Jeremiah 20
About JeremiahWritten by AI
Jeremiah is a book of prophecy from the final, painful decades of the kingdom of Judah. Jeremiah was a priest's son from Anathoth, called as a young man around 627 BC. He preached for about forty years, through the reigns of Josiah's sons, the Babylonian sieges, and the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC. His scribe Baruch helped write his words down.
The book is not in time order. Sermons, poems, personal laments, and stories are grouped by theme, so a chapter set under Jehoiakim may be followed by one from Zedekiah's reign. The opening verses of a chapter often tell you which king is on the throne, and it helps to watch for them.
The big movement is from warning to judgment to hope. Jeremiah calls a stubborn people back to God, suffers for it, and watches the city fall. Yet in the middle of the book God promises a new covenant, written on the heart. Watch also for Jeremiah's honest prayers of complaint, some of the rawest in Scripture.
Before you read Jeremiah 20Written by AI
The priest Pashhur has Jeremiah beaten and put in the stocks. Then comes one of the most honest prayers in the Bible. Jeremiah says God deceived him, he is mocked all day, and he curses the day he was born. Yet he cannot stay silent: “His message becomes a fire burning in my heart.”
Pashhur Persecutes Jeremiah
When Pashhur the priest, the son of Immer and the chief official in the house of the LORD, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things, he had Jeremiah the prophet beaten and put in the stocks at the Upper Gate of Benjamin, which was by the house of the LORD.
The next day, when Pashhur released Jeremiah from the stocks, Jeremiah said to him, “The LORD does not call you Pashhur, but Magor-missabib. For this is what the LORD says: ‘I will make you a terror to yourself and to all your friends. They will fall by the sword of their enemies before your very eyes. And I will hand Judah over to the king of Babylon, and he will carry them away to Babylon and put them to the sword. I will give away all the wealth of this city—all its products and valuables, and all the treasures of the kings of Judah—to their enemies. They will plunder them, seize them, and carry them off to Babylon. And you, Pashhur, and all who live in your house, will go into captivity. You will go to Babylon, and there you will die and be buried—you and all your friends to whom you have prophesied these lies.’”
Jeremiah’s Complaint
You have deceived me, O LORD, and I was deceived.
You have overcome me and prevailed.
I am a laughingstock all day long;
everyone mocks me.
For whenever I speak, I cry out;
I proclaim violence and destruction.
For the word of the LORD has become to me
a reproach and derision all day long.
If I say, “I will not mention Him
or speak any more in His name,”
His message becomes a fire burning in my heart,
shut up in my bones,
and I become weary of holding it in,
and I cannot prevail.
For I have heard the whispering of many:
“Terror is on every side!
Report him; let us report him!”
All my trusted friends
watch for my fall:
“Perhaps he will be deceived
so that we may prevail against him
and take our vengeance upon him.”
But the LORD is with me like a fearsome warrior.
Therefore, my persecutors will stumble and will not prevail.
Since they have not succeeded, they will be utterly put to shame,
with an everlasting disgrace that will never be forgotten.
O LORD of Hosts, who examines the righteous,
who sees the heart and mind,
let me see Your vengeance upon them,
for to You I have committed my cause.
Sing to the LORD!
Praise the LORD!
For He rescues the life of the needy
from the hands of evildoers.
Cursed be the day I was born!
May the day my mother bore me never be blessed.
Cursed be the man who brought my father the news,
saying, “A son is born to you,”
bringing him great joy.
May that man be like the cities
that the LORD overthrew without compassion.
May he hear an outcry in the morning
and a battle cry at noon,
because he did not kill me in the womb
so that my mother might have been my grave,
and her womb forever enlarged.
Why did I come out of the womb
to see only trouble and sorrow,
and to end my days in shame?