20 Now Pashhur the priest, the son of Immer, who was chief officer in the house of the Lord, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things. 2 Then Pashhur beat Jeremiah the prophet, and put him in the stocks that were in the upper Benjamin Gate of the house of the Lord. 3 The next day, when Pashhur released Jeremiah from the stocks, Jeremiah said to him, “The Lord does not call your name Pashhur, but Terror on Every Side. 4 For thus says the Lord: Behold, I will make you a terror to yourself and to all your friends. They shall fall by the sword of their enemies while you look on. And I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon. He shall carry them captive to Babylon, and shall strike them down with the sword. 5 Moreover, I will give all the wealth of the city, all its gains, all its prized belongings, and all the treasures of the kings of Judah into the hand of their enemies, who shall plunder them and seize them and carry them to Babylon. 6 And you, Pashhur, and all who dwell in your house, shall go into captivity. To Babylon you shall go, and there you shall die, and there you shall be buried, you and all your friends, to whom you have prophesied falsely.”
7 O Lord, you have deceived me,
and I was deceived;
you are stronger than I,
and you have prevailed.
I have become a laughingstock all the day;
everyone mocks me.
8 For whenever I speak, I cry out,
I shout, “Violence and destruction!”
For the word of the Lord has become for me
a reproach and derision all day long.
9 If I say, “I will not mention him,
or speak any more in his name,”
there is in my heart as it were a burning fire
shut up in my bones,
and I am weary with holding it in,
and I cannot.
10 For I hear many whispering.
Terror is on every side!
“ Denounce him! Let us denounce him!”
say all my close friends,
watching for my fall.
“ Perhaps he will be deceived;
then we can overcome him
and take our revenge on him.”
11 But the Lord is with me as a dread warrior;
therefore my persecutors will stumble;
they will not overcome me.
They will be greatly shamed,
for they will not succeed.
Their eternal dishonor
will never be forgotten.
12 O Lord of hosts, who tests the righteous,
who sees the heart and the mind,1
let me see your vengeance upon them,
for to you have I committed my cause.
13 Sing to the Lord;
praise the Lord!
For he has delivered the life of the needy
from the hand of evildoers.
14 Cursed be the day
on which I was born!
The day when my mother bore me,
let it not be blessed!
15 Cursed be the man who brought the news to my father,
“ A son is born to you,”
making him very glad.
16 Let that man be like the cities
that the Lord overthrew without pity;
let him hear a cry in the morning
and an alarm at noon,
17 because he did not kill me in the womb;
so my mother would have been my grave,
and her womb forever great.
18 Why did I come out from the womb
to see toil and sorrow,
and spend my days in shame?
Section Overview
Chapter 20 continues the narrative begun in chapter 19, as Jeremiah returns from Topheth to Jerusalem in order to prophesy at the temple. His message for those coming to worship is that Yahweh has already begun to bring judgment against this rebellious nation by the hand of Babylon (cf. 19:14–15). Upon hearing Jeremiah’s words, Pashhur the priest seizes and beats him (20:1) before placing him in stocks to shame him publicly (v. 2). When Jeremiah is released the next day, he prophesies against Pashhur, who will personally witness the destruction of his family, community, and nation before going into exile (vv. 3–6).
The public boldness of Jeremiah contrasts starkly with his private struggle from the pain of being a prophet. He accuses Yahweh of tricking him into ministry and bringing him only trouble (vv. 7–8), even while recognizing that he cannot cease from speaking Yahweh’s word, which is “in my heart [like] . . . a burning fire shut up in my bones” (v. 9). His enemies may plot his demise (v. 10), but Jeremiah trusts that Yahweh will protect and vindicate him (vv. 11–12) as the God the community must praise (v. 13). Abruptly, however, the prophet turns away from both Yahweh (cf. vv. 7–12) and the community (cf. v. 13) in the most bitter of all laments in the book (vv. 14–18). Gerhard von Rad rightly observes of this section, “Night has now completely enveloped the prophet.”66 Jeremiah’s cry that he would have been better off never being born (vv. 14–16) or being slain by Yahweh in the womb (vv. 17–18) is the closest the OT ever comes to describing a suicide wish.
Section Outline
III.I. Jeremiah’s Confrontation with Pashhur (20:1–18)
1. Jeremiah’s Public Debate with Pashhur (20:1–6)
a. Pashhur Beats and Imprisons Jeremiah after Hearing His Prophecy against Judah (20:1–2)
b. Upon His Release, Jeremiah Prophesies against Pashhur (20:3–6)
2. Jeremiah’s Private Anguish before God (20:7–18)
a. Lord, You Tricked and Forced Me into Ministry! (20:7)
b. Prophetic Ministry for Yahweh is Both Impossible and Impossible to Escape (20:8–9)
c. Enemies Come against Me but Yahweh Will Vindicate Me (20:10–12)
d. A Brief (and Bizarre) Interlude of Praise (20:13)
e. Jeremiah’s Wish to Have Never Existed (20:14–18)
(1) Cursed Be the Day I Was Born! (20:14)
(2) Cursed Be the Messenger Who Brought News of My Birth! (20:15–17)
(3) Why Was I Born for Such Trouble and Reproach? (20:18)
Response
With the possible exception of Psalm 88, this passage offers the darkest picture of a person suffering from depression in the entire Bible. But Jeremiah is not just any person, of course; he is a “prophet to the nations” (Jer. 1:5). He has also received special assurance that God will be with him despite any and all opposition (1:18–19). How could any true believer struggle to the point of feeling suicidal like this, much less a minister like Jeremiah?
