Jeremiah 20: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Pashhur, a priest and chief officer of the temple, has Jeremiah beaten and locked in the stocks for his preaching. When released, Jeremiah tells him the LORD has named him "Terror on Every Side" and tells him that Judah's wealth and people, Pashhur included, will be carried off to Babylon, where Pashhur will die. The rest of the chapter is Jeremiah speaking to the LORD: he complains that the message has made him a laughingstock, admits he cannot keep silent, asks to see his enemies punished, calls for praise, and then curses the day he was born.

Claim by Claim

1. 20:1
   • Pashhur was the son of Immer.
   • Pashhur was a priest.
   • Pashhur was the chief officer in the house of the LORD.
   • Pashhur heard Jeremiah prophesying these things.
2. 20:2
   • Pashhur struck Jeremiah the prophet.
   • Jeremiah was a prophet.
   • Pashhur put Jeremiah in the stocks.
   • The stocks were in the upper gate of Benjamin.
   • The upper gate of Benjamin was at the house of the LORD.
3. 20:3
   • On the next day Pashhur brought Jeremiah out of the stocks.
   • Jeremiah spoke to Pashhur.
   • Jeremiah said the LORD has not called Pashhur's name Pashhur.
   • Jeremiah said the LORD has called his name Terror-on-every-side.
4. 20:4
   • Jeremiah said this is what the LORD says.
   • The LORD said he would make Pashhur a terror to himself.
   • The LORD said he would make Pashhur a terror to all his friends.
   • The LORD said Pashhur's friends would fall by the sword of their enemies.
   • The LORD said Pashhur's own eyes would see it.
   • The LORD said he would give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon.
   • The LORD said the king of Babylon would carry them captive to Babylon.
   • The LORD said the king of Babylon would strike them with the sword.
5. 20:5
   • The LORD said he would give all the wealth of this city into the hand of their enemies.
   • The LORD said he would give all the produce of this city to their enemies.
   • The LORD said he would give all the precious things of this city to their enemies.
   • The LORD said he would give all the treasures of the kings of Judah into the hand of their enemies.
   • The LORD said the enemies would plunder these things.
   • The LORD said the enemies would seize these things.
   • The LORD said the enemies would carry these things to Babylon.
6. 20:6
   • The LORD said Pashhur would go into captivity.
   • The LORD said all who dwell in Pashhur's house would go into captivity.
   • The LORD said Pashhur would come to Babylon.
   • The LORD said Pashhur would die in Babylon.
   • The LORD said Pashhur would be buried in Babylon.
   • The LORD said Pashhur's friends would also die and be buried there.
   • The LORD said Pashhur had prophesied lies to his friends.
7. 20:7
   • Jeremiah said the LORD had deceived him.
   • Jeremiah said he was deceived.
   • Jeremiah said the LORD overpowered him.
   • Jeremiah said the LORD prevailed.
   • Jeremiah said he had become a laughingstock all day long.
   • Jeremiah said everyone mocks him.
8. 20:8
   • Jeremiah said that whenever he speaks he cries out.
   • Jeremiah said he proclaims violence and destruction.
   • Jeremiah said the word of the LORD had become a reproach to him.
   • Jeremiah said the word of the LORD had become a derision to him.
   • Jeremiah said this reproach and derision continued all day long.
9. 20:9
   • Jeremiah said he decided not to make mention of the LORD.
   • Jeremiah said he decided not to speak any more in the LORD's name.
   • Jeremiah said the LORD's word was in his heart like a burning fire.
   • Jeremiah said the fire was shut up in his bones.
   • Jeremiah said he grew weary with holding it in.
   • Jeremiah said he could not hold it in.
10. 20:10
    • Jeremiah said he heard the whispering of many.
    • The many said terror was on every side.
    • The many said to report him.
    • The many said they would report him.
    • Jeremiah said all his familiar friends watched for his stumbling.
    • They said perhaps he will be enticed.
    • They said then they would prevail against him.
    • They said then they would take their revenge on him.
11. 20:11
    • Jeremiah said the LORD was with him like a dread warrior.
    • Jeremiah said therefore his persecutors would stumble.
    • Jeremiah said his persecutors would not prevail.
    • Jeremiah said they would be greatly ashamed.
    • Jeremiah said the reason is that they did not succeed.
    • Jeremiah said their everlasting disgrace would never be forgotten.
12. 20:12
    • Jeremiah addressed the LORD of hosts.
    • Jeremiah said the LORD of hosts tests the righteous.
    • Jeremiah said the LORD sees the inward parts and the heart.
    • Jeremiah asked to see the LORD's vengeance on them.
    • Jeremiah said he had laid his case before the LORD.
13. 20:13
    • A call is given to sing to the LORD.
    • A call is given to praise the LORD.
    • The reason given is that the LORD has delivered the life of the needy from the hand of evildoers.
14. 20:14
    • Jeremiah cursed the day he was born.
    • Jeremiah said let the day his mother bore him not be blessed.
15. 20:15
    • Jeremiah cursed the man who brought the news to his father.
    • The man said a male child had been born to him.
    • The news made Jeremiah's father very glad.
16. 20:16
    • Jeremiah said let that man be like the cities the LORD overthrew.
    • Jeremiah said the LORD did not relent when he overthrew those cities.
    • Jeremiah said let that man hear an outcry in the morning.
    • Jeremiah said let that man hear a battle alarm at noon.
17. 20:17
    • Jeremiah gave as the reason that he was not killed in the womb.
    • It is left unclear whether the one who did not kill him is the man who brought the news or the LORD.
    • Jeremiah said his mother would then have been his grave.
    • Jeremiah said her womb would then have remained forever pregnant.
18. 20:18
    • Jeremiah asked why he came out of the womb.
    • Jeremiah said he came out to see trouble and sorrow.
    • Jeremiah said his days are consumed in shame.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

