The son of Immer; a deadly foe to the church. His name is derived from Pashah, to spread; but from his enmity to the people of God while governor in the land, and his cruelty upon the person of the prophet Jeremiah, the prophet called him Magor-missabib, which the margin of the Bible renders fear round about. (See Jeremiah 20:1-6) I pause over the name and character of this man just to remark the blessedness of all times in the church, when the Lord is pleased to give to his exercised people precious testimonies to his truth over and above the grace he manifests to their own hearts. Though, as Asaph saith, apparently the way of the wicked prospereth to outward view, yet to inward feelings they are total strangers to any good; and who shall take upon them to say what sorrows fill their minds? "There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked." (Isaiah 57:21) When the Lord's people therefore hear of such characters, or behold them in their own neighbourhood, (and they are to be found in every place) and observe in the midst of much outside appearances of gaiety, that they are like so many Pashur Magor-missabibs in themselves, surely a voice from every parish steeple where they dwell could not more loudly testify to the truths of God! I would recommend the reader, at any time, when at a loss to explain what he beholds of the prosperity of the wicked and the adversity of the Lord's exercised family, to read what Asaph, taught by the Holy Ghost, hath said, Psalms 73:1-28, throughout; and if he adds to Asaph's observations what the man of Uz hath said on the same subject, he will find both profitable. (Job 21:7-13) Moses also, the man of God, hath left upon record the portrait of the inward terrors of the haunted mind. (Deuteronomy 28:65-67)