Jeremiah 20:1-18
20 And Priest Pashhur the son of Immer, he being chief commissioner in Jehovah’s house, heard Jeremiah uttering these prophecies,
2 and he beat the prophet Jeremiah and put him in the stocks at the upper Benjamin gate in Jehovah’s house.
3 And next day Pashhur took Jeremiah out of the stocks, and Jeremiah said to him “Jehovah does not call you Pashhur but Terror.
4 For Jehovah says, Here I am making you a terror to yourself and to all who love you, and they will fall by their enemies’ swords, your eyes seeing it; and I will give all Judah into the hands of the king of Babylon, and he will deport them to Babylon and strike them down with swords.
5 And I will give all the capital of this city and all its acquisitions and all its treasures and all the hoards of the kings of Judah into the hands of their enemies, and they will plunder them, and take them and bring them to Babylon.
6 And you, Pashhur, and all who live in your house, will go into foreign slavery; and you will come to Babylon and die there and be buried there, and all who love you, to whom you have prophesied falsely.”
7 You inveigled me, Jehovah, and I let myself be inveigled; you were too strong for me and had your way; I have come to be a laugh all day, everybody makes fun of me.
8 * For as often as I speak I make outcry; I call out about outrage and violence; for Jehovah’s word has become an all-day slur and gibe for me.
9 And I say “I will not mention him, nor speak again in his name”—and there is in my heart the like of a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I get worn out with holding in and cannot do it.
10 For I have heard the gossip of many, terror on every side, “tell it, so we can tell”; all the men that are on good terms with me are watching for my breaking down, “maybe he will have a delusion and we shall master him and take our revenge on him.”
11 But Jehovah is with me like an overbearing champion; therefore my pursuers will stumble and not succeed; they are utterly put to shame, because they have not come through well, with perpetual unforgettable humiliation.
12 But Jehovah of Armies is an honest prober, he sees heart and brain; I shall see your vengeance on them because I have left my quarrel to you.
13 Sing to Jehovah, praise Jehovah, because he has delivered a needy man’s life from the hands of evil-doers.
14 Cursed be the day I was born on! be the day that my mother bore me not blessed!
15 Cursed be the man that brought my father good news, “you have a son born, a male,” making him glad indeed!
16 ** And be that man like the cities Jehovah overthrew without remorse; and may he hear an outcry in the morning and yells at noontime,
17 * that he did not dispatch me at birth, and my mother would have been my grave and her womb permanently pregnant.
18 What did I come out of a womb for, to see toil and trouble and have my days worn out in shame?
Footnotes
^ 20:8 Or I call out “Murder! thieves!”
^ 20:16 Conj. that day . . . it . . . it
^ 20:16 Var. in anger and without
^ 20:17 Lit. dispatch me out of womb Var. dispatch me in the womb
