XX. (1) PASHUR THE SON OF IMMER. — The description must be remembered as distinguishing him from the son of Melchiah of the same name in Jeremiah 21:1. We may probably identify him with the father of the Gedaliah named in Jeremiah 38:1 as among the “princes” that at a later date opposed the prophet’... [ Continue Reading ]
THEN PASHUR SMOTE JEREMIAH THE PROPHET. — It is the first time that he has been so described, the office to which he was called being apparently named to emphasise the outrage which had been inflicted on him. Other prophets had, under Ahab or Manasseh, been slain with the sword, but none, so far as... [ Continue Reading ]
MAGOR-MISSABIB. — The words are a quotation from Psalms 31:13, and are rightly rendered, “Fear is round about;” they had already been used by the prophet in Jeremiah 6:25. We may venture to think that the Psalm had been his comfort in those night-watches of suffering, and that he now uttered the wor... [ Continue Reading ]
I WILL MAKE THEE A TERROR TO THYSELF, AND TO ALL THY FRIENDS. — We should have looked for a different explanation, indicating that terrors from without should gather round the cruel and relentless persecutor, but the prophet’s words go deeper. He should be an object of self-loathing, outer fears int... [ Continue Reading ]
ALL THE STRENGTH. — i.e., the treasure or “substance” of the city.... [ Continue Reading ]
THOU SHALT COME TO BABYLON... — The sons of Immer, the section of priests to which Pashur belonged, were found in large numbers at Babylon (Ezra 2:37), and it lies in the nature of the case that he, as a high official, would be among the captives when Nebuchadnezzar carried into exile all but the “p... [ Continue Reading ]
O LORD, THOU HAST DECEIVED ME. — There is an obvious break between Jeremiah 20:6. The narrative ends, and a psalm of passionate complaint begins. Its position probably indicates that the compiler of the prophecies in their present form looked on the complaints as belonging to this period of the prop... [ Continue Reading ]
I CRIED OUT, I CRIED. — The two Hebrew words are not, as in the English, alike, the first being the cry of complaint, the second of protest: _When I speak_ (the tense implies from the beginning of his work till now), _I complain; I call out_ (_against_)_ violence and spoil._ They had formed the burd... [ Continue Reading ]
THEN I SAID... — The sense of a hopeless work, destined to fail, weighed on the prophet’s soul, and he would fain have withdrawn from it; but _it_ (the words in italics, though they do not spoil the sense, are hardly needed) burnt like fire within him, and would not be restrained. I COULD NOT STAY.... [ Continue Reading ]
THE DEFAMING OF MANY. — Another quotation from the Psalms (Psalms 31:13), where the Authorised Version has “the slander of many.” FEAR ON EVERY SIDE. — The _Magor-missabib_ still rings in the prophet’s ears, and, for himself as for others, is the burden of his cry. It may be noted that this also co... [ Continue Reading ]
BUT THE LORD IS WITH ME. — As in Psalms 22 and other like utterances, the prophet, though perplexed. is yet not in despair (2 Corinthians 4:8). He passes through the deep waters, but struggles out of them to the rock of refuge. The word “terrible” was used with a special significance. Jehovah had pr... [ Continue Reading ]
BUT, O LORD OF HOSTS... — The verse is almost verbally identical with Jeremiah 11:20, where see Note.... [ Continue Reading ]
SING UNTO THE LORD... — It was as though heaviness had endured for a night, and joy had come in the morning. As with so many of the Psalms (Psalms 22:22 is, perhaps, the most striking parallel), what began in a cry _De profundis_ ends in a Hallelujah.... [ Continue Reading ]
CURSED BE THE DAY WHEREIN I WAS BORN... — The apparent strangeness of this relapse from the confidence of the two previous verses into a despair yet deeper than before is best explained by the supposition that it is in no sense part of the same poem or meditation, but a distinct fragment belonging t... [ Continue Reading ]
MAKING HIM VERY GLAD. — The memory, or rather the thought of that day, the joy of father and another when their child was born (John 16:21) was wanted, as in the irony of destiny, to add the keenest pang to the misery of the present. The “sorrow’s crown of sorrow” was found in remembering happier da... [ Continue Reading ]
THE CITIES WHICH THE LORD OVERTHREW. — The verb is the same as that used in Genesis 19:29, and the reference is clearly to the “cities of the plain,” whose destruction is there described. The reference to them in Deuteronomy 32:32; Isaiah 1:9, shows that they had already become familiar to men as th... [ Continue Reading ]
BECAUSE HE SLEW ME NOT... — The wish that he had never been born is uttered by the prophet in strange, bold language. It would have been better that the messenger that told that he was born had slain him before his birth, that his mother’s womb had been his grave, that she had never had strength to... [ Continue Reading ]
WHEREFORE CAME I FORTH...? — Like the preceding verse, this is in its tone, almost in its words, an echo of Job 3:11; Job 3:20.... [ Continue Reading ]