gods messenger could not be turned from his conviction that “we ought to obey God rather than men.” And as he sat alone in his intolerable anguish, brooding over his shameful wrongs, and despairing of redress, a Divine Word came in the stillness of night to this victim of human tyranny. For it came to pass on the morrow that Pashchur brought Jeremiah forth out of the stocks; and Jeremiah said unto him, Not Pashchur (as if “Glad and free”)-but Magormissabib-(“Fear on every side”) “hath Jehovah called thy name!” Sharpened with misery, the seers eye pierces through the shows of life, and discerns the grim contrast of truth and appearance. Before him stands this great man, clothed with all the dignity of high office, and able to destroy him with a word; but Iahvahs prophet does not quail before abused authority. He sees the sword suspended by a hair over the head of this haughty and supercilious official; and he realises the solemn irony of circumstance, which has connected a name suggestive of gladness and freedom with a man destined to become the thrall of perpetual terrors. “For thus hath Iahvah said: Lo, I am about to make thee a Fear to thyself and to all thy lovers; and they will fall by the sword of their foes, while thine eyes look on!” This “glad and free” persecutor, wantoning in the abuse of power, blindly fearless of the future, is not doomed to be slain out of hand; a heavier fate is in store for him, a fate prefigured and foreshadowed by his present sins. His proud confidence is to give place to a haunting sense of danger and insecurity; he is to see his followers perish one after another, and evermore to be expecting the same end for himself: while the freedom which he has enjoyed and abused so long, is to be exchanged for a lifelong captivity in a foreign land. “And all Judah will I give into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will transport them to Babylon, and smite them with the sword. And I will give all the store of this city” (the hoarded wealth of all sorts, which constitutes its strength and reserve force) “and all the gain thereof” (the produce of labour) “and all the value thereof” (things rare and precious of every kind, works of the carvers and the goldsmiths and the potters and the weavers art); “and all the treasures of the kings of Judah will I give into the hand of their foes, that they may spoil them and take them and bring them to Babylon.”
“And for thyself, Pashchur, and all that dwell in thine house, ye shall depart among the captives; and to Babylon thou shalt come, and there thou shalt die, and there be buried, thyself and all thy lovers, to whom thou hast prophesied with untruth,” or rather “by the Lie,” i.e., “by the Baal.” {Jer 2:8; Jer 23:13; Jer 12:16}
The play on the name of Pashchur is like that on Perath (chapter 13), and the change to Magormissabib is like the change of Tophet into “Valley of Slaughter” (chapter 19). Like Amos, {Amo 7:16} Jeremiah repeats his obnoxious prophecy, with a special application to his cruel persecutor, and with the added detail that all the wealth of Jerusalem will be carried as spoil to Babylon; a detail in which there may lie an oblique reference to the covetous worldliness and the interested opposition of such men as Pashchur. Riches and ease and popularity were the things for which he and those like him had bargained away their integrity, prophesying with conscious falsehood to the deluded people. His “lovers” are his partisans, who eagerly welcomed his presages of peace and prosperity, and doubtless actively opposed Jeremiah with ridicule and threats. The last detail is remarkable, for we do not otherwise know that Pashchur affected to prophesy. If it be not meant simply that Pashchur accepted and lent the weight of his official sanction to the false prophets, and especially those who uttered their divinations in the name of “the Baal,” that is to say, either Molech, or the popular and delusive conception of the God of Israel, we see in this man one who combined a steady professional opposition to Jeremiah with power to enforce his hostility by legalised acts of violence. The conduct of Hananiah on a later occasion, {Jer 28:10} clearly proves that, where the power was present, the will for such acts was not wanting in Jeremiahs professional adversaries.
