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Expositor's Bible Commentary Jeremiah 20:1 Now Pashur the son of Immer the priest, who was also chief governor in the house of the LORD, heard that Jeremiah prophesied these things. CHAPTER XIII JEREMIAH UNDER PERSECUTION Jeremiah 20:1-18 THE prophet has now to endure something more than a scornful rejection of his message. "And Pashchur ben Immer the priest" (he was chief officer in the house of Iahvah) "heard Jeremiah prophesying these words. And Pashchur smote Jeremiah the prophet and put him in the stocks, which were in the upper gate of Benjamin in the house of Iahvah." Like the priest of Bethel, who abruptly put an end to the preaching of Amos in the royal sanctuary, Pashchur suddenly interferes, apparently before Jeremiah has finished his address to the people; and enraged at the tenour of his words, he causes him-"Jeremiah the prophet," as it is significantly added, to indicate the sacrilege of the act-to be beaten in the cruel Eastern manner on the soles of the feet, inflicting probably the full number of forty blows permitted by the Law (Deuteronomy), and then leaving him in his agony of mind and body, fast bound in "the stocks." For the remainder of that day and all night long the prophet sat there in the gate, at first exposed to the taunts and jeers of his adversaries and the rabble of their followers, and as the weary hours slowly crept on, becoming painfully cramped in his limbs by the barbarous machine which held his hands and feet near together, and bent his body double. This cruel punishment seems to have been the customary mode of dealing with such as were accounted false prophets by the authorities. It was the treatment which Hanani endured in return for his warning to king Asa, { 2 Chronicles 16:10 } some three centuries earlier than Jeremiah’s time; and a few years later in our prophet’s history, an attempt was made to enforce it again in his case. { Jeremiah 29:26 } Thus, like the holy apostles of our Lord, was Jeremiah "counted worthy to suffer shame" for the Name in which he spoke; { Acts 5:40-41 } and like Paul and Silas at Philippi, after enduring "many stripes" his feet were "made fast in the stocks". { Acts 16:23-24 } The message of Jeremiah was a message of judgment, that of the apostles was a message of forgiveness; and both met with the same response from a world whose heart was estranged from God. The heart that loves its own way is only at ease when it can forget God. Any reminder of His Presence, of His perpetual activity in mercy and judgment, is unwelcome, and makes its authors odious. From the outset, transgressors of the Divine law have sought to hide "among the trees of the garden"-in the engrossing pursuits and pleasures of life-from the Presence of God. Pashchur’s object was not to destroy Jeremiah, but to break his spirit, and discredit him with the multitude, and so silence him forever. But in this expectation he was as signally disappointed as his successor was in the case of St. Peter. { Acts 5:24 ; Acts 5:29 } Now as then, God’s messenger could not be turned from his conviction that "we ought to obey God rather than men." And as he sat alone in his intolerable anguish, brooding over his shameful wrongs, and despairing of redress, a Divine Word came in the stillness of night to this victim of human tyranny. For it came to pass on the morrow that Pashchur brought Jeremiah forth out of the stocks; and Jeremiah said unto him, Not Pashchur (as if "Glad and free")-but Magormissabib -("Fear on every side") "hath Jehovah called thy name!" Sharpened with misery, the seer’s eye pierces through the shows of life, and discerns the grim contrast of truth and appearance. Before him stands this great man, clothed with all the dignity of high office, and able to destroy him with a word; but Iahvah’s prophet does not quail before abused authority. He sees the sword suspended by a hair over the head of this haughty and supercilious official; and he realises the solemn irony of circumstance, which has connected a name suggestive of gladness and freedom with a man destined to become the thrall of perpetual terrors. "For thus hath Iahvah said: Lo, I am about to make thee a Fear to thyself and to all thy lovers; and they will fall by the sword of their foes, while thine eyes look on!" This "glad and free" persecutor, wantoning in the abuse of power, blindly fearless of the future, is not doomed to be slain out of hand; a heavier fate is in store for him, a fate prefigured and foreshadowed by his present sins. His proud confidence is to give place to a haunting sense of danger and insecurity; he is to see his followers perish one after another, and evermore to be expecting the same end for himself: while the freedom which he has enjoyed and abused so long, is to be exchanged for a lifelong captivity in a foreign land. "And all Judah will I give into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will transport them to Babylon, and smite them with the sword. And I will give all the store of this city" (the hoarded wealth of all sorts, which constitutes its strength and reserve force) "and all the gain thereof" (the produce of labour) "and all the value thereof" (things rare and precious of every kind, works of the carver’s and the goldsmith’s and the potter’s and the weaver’s art); "and all the treasures of the kings of Judah will I give into the hand of their foes, that they may spoil them and take them and bring them to Babylon." "And for thyself, Pashchur, and all that dwell in thine house, ye shall depart among the captives; and to Babylon thou shalt come, and there thou shalt die, and there