Jeremiah 20:7-18

The Prophet's Troubles, Hopes, and Dark Despair. In passionate protest against his lot (possibly occasioned by the incident just related) Jeremiah complains that Yahweh has beguiled him into the work of a prophet, only that he may incur bitter shame, and suffer violence. Yet the inner compulsion of the prophetic word will not allow him to restrain it (i.e. forbear, Jeremiah 20:9), though it subjects him to the charge of treasonable utterance (Jeremiah 26:11). Jeremiah 20:11 (if originally here) mark a change of mood, and express Jeremiah's confidence that Yahweh will avenge him. The depth of his despair is reached in Jeremiah 20:14 (cf. Job 3:3), in which he curses the very day of his birth; he awards a curse instead of the usual reward for good news to the messenger who announced it, invoking on him the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:25; Isaiah 13:19), and the alarms of war (Jeremiah 4:19). He wishes he had never been born, because of his hard fate (Jeremiah 20:18). This impressive passage is of great importance for the study of the prophetic consciousness; it shows clearly that the psychological compulsion which underlies a Thus saith the Lord is the guarantee of the prophet's sincerity, when claiming to speak by Divine inspiration.

Jeremiah 20:8. Violence and spoil: i.e. as being suffered by the speaker.

Jeremiah 20:17. For from read in, with LXX, Syr.