It is generally taken for granted that the name of “Pashchur” has been substituted for that of “Malchijah” in the list of the priestly families which returned with Zerubbabel from the Babylonian captivity {Ezr 2:38; Neh 7:41; cf. 1Ch 24:9} but it seems quite possible that “the sons of Pashchur” were a subdivision of the family of Immer, which had increased largely during the Exile. In that case, the list affords evidence of the fulfilment of Jeremiahs prediction to Pashchur. The prophet elsewhere mentions another Pashchur, who was also a priest, of the course or guild of Malchijah, {Jer 21:1; Jer 38:1} which was the designation of the fifth class of the priests, as “Immer” was that of the sixteenth. {1Ch 24:9; 1Ch 24:14} The prince Gedaliah, who was hostile to Jeremiah, was apparently a son of the present Pashchur. {Jer 38:1}
It is not easy to determine the relation of the lyrical section which immediately follows the doom of Pashchur, to the preceding account (Jer 20:7-8). If the seventh verse be in its original place, it would seem that the prophets word had failed of accomplishment, with the result of intensifying the unbelief and the ridicule which his teachings encountered. There is also something very strange in the sequence of the thirteenth and fourteenth verses (Jer 20:13-14), where, as the text now stands, the prophet passes at once, in the most abrupt fashion imaginable, from a fervid ascription of praise, a heartfelt cry of thanksgiving for deliverance either actual or contemplated as such, to utterances of unrelieved despair. I do not think that this is in the manner of Jeremiah; nor do I see how the violent contrast of the two sections (Jer 20:7-13 and Jer 20:14-18) can fairly be accounted for, except by supposing either that we have here two unconnected fragments, placed in juxtaposition with each other because they belong to the same general period of the prophets ministry; or that the two passages have by some accident of transcription been transposed, which is by no means an uncommon occurrence in the MSS. of the Biblical writers. Assuming this latter as the more probable alternative, we see in the entire passage a powerful representation of the mental conflict into which Jeremiah was thrown by Pashchurs highhanded violence and the seeming triumph of his enemies. Smarting with the sense of utter injustice, humiliated in his inmost soul by shameful indignities, crushed to the earth with the bitter consciousness of defeat and failure, the prophet, like Job, opens his mouth and curses his day.
1. Cursed be the day wherein I was born!
The day that my mother bare me,
Let it not be blest!
2. Cursed be the man who told the glad tidings to my father.
There is born to thee a male child;
Who made him rejoice greatly.
3. And let that man become like the cities that Iahweh overthrew, without relenting,
And let him hear a cry in the morning,
And an alarm at the hour of noon!
4. For that he slew me not in the womb,
That my mother might have become my grave,
And her womb have been laden evermore!
5. “O why from the womb came I forth
To see labour and sorrow,
And my days foredone with shame?”
These five triplets afford a glimpse of the lively grief, the passionate despair, which agitated the prophets heart as the first effect of the shame and the torture to which he had been so wickedly and wantonly subjected. The elegy, of which they constitute the proem, or opening strophe, is not introduced by any formula ascribing it to Divine inspiration; it is simply written down as a faithful record of Jeremiahs own feelings and reflections and self-communings, at this painful crisis in his career. The poet of the book of Job has apparently taken the hint supplied by these opening verses, and has elaborated the idea of cursing the day of birth through seven highly wrought and imaginative stanzas. The higher finish and somewhat artificial expansion of that passage leave little doubt that it was modelled upon the one before us. But the point to remember here is that both are lyrical effusions, expressed in language conditioned by Oriental rather than European standards of taste and usage. As the prophets were not inspired to express their thoughts and feelings in modern English dress, it is superfluous to inquire whether Jeremiah was morally, justified in using these poetic formulas of imprecation. To insist on applying the doctrine of verbal inspiration to such a passage is to evince an utter want of literary tact and insight, as well as adhesion to an exploded and pernicious relic of sectarian theology. The prophets curses are simply a highly effective form of poetical rhetoric, and are in perfect harmony with the immemorial modes of Oriental expression; and the underlying thought, so equivocally expressed, according to our ways of looking at things, is simply that his life has been a failure, and therefore it would have been better not to have been born. Who that is at all earnest for Gods truth, nay, for far lower objects of human interest and pursuit, has not in moments of despondency and discouragement been overwhelmed for a time by the like feeling? Can we blame Jeremiah for allowing us to see in this faithful transcript of his inner life how intensely human, how entirely natural the spiritual experience of the prophets really was? Besides, the revelation does not end with this initial outburst of instinctive astonishment, indignation, and despair. The poem is succeeded by a psalm in seven stanzas of regular poetical form-six quatrains rounded off with a final couplet-in which the prophets thought rises above the level of nature, and finds in an overruling Providence both the source and the justification of the enigma of his life.
