Jeremiah 20
ButlerChap. 20 is a continuation of chap. 19.
1,2. Pashur’s unjust displeasure against Jeremiah, and the fruits of that displeasure (verses 1, 2). This Pashur was a priest, and therefore, one would think, should have protected Jeremiah, who was of his own order, a priest too; and the more because he was a prophet of the Lord, whose interests the priests, his ministers, ought to consult; but this priest was a persecutor of him whom he should have patronized. H.—This Pashur was not the man who bears the same name in 21:1—this being the son of Immer; that, the son of Melchiah. This man was head prefect of the Temple, the priest who had the general supervision there. This may have been the first case of personal violence to the prophet. The “stocks” were an instrument contrived not merely to confine the person, but to torture it as well. The original word implies this—a wrench, made to twist and distort the body out of any natural, easy posture. H. C.
Pashur was a priest and of high rank in the service of the Temple of Jehovah. Such a man should have been able to recognize a true prophet of Jehovah as his fellow-servant. Yet he was first in persecuting him. Pashur was a responsible officer of justice. Such a man should not have allowed himself to be carried away by a flood of popular indignation, influences of class jealousy or impulses of personal spite. Judicial crimes are always the most atrocious crimes. They poison justice at its very fountain, they abuse high trusts, they disorganize society.
Pashur replied to the words of prophecy with the arm of force. He could not answer Jeremiah, so he attempted to repress him. Unable to refute the arguments of the prophet, he endeavored to restrain the utterance of them. Here we recognize the folly, the injustice and the cruelty of such persecution: the folly, for to silence a voice is not to destroy the unpleasant truth it declares; injustice, for nothing can be more unfair than to do violence to a man for uttering words which we cannot deny to be true; and cruelty, for it is a man’s duty to make known what he believes to be important truths. Adeney.
3. After one day’s confinement and torture, Pashur brought Jeremiah forth. Undaunted by this torture, Jeremiah announces to his tormentor a new and terrible word from the Lord for him personally. The name Pashur signifies “security round about.” The Lord does not give him that name—certainly not any longer—but “fear round about,” a name significant of his doom—referred to in the following verses. H. C.
We do not find that, when Pashur put Jeremiah in the stocks, the latter gave him any check for what he did; he appears to have quietly and silently submitted to the abuse; when he suffered, he threatened not; but when he brought him out of the stocks, then God put a word into the prophet’s mouth which would awaken his conscience if he had any. For when the prophet of the Lord was bound, the word of the Lord was not. What can we think Pashur aimed at in smiting and abusing Jeremiah? Whatever it is, we shall see by what God says to him that he is disappointed. H.
7-18. The remaining verses of this chapter are personal to Jeremiah, recording his own experiences, his prayer and his language addressed to God. In order to judge him fairly, we must bear in mind that, in addition to the unceasing trial of failure in his efforts to reclaim and save the people, in addition also to scorn and reproach from every quarter, he had now spent one day in torture, and came forth only to confront his arch persecutor with another message of terror from the Lord. H. C.—There are many such photographs of the inner heart-life of God’s people. It is the touch of nature which brings them near to us. The words and work of Jeremiah become more living and influential when we witness his spiritual struggles. M.
7. The true meaning is, “Thou didst persuade me"—i.e., to undertake the prophetic work, quite against my wish and preference, but I yielded; “Thou wert stronger than I, and didst prevail,” for in this struggle I could not decide against Thy will, expressed so clearly and so strongly. Yet he goes on to say, “Although I entered upon this work only under the strong pressure of Thy command, I have been in derision all the time; every one mocks me.” H. C.
O Lord, Thou hast deceived me. The original word here may signify to “persuade” or “allure,” and that by fair, as well as by indirect means. The passage alludes to that encouragement which the prophet received from God, either at his first appointment (chap. 1:7, 8, 17-19), or afterward, when he began to complain of hardships (chap. 15:19-21). The meaning, therefore, of the prophet’s words in this place is consistent with the most perfect piety and reverence toward God, who, he says, had prevailed on him to undertake an honorable though painful employment, and had encouraged him to go on with it by assurances which he acknowledges to have been made good (verses 11-13), notwithstanding the unmerited scorn and reproaches of his countrymen had often tempted him to wish that he could withdraw himself out of the way (verses 8, 9). Blayney.
Verses 8-11 furnish an effective illustration of the comparative excellence of the Revised Version. The reader can readily make the comparison. B.
9. Then the thought comes up (the temptation, shall we not call it ?), “I will prophesy no more; I will not name the Lord to this people again. But the present hand of God upon me—is in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones”—a most vivid account of the intense pressure of his convictions of duty and of his sense of a present God pressing him on in his work. H. C.
Many an earnest ministering spirit has felt like this, overborne by the force of the world’s evil, impatient of the slow progress of the kingdom of truth and righteousness. But the prophet cannot so easily throw up his work. God, as at the beginning, is “stronger than he,” and holds him firmly in His grasp; holds him to his office and ministry by the force not so much of outward circumstance as of a spiritual persuasion by the strong necessity of an inward law. W.