The answers lie in a series of paradoxes that characterize the biblical understanding of lament. The prophet who confidently rebukes Pashhur (20:6) is the same individual who exudes agony in almost the next breath (v. 7). While the redaction critic “solves” the paradox by attributing such tensions in the passage to different sources,70 this is unnecessary, for psychologists have long known what interpreters of the Bible tend to overlook: “All too often biblical criticism has been hampered by the unrealistic assumption that [grieving] people react to events with a single consistent emotion or opinion.”71 What is more, the passage makes clear that Jeremiah’s emotional tailspin comes not from any lack of fortitude or trust in God but precisely because he has been obedient (v. 8). This leads to another paradox, but this time about ministry: faithfulness to God leads to pain, which leads to lament, yet protesting against God’s apparent indifference is somehow not a matter of unfaithfulness.
Jeremiah’s approach to such paradoxes shows how to keep pain, ministry, and faithfulness in the proper tension. Though he feels ceaseless pain for the sake of faithful ministry and wants to give up, he also affirms the opposing truth: he cannot back down, because God’s word is within him like a burning fire (v. 9). The reality that ministry can bring suffering still pales in comparison to the deeper pain that would come from refusing to suffer as God intends. This conviction turns Jeremiah’s doubts about suffering back into the trust that Yahweh is with him and that he has served faithfully (vv. 10–13). But without warning another struggle appears when Jeremiah’s assurance turns suddenly back to doubt (vv. 14–18). Why does someone who speaks with such conviction to God (and not just for God, as in the preceding verses) remain prone to despair—and not just once, but several times in the chapter?
Again, this is where biblical scholarship has tended to mirror the simplistic picture that many believers have about grief, lament, and suffering. For nearly a century, the standard view on biblical laments has been that they conclude with the “certainty of being heard” by God, as Hermann Gunkel’s influentially described the resolution of many laments.72 But as Federico Villanueva has shown, a not-insignificant number of laments go in the opposite direction and end without the turn toward faith that scholars and laymen alike have come to expect.73
Together with Lamentations, Jeremiah 20 furnishes an outstanding reminder that praise and lament are not mutually exclusive, nor are they even different points along the same faith journey. Instead, they can often be simultaneous and intense experiences in the believer’s life that each needs space to meander rather than being forced into a linear progression of what faithfulness to God is expected to be. The prophet Jeremiah exemplifies how the paradox of living honestly between pain and promise is an essential step in the journey of recovering from brokenness.74Jeremiah 20
Chapters 21–24 form the first of a two-part bridge between the “Confessions” of the prophet (chs. 11–20) and the “Book of Consolation” (chs. 30–33). Between those sections, which are largely poetry, the two main units of Jeremiah 21–24; 26–29 are mostly prose narratives and speeches about the military threat Babylon poses to Judah’s revolving door of kings in the early sixth century BC. Jehoiakim and Zedekiah, the two most important rulers of Judah’s last days, are both mentioned by name for the first time (21:1; 22:18) since the superscription of the book (cf. 1:3). Chapter 25 is a literary hinge not only between chapters 21–24 and 26–29 but also for the entire book, due to a discourse about the nations that joins the book’s opening commission to a “prophet to the nations” (1:5) with its closing “Oracles concerning the Nations” (chs. 46–51).
It is important to realize that Jeremiah 21–24 is organized thematically, not chronologically. The first section about Zedekiah (21:1–14) is followed by a general indictment of Judah’s kings (22:1–10) before turning back time, as it were, to speak of earlier kings such as Shallum (22:11–17) and Jehoiachin (22:24–30). Another general pronouncement of judgment against the Davidic kings is then followed by the book’s most extensive discussion of the coming Messiah (23:1–8). As will be discussed below, this nonchronological scheme serves to emphasize that all Judah’s kings are rotten, not only specific rulers or their deeds. The entirety of the Davidic line amounts to nothing, while the people await its perfect representative.
Compared to the negative assessment of Judah’s kings in these chapters, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon is painted in a mostly positive light as Yahweh’s instrument of discipline. This startling portrayal contrasts with Jeremiah 50–51, when Babylon’s depiction changes into a wicked empire to be judged rather than as the tool of Yahweh’s judgment. The reason for this shift is given in Jeremiah 25, a key chapter in which the gears of world history turn around a tiny pivot—the miniscule nation of Judah and its shifting relationship to the mighty empires of the world, Babylon foremost among them.Jeremiah 21–24
Jeremiah 21