1. Thou enticedst me, Iahvah, and I was enticed,
Thou urgedst me, and didst prevail!
I am become a derision all the day long.
Every one mocketh at me.
2. For as oft as I speak, I cry alarm,
Violence and havoc do I proclaim
For Iahvahs word is become to me a reproach,
And a scoff all the day long.
3. And if I say, I will not mind it,
Nor speak any more in His Name;
Then it becometh in my heart like a burning fire prisoned in my bones.
And I weary of holding it in and am not able.
4. For I have heard the defaming of many, the terror on every side!
All the men of my friendship are watching for my fall;
Perchance he will be enticed, and we shall prevail over him,
And take our revenge of him.
5. Yet Iahvah is with me as a dread warrior,
Therefore my pursuers shall stumble and not prevail;
They shall be greatly ashamed, for that they have not prospered,
With eternal dishonour that shall not be forgotten.
6. And Iahvah Sabaoth trieth the righteous,
Seeth the reins and the heart;
I shall see Thy revenge of them,
For unto Thee have I committed my quarrel.
7. “Sing ye to Iahvah, acclaim ye Iahvah!
For He hath snatched the poor mans life out of the hand of evildoers.”
The cause was of God. “Thou didst lure me, Iahvah, and I let myself be lured; Thou urgedst me and weft victorious.” He had not rashly and presumptuously taken upon himself this office of prophet; he had been called, and had resisted the call, until his scruples and his pleadings were overcome, as was only natural, by a Will more powerful than his own. {Jer 1:6} In speaking of the inward persuasions which determined the course of his life, he uses the very terms which are used by the author of Kings in connection with the spirit that misled the prophets of Ahab before the fatal expedition to Ramoth Gilead. “And he said, Thou shalt entice, and also be victorious”. {1Ki 22:22} Iahvah, therefore, has treated him as an enemy rather than a friend, for He has lured him to his own destruction. Half in irony, half in hitter complaint, the prophet declares that Iahvah has succeeded only too well in His malign purpose: “I am become a derision all the day long; Every one mocketh at me.”
In the second stanza, the thought appears to be continued thus: “Thou overcamest me; for as often as I speak,” I am a prophet of evil, “I cry alarm” (ez aq; cf. ze aqah, Jer 20:16); I proclaim the imminence of invasion, the “violence and havoc” of a ruthless conqueror. “Thou overcamest me” also, in Thy purpose of making me a laughing stock to my adversaries: “for Iahvahs word is become to me a reproach, and a scoff all the day long” (the relation between the two halves of the stanza is that of coordination; each gives the reason of the corresponding couplet in the first stanza). His continual threats of a judgment that was still delayed, brought upon him the merciless ridicule of his opponents.
Or the prophet may mean to complain that the monotony of his message, his ever-recurring denunciation of prevalent injustice, is made a reproach against him. “For as often as I speak I make an outcry” of indignation at foul wrongdoing; {Gen 4:10; Gen 18:21; Gen 19:13} “wrong and robbery do I proclaim” {Hab 1:2-3} -the oppression of the poor by the covetous and luxurious ruling classes. A third view is that Jeremiah complains of the frequent attacks upon himself: “For as often as I speak I have to exclaim; Of assault and violence do I cry”; but the first suggestion appears to suit best, as giving a reason for the ridicule which the prophet finds so intolerable. {cf. Jer 17:15}
The third stanza carries this plea for justice a step further. Not only was the prophets overwhelming trouble due to his having yielded to the persuasions and promises of Iahvah; not only has he been rewarded with scorn and the scourge and the stocks for his compliance with a Divine call. He has been in a manner forced and driven into his intolerable position by the coercive power of Iahvah, which left him no choice but to utter the word that burnt like a fire within him. Sometimes his fears of perfidy and betrayal suggested the thought of succumbing to the insuperable obstacles which seemed to block his path; of giving up once for all a thankless and fruitless and dangerous enterprise: but then the inward flame burnt so fiercely that he could find no relief for his anguish but by giving it vent in words. {cf. Psa 39:1-3}