The risk of unfaithfulness is put beyond Jeremiah’s control. He is put between two great “cannots.” He cannot bear the reproaches of the people. That on the one hand. But, on the other hand, he finds that he cannot keep unexpressed the message of Jehovah. God takes His Word into His own keeping. The pain of prophesying, great as it was, was less than the pain of withholding the prophecy. It is ever a mark of God’s true servants, that in times when there is great need of testimony they cannot keep silent. Better to burn at the stake than to have one’s true, inner life burned up in resisting God. Y.
In like manner Paul says of himself, that “necessity was laid upon him, so that woe would be to him if he preached not the Gospel, the dispensation of which was committed unto him” (1 Cor. 9:16, 17). The psalmist makes use of the like expression, “the fire burned,” to denote the inward agitation he felt, while he endeavored to stifle the sentiments which labored for utterance (Ps. 39:3). Blayney.
The same experience is felt by all men who have spiritual relations with truth. They do not hold truth; they find that truth holds them. The reason of this is found in the real presence of the Spirit of God. Revelation is by inspiration, and inspiration is the breathing of God’s Spirit into a man’s spirit, so that he becomes possessed by it. The tremendous importance of the truth revealed increases this compulsion of utterance. Jeremiah had revealed to him no barren, abstract dogmas, no trivial religious notions, no empty answers to curious, prying questions of little practical moment, but terrible truths concerning his people and their highest interests. How could he hide such truths as we have seen he had been entrusted with? If God speaks it must be to utter important words. The burden of them urges their custodian to declare them. Adeney.
There is only one source from which the enthusiasm of the Gospel ministry can come, and that is a deep and ever deeper Christian life of our own. Live deeper. Let God do more for you. Be sure that you have not begun to reach the limits of what He can do. Give Him a larger liberty to help you; and then the thought that any man should go unhelped by Him will seem dreadful to you, and you must speak so that men will hear. Bp. Brooks.—The preacher’s words had power because they accorded with his thoughts, had reality and depth because they harmonized with the life he had always lived. It was not mere breath that this preacher uttered; they were the words of life, because a life of good deeds and holy love was melted into them. Pearls pure and rich had been dissolved into the precious draught. Hawthorne.
The Incarnate Son of God bids us disciple all the nations and preach the Gospel to every creature. Shall we not do it? Oh, for the Pentecostal breath and the flaming tongues of fire! Oh, for the vision which Stephen had in the hour of his martyrdom! Oh, for the flaming feet of the Master in all our assemblies, and the passion of His speech, as showing us His pierced side and palms! He says: “All this I suffered for thee; what hast thou done for Me?” That question made Zinzendorf the pioneer of modern missions; that question ringing in our ears will sandal our feet for the world’s evangelization. Come again, to each one of us, O Thou Incarnate Son of God, that we may count it our supreme joy to live, and toil, and die for Thee! Behrends.
If we have found Christ for ourselves, we shall undoubtedly wish to speak forth our knowledge of His love. Convictions which are deep demand expression. Emotion which is strong needs utterance. If our hearts have any fervor of love to Christ in them, it will be as natural to tell it forth as tears are to sorrow or smiles to happiness. True, there is a reticence in profound feeling, and sometimes the deepest love can only “love and be silent,” and there is a just suspicion of loud or vehement protestations of Christian emotion, as of any emotion. But for all that, it remains true that a heart warmed with the love of Christ needs to express its love, and will give it forth, as certainly as light must radiate from its centre or heat from a fire.
The possession of the Gospel imposes the obligation to impart it. All our possessions are trusts, but especially is this the case in regard to our religion. “God hath shined into our hearts” that we may to others “give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” We are bound to impart the Gospel by our common humanity; for the possessions of each are for the good of all. We are bound by loyalty to Jesus Christ, who will have us make plain who is our master. He is a coward who hides his colors. No church commission or sanction is needed. God makes men preachers, in the true sense of the word, by making them Christians; and there can be no more stringency given to the obligation to proclaim Christ than it already possesses, though all the churches were to summon to the work, or the angel that impelled Peter on the road to Cesarea were to lay his hand on our shoulders. The necessity of utterance accompanies all deep convictions about moral or religious matters; and if a Christian man has never felt that God’s word is as a fire in his bones, which must have vent, he has need to ask himself whether he is a Christian. God forbid that we should say that such men are not; but, if they are, they certainly are very imperfectly so. A. M.
10. The terribly bitter thing to the heart of this loving prophet was that those who stood in the relations of friendship and protection to him had turned so cruelly against him. H. C.
13. Jeremiah closes his prayer with praise. No sooner has he asked for God’s help than he feels so assured of receiving it that he anticipates it in imagination, and breaks forth into grateful song as though he were already enjoying it. This is a proof of genuine faith. Faith makes the absent seem near and the future appear. Adeney.
