Jeremiahchapter 20
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Speaks with:Jeremiah 20×3Jeremiah 15×3Job 3×3Jeremiah 1×32 Kings 25×2Psalms 31×2
Summary
Chapter summary
Pashhur the priest, chief officer of the temple, strikes Jeremiah and locks him in the stocks. Released, the prophet renames him Magor-missabib (Terror on every side) and sends him to Babylon to die. Then comes the most naked page in the prophets: 'O Jehovah, thou hast persuaded me, and I was persuaded; thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed.' He is a laughing-stock all the day; and when he resolves to quit, 'then there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with forbearing, and I cannot contain' (20:9). Praise breaks out. And the chapter still ends cursing the day of his birth.
Context
Prophecy · Jeremiah — Jeremiah overview
- A. 1–6 Pashhur Puts the Prophet in Stocks and Is Renamed Terror
- B. 7–13 A Burning Fire Shut Up in My Bones
- C. 14–18 Cursed Be the Day Wherein I Was Born
The outline
A.Pashhur Puts the Prophet in Stocks and Is Renamed Terrorvv. 1 to 6
Read vv. 1 to 6 →B.A Burning Fire Shut Up in My Bonesvv. 7 to 13
Read vv. 7 to 13 →C.Cursed Be the Day Wherein I Was Bornvv. 14 to 18
Read vv. 14 to 18 →
The world behind this chapter
Jeremiah 20The history
Pashhur is introduced by his job: chief officer in the house of the LORD, the man responsible for order in the temple precinct. He had a police function and used it. This is the first recorded time Jeremiah is physically punished, and the man who does it is not a pagan but the temple's own head of security.
The stocks were not a pair of ankle holes. The device named here twisted the body — the neck, arms and legs forced into a bent position and held there — so that a night in it left a man in agony and unable to stand straight afterwards. It was set at the upper Benjamin Gate, a busy entrance, because humiliation in front of the crowd was half the punishment.
The new name Jeremiah gives Pashhur, Terror on Every Side, is a phrase from the invasion oracles. Renaming a man was a prophetic act with legal weight in that culture — it announced what he would become.
The second half of the chapter is the rawest private writing in the book. The prophet says he was deceived and overpowered, that he is laughed at all day, that he tried to quit and found the word like fire shut up in his bones, and that his friends were watching for him to slip so they could denounce him. He ends by cursing the day he was born and the man who brought his father the news of a son.
What it meant to them
First hearers saw the state of the nation in one image: the man telling the truth locked in a frame at the gate, and the temple's own officer holding the key.
What they were not spared is the cost. In the same chapter he sings that the LORD is with him like a dread warrior and then wishes he had never been born. Both are left standing, side by side, without an apology.
Sources cited
- Roland de Vaux, Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions
- John Bright, Jeremiah (Anchor Bible)
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Jeremiah 20. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.