The verse finely illustrates that vivid sense of a Divine constraint which distinguishes the true prophet from pretenders to the office. Jeremiah does not protest the purity of his motives; indirectly and unconsciously he expresses it with a simplicity and a strength which leave no room for suspicion. He has himself no doubt at all that what he speaks is “Iahvahs word.” The inward impulse is overpowering; he has striven in vain against its urgency; like Jacob at Peniel, he has wrestled with One stronger than himself. He is no vulgar fanatic or enthusiast, in whom rooted prejudices and irrational frenzies overbalance the judgment, making him incapable of estimating the hazards and the chances of his enterprise; he is as well aware of the perils that beset his path as the coolest and craftiest of his worldly adversaries. Thanks to his natural quickness of perception, his developed faculty of reflection, he is fully alive to the probable consequences of perpetually thwarting the popular will, of taking up a position of permanent resistance to the policy and the aims and the interests of the ruling classes. But while he has his mortal hopes and fears, his human capacity for anxiety and pain; while his heart bleeds at the sight of suffering, and aches for the woes that thickly crowd the field of his prophetic vision; his speech and his behaviour are dominated, upon the whole, by an altogether higher consciousness. His emotions may have their moments of mastery; at times they may overpower his fortitude, and lay him prostrate in an agony of lamentation and mourning and woe; at times they may even interpose clouds and darkness between the prophet and his vision of the Eternal; but these effects of mortality do not last: they shake but cannot loosen his grasp of spiritual realities; they cannot free him from the constraining influence of the Word of Iahvah. That word possesses, leads him captive, “triumphs over him,” over all the natural resistance of flesh and blood; for he is “not as the many” (the false prophets) “who corrupt the Word of God; but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God, he speaks.” {2Co 2:14; 2Co 2:17}
And still, unless a man be thus impelled by the Spirit; unless he have counted the cost and is prepared to risk all for God; unless he be ready to face unpopularity and social contempt and persecution; unless he knows what it is to suffer for and with Jesus Christ; I doubt if he has any moral right to speak in that most holy Name. For if the all-mastering motive be absent, if the love of Christ constrain him not, how can his desires and his doings be such as the Unseen Judge will either approve or bless?
The fourth stanza explains why the prophet laboured, though vainly, to keep silence. It was because of the malicious reports of his utterances, which were carefully circulated by his watchful antagonists. They beset him on every side; like Pashchur, they were to him a “magor-missabib,” an environing terror, {cf. Jer 6:25} as they listened to his harangues, and eagerly invited each other to inform against him as a. traitor (The words “Inform ye, and let us inform against him!” or “Denounce ye, and let us denounce him!” may be an ancient gloss upon the term dibbah, ” ill report,” “calumny”; Gen 37:2; Num 13:32; Job 17:5. For the construction, cf. Job 31:37. They spoil the symmetry of the line. That dibbah really means “defaming,” or “slander,” appears not only from the passages in which it occurs, but also from the Arabic dabub, ” one who creeps about with slander,” from dabba, ” to move gently or slowly about.” The Hebrews ragal, riggel, ” to go about slandering,” and rakil, ” slander,” are analogous).
And not only open enemies thus conspired for the prophets destruction. Even professed friends {for the phrase, cf. Jer 38:22; Psa 41:10} were treacherously watchful to catch him tripping. {cf. Jer 9:2; Jer 12:6} Those on whom he had a natural claim for sympathy and protection, bore a secret and determined grudge against him. His unpopularity was complete, and his position full of peril. We have in the thirty-first and several of the following psalms outpourings of feeling under circumstances very similar to those of Jeremiah on the present occasion, even if they were not actually written by him at the same crisis in his career, as certain striking coincidences of expression seem to suggest. {Jer 20:10; cf. Psa 31:13; Psa 35:15; Psa 38:17; Psa 41:9; Jer 20:13 with Psa 35:9-10}
The prophet closes his psalm-like monologue with an act of faith. He remembers that he has a Champion who is mightier than a thousand enemies. Iahvah is with him, not with them; {cf. 2Ki 6:16} their plots, therefore, are foredoomed to failure, and themselves to the vengeance of a righteous God. {Jer 11:20} The last words are an exultant anticipation of deliverance.
We thus see that the whole piece, like a previous one, {Jer 15:10-21} begins with cursing and ends with an assurance of blessing.