14-18. Divested of its poetical heightening, all that the prophet says amounts only to this: that the man who had brought his father the tidings of his birth had been, in reality, the messenger of ill news instead of good; for that, as things had turned out with him, it would have been a kinder and more charitable office to have strangled him in the womb than to have assisted in bringing him into the world to lead a life of so much bitterness and disquietude. W. Lowth, Dr. Blayney.
Jeremiah was making the huge blunder of looking at things entirely from the point of view of his own feelings, and his present feelings. His actions were better than his words. Speaking out of his own feelings, he talked great folly; speaking as the prophet of God, his utterances were those of wisdom and truth. The fact was that of no one belonging to his generation could it be more truly said than of him that his birth was a good thing; good for the nation, good for himself, good for the glory and service of Jehovah. We must not bemoan existence because there is suffering in it. Suffering may be very protracted and intense, and yet life be full of blessing. Y.
Jeremiah and Elijah had seasons of being strong in the Lord, and also seasons of being sadly weak in the Lord, or rather weak through not being just then very much in the Lord, but rather in the flesh, and under the control of a prostrate nervous system. Elijah one day faces down eight hundred idol prophets, and sees them laid dead at his feet; but the tax on his nervous energy was exhausting, and the next day he fears a single woman, and flies for his life, and even begs that God will take him out of the world. These verses are a sad record of the spirit of Jeremiah; for, after making all the allowance we can for these words of his on the score of Oriental usage, and on the score of their manifest imitation of Job’s imprecations upon the day of his birth (Job 3), we cannot bring them into harmony with the sweet spirit of trust in God’s love and universal providence, which it is the Christian’s privilege and glory to maintain through every possible extreme of earthly trial. Very probably Jeremiah had it in mind to compare his case tacitly with that of Job, and to say within himself, If Job had occasion to utter such imprecations upon the day of his birth, and upon all the parties who either had or might have had any agency there, fully as much, or more, have I; but this view of the case, though it may suggest the occasion, fails to justify the spirit of such words. H. C.
When grace has got the victory, it is good to remember the struggles of corruption, that we may be ashamed of ourselves and our own folly, may admire the goodness of God in not taking us at our word, and may be warned by it to double our guard upon our spirits another time. See here how strong the temptation was which the prophet, by Divine assistance, got the victory over, and how far he yielded to it, that we may not despair if we through the weakness of the flesh be at any time thus tempted. H.—God lets a true heart dare much in speech; for He knows that the sputter and foam prove that “the heart’s deeps boil in earnest.” A. M.
Jeremiah was a prophet, a good man, a man of faith, a man of prayer. Yet he cursed the day of his birth. Jeremiah was not without precedents for his conduct. Not to mention Jonah, whose character is by no means exemplary (though, poor man, he may have been good at heart), the patient Job and the courageous Elijah had both regarded existence as a curse, and cried passionately for death. Jeremiah had great provocations to despair. His mission seemed to be a failure; his old friends had become spies in league with his inveterate foes; he stood alone, watched, maligned, hated, cruelly misjudged. We cannot be surprised that his patience broke down. Though impatience and a yielding to despair are proofs of weakness, they are far less culpable than unfaithfulness. Many would have quietly declined the tasks which Jeremiah manfully performed, though they led him to the verge of despair. It must be noted that, though the prophet cursed the day of his birth, he did not flee from the mission of his life; though he longed for death, he did not commit suicide. From his experience the sorrowful may learn that deeper depths of sorrow have been traversed than any they are in, and yet the light has been reached on the farther side; the desponding may see how good men have been near despair before them, and so be encouraged by knowing that their despondency is not a sin of fatal unbelief. Adeney.
The life of Jeremiah, “the sorrowful prophet,” should encourage us to noble things in spite of the hardest trials and oppositions. Like Job, he drank affliction and hostility to the dregs; yet what was bitter in his experience turned to sweetness in his character. Like Elijah, he was a man of life passions with ourselves, sensitive to pain, susceptible of temptation, liable to sin; yet he conquered against tremendous odds by means of the Divine grace open to us all. Moreover, he was a man not without sin. Occasionally, he failed even in his characteristic excellences. Scepticism sometimes touched him with its icy finger (4:10). Once he was tempted, like Jonah, to desert his task (1:6). Like Job, he was betrayed into cursing the day of his birth (20:14-18). Nevertheless his life was, upon the whole, a psalm of heroic nobility. Standing alone amid the crashing foundations of Judah, his character remains erect and enduring. The dirges which came so plaintively from his riven soul have brought peans of praise to many later sufferers. He triumphed because he believed in God and in every word of God. He endured, like Moses, as seeing him who is invisible. There his faith cast anchor, and the stormy sea was powerless to dislodge it. It made him sure of final safety whatever earthly illusions might vanish, whatever earthly catastrophes might befall. It stationed him at the view point of the Unchangeable and Omniscient, and enabled him to see things as they actually were. This martyr to truth has become the hero of immortal honor, because he trusted in the God who holds the future as well as the present. “The sorrows of Jeremiah, more than those of any other single prophet, correspond to the desertion, the isolation, the tenderness, the death, and the final glorification of the Divine Sufferer.” McPherson.