Jeremiah 20

Contemporary English Version

Pashhur Arrests Jeremiah

20 Pashhur son of Immer was a priest and the chief of temple security. He heard what I had said, ²and so he hit me.^[a] Then he had me arrested and put in chains^[b] at the Benjamin Gate in the Lord's temple.^[c] ³The next day, when Pashhur let me go free, I told him that the Lord had said:

No longer will I call you Pashhur. Instead, I will call you Afraid-of-Everything.^[d] ⁴You will be afraid, and you will bring fear to your friends as well. You will see enemies kill them in battle. Then I will let the king of Babylonia take everyone in Judah prisoner, killing some and dragging the rest away to Babylonia. ⁵He will clean out the royal treasury and take everything else of value from Jerusalem.

⁶Pashhur, you are guilty of telling lies and claiming they were messages from me. That's why I will let the Babylonians take you, your family, and your friends as prisoners to Babylonia, where you will all die and be buried.

Jeremiah Complains to the Lord

⁷You tricked me, Lord,
    and I was really fooled.
You are stronger than I am,
    and you have defeated me.
People never stop sneering
    and insulting me.
⁸You have let me announce
    only injustice and death.
Your message has brought me
nothing but insults
    and trouble.
⁹Sometimes I tell myself
not to think about you, Lord,
    or even mention your name.
But your message burns
in my heart and bones,
    and I cannot keep silent.

¹⁰I heard the crowds whisper,
    “Everyone is afraid.
Now's our chance
    to accuse Jeremiah!”
All of my so-called friends
are just waiting
    for me to make a mistake.
They say, “Maybe Jeremiah
    can be tricked.
Then we can overpower him
    and get even at last.”

¹¹But you, Lord,
are a mighty soldier,
    standing at my side.
Those troublemakers
will fall down and fail—
    terribly embarrassed,
    forever ashamed.

¹²Lord All-Powerful,
    you test those who do right,
and you know every heart
    and mind.
I have told you my complaints,
so let me watch you
    take revenge on my enemies.
¹³I sing praises to you, Lord.
You rescue the oppressed
    from the wicked.

¹⁴^(A) Put a curse on the day I was born!
    Don't bless that day.
¹⁵Put a curse on the man
who told my father, “Good news!
    You have a son.”
¹⁶May that man be like the towns
    you destroyed without pity.
Let him hear shouts of alarm
in the morning
    and battle cries at noon.
¹⁷He deserves to die
for not killing me
    before I was born.
Then my mother's body
    would have been my grave.
¹⁸Why did I have to be born?
Was it just to suffer
    and die in shame?

Footnotes

20.2 hit me: Or “beat me up” or “had me beaten up.”
20.2 in chains: Or “in the stocks” (a wooden frame with holes for the hands, neck, or feet of a prisoner) or “in a prison cell.”
20.2 the Benjamin Gate in the Lord's temple: The Hebrew text has “the upper Benjamin Gate in the temple”; the lower Benjamin Gate may have been the city gate of that name.
20.3 Afraid-of-Everything: Hebrew “Magor-Missabib.”