20:1

The KJV's "chief governor" is not a civil ruler. Pashhur held the temple office of chief officer, the official in charge of order in the temple precincts, ranking just below the high priest, with authority to arrest and punish anyone causing a disturbance there. He was acting within his job description.

20:2

"Smote" here means struck or beaten, most likely a formal flogging rather than a casual blow. The stocks were a wooden frame that clamped the neck, hands and feet together, forcing the body into a bent, twisted position; the pain and the public humiliation in a busy gateway were both part of the punishment. The Gate of Benjamin was on the north side of the temple, named for the direction of the tribal territory of Benjamin, which lay that way.

20:3

The renaming is the whole point of the verse, and both names have to be heard in Hebrew to work. "Magor-missabib" means "Terror on every side." The sense of "Pashhur" is uncertain, but it was a real and ordinary name, and Jeremiah replaces it with a phrase no one would ever be named, announcing what the man's life is about to become.

20:4

Babylon was the dominant empire of the region in Jeremiah's lifetime, under King Nebuchadnezzar. Deporting a conquered people (especially its leaders, priests and skilled workers) and resettling them in the conqueror's territory was standard imperial practice: it broke a nation's ability to rebel. Jerusalem fell and Judah was deported some years after this scene.

20:5

Kings kept gold, silver, and other rich things stored up in the city. When an army won, it carried all of that home with it.

20:6

Dying and being buried in Babylon is a specific curse, not merely a prediction of death. Burial in the family tomb in one's own land was what a person expected and hoped for; to be buried in foreign soil, cut off from the family graves, was considered a disgraceful end.

20:7

The two Hebrew verbs here are unusually forceful. The one translated "deceived" is elsewhere used of enticing or seducing someone into doing what they would not otherwise do; the one behind "stronger" and "prevailed" is used of physically overpowering a person. Translators differ over how violent to make them in English, ranging from "you tricked me" to "you seduced me" and "you overpowered me." The ambiguity is in the original.

20:8

"Spoil" in 1611 English means plunder, the goods stripped from a captured city, not something going rotten. "Violence and spoil" is Jeremiah summing up his own message: he has nothing to announce except attack and looting, which is why people react to him the way they do.

20:9

To "speak in his name" is to deliver a message as someone's official spokesman, with their authority behind it. That was the prophet's whole job, so what Jeremiah is describing here is quitting. "I was weary with forbearing" means he exhausted himself holding the message in.

20:10

"Terror on every side" is the same phrase Jeremiah made into Pashhur's new name in verse 3. Here his enemies are using it, either as a taunting nickname for Jeremiah himself, throwing his catchphrase back at him, or as the alarm cry they raise about him. The KJV's "my familiars" means his intimates, the friends closest to him, and "watched for my halting" means watched for him to stumble.

20:11

"Terrible" in 1611 English means terror-inspiring, not bad quality. The picture is of God standing beside Jeremiah as a warrior frightening enough to scatter the people hunting him. "Confusion" here means public disgrace, the state of being humiliated in front of everyone.

20:12

"LORD of hosts" means the LORD commanding armies, the title pictures God as a military commander. "The reins" in the KJV means the kidneys. Hebrew described the inner person by internal organs: the kidneys were the seat of the emotions and conscience, the heart the seat of thought and will. Together they mean everything a person is on the inside, where no one else can see.

20:14

A curse in this culture is not swearing or bad temper. It is a formal spoken formula invoking harm on its target, the exact mirror image of a blessing, and it was believed to have real force once uttered. Jeremiah is pronouncing the ritual form over his own birthday. A near-identical speech appears in the book of Job.

20:15

When a child was born, a messenger ran ahead to bring the news to the father, who was not present at the birth, and the bearer of good news could expect thanks and a reward. The curse is aimed at the man who did nothing but carry a happy announcement, which is part of the point of how far the curse reaches.

20:16

"The cities which the LORD overthrew" is an unmistakable reference to Sodom and Gomorrah, destroyed so completely that the phrase needed no explanation. The morning screaming and the noon battle cry are the sounds of a town under assault: the alarm at daybreak and the attackers' shout still going at midday, meaning a day with no relief in it at all.

20:17

"Great with me" is the old English idiom for pregnant, as in "great with child." The image is of a pregnancy that never ends and never delivers, the mother's body serving as a permanently sealed tomb.

20:18

"Labour" here means hard toil and trouble, its ordinary sense in 1611, not the labor of childbirth, even though the verse is talking about being born. "That my days should be consumed with shame" means having his whole life used up in public disgrace, which is where the chapter leaves him: no resolution, straight after the praise of verse 13.