be buried, thyself and all thy lovers, to whom thou hast prophesied with untruth," or rather "by the Lie," i.e., "by the Baal." { Jeremiah 2:8 ; Jeremiah 23:13 ; Jeremiah 12:16 } The play on the name of Pashchur is like that on Perath (chapter 13), and the change to Magormissabib is like the change of Tophet into "Valley of Slaughter" (chapter 19). Like Amos, { Amos 7:16 } Jeremiah repeats his obnoxious prophecy, with a special application to his cruel persecutor, and with the added detail that all the wealth of Jerusalem will be carried as spoil to Babylon; a detail in which there may lie an oblique reference to the covetous worldliness and the interested opposition of such men as Pashchur. Riches and ease and popularity were the things for which he and those like him had bargained away their integrity, prophesying with conscious falsehood to the deluded people. His "lovers" are his partisans, who eagerly welcomed his presages of peace and prosperity, and doubtless actively opposed Jeremiah with ridicule and threats. The last detail is remarkable, for we do not otherwise know that Pashchur affected to prophesy. If it be not meant simply that Pashchur accepted and lent the weight of his official sanction to the false prophets, and especially those who uttered their divinations in the name of "the Baal," that is to say, either Molech, or the popular and delusive conception of the God of Israel, we see in this man one who combined a steady professional opposition to Jeremiah with power to enforce his hostility by legalised acts of violence. The conduct of Hananiah on a later occasion, { Jeremiah 28:10 } clearly proves that, where the power was present, the will for such acts was not wanting in Jeremiah’s professional adversaries. It is generally taken for granted that the name of " Pashchur " has been substituted for that of " Malchijah " in the list of the priestly families which returned with Zerubbabel from the Babylonian captivity { Ezra 2:38 ; Nehemiah 7:41 ; cf. 1 Chronicles 24:9 } but it seems quite possible that "the sons of Pashchur" were a subdivision of the family of Immer, which had increased largely during the Exile. In that case, the list affords evidence of the fulfilment of Jeremiah’s prediction to Pashchur. The prophet elsewhere mentions another Pashchur, who was also a priest, of the course or guild of Malchijah, { Jeremiah 21:1 ; Jeremiah 38:1 } which was the designation of the fifth class of the priests, as "Immer" was that of the sixteenth. { 1 Chronicles 24:9 ; 1 Chronicles 24:14 } The prince Gedaliah, who was hostile to Jeremiah, was apparently a son of the present Pashchur. { Jeremiah 38:1 } It is not easy to determine the relation of the lyrical section which immediately follows the doom of Pashchur, to the preceding account ( Jeremiah 20:7-8 ). If the seventh verse be in its original place, it would seem that the prophet’s word had failed of accomplishment, with the result of intensifying the unbelief and the ridicule which his teachings encountered. There is also something very strange in the sequence of the thirteenth and fourteenth verses ( Jeremiah 20:13-14 ), where, as the text now stands, the prophet passes at once, in the most abrupt fashion imaginable, from a fervid ascription of praise, a heartfelt cry of thanksgiving for deliverance either actual or contemplated as such, to utterances of unrelieved despair. I do not think that this is in the manner of Jeremiah; nor do I see how the violent contrast of the two sections ( Jeremiah 20:7-13 and Jeremiah 20:14-18 ) can fairly be accounted for, except by supposing either that we have here two unconnected fragments, placed in juxtaposition with each other because they belong to the same general period of the prophet’s ministry; or that the two passages have by some accident of transcription been transposed, which is by no means an uncommon occurrence in the MSS. of the Biblical writers. Assuming this latter as the more probable alternative, we see in the entire passage a powerful representation of the mental conflict into which Jeremiah was thrown by Pashchur’s highhanded violence and the seeming triumph of his enemies. Smarting with the sense of utter injustice, humiliated in his inmost soul by shameful indignities, crushed to the earth with the bitter consciousness of defeat and failure, the prophet, like Job, opens his mouth and curses his day. 1. Cursed be the day wherein I was born! The day that my mother bare me, Let it not be blest! 2. Cursed be the man who told the glad tidings to my father. ‘There is born to thee a male child’; Who made him rejoice greatly. 3. And let that man become like the cities that Iahweh overthrew, without relenting, And let him hear a cry in the morning, And an alarm at the hour of noon! 4. For that he slew me not in the womb, That my mother might have become my grave, And her womb have been laden evermore! 5. "O why from the womb came I forth To see labour and sorrow, And my days foredone with shame?" These five triplets afford a glimpse of the lively grief, the passionate despair, which agitated the prophet’s heart as the first effect of the shame and the torture to which he had been so wickedly and wantonly subjected. The elegy, of which they constitute the proem, or opening strophe, is not introduced by any formula ascribing it to Divine inspiration; it is simply written down as a faithful record of Jeremiah’s own feelings and reflections and self-communings, at this painful crisis in his career. The poet of the book of Job has apparently taken the hint supplied by these opening verses, and has elaborated the idea of cursing the day of birth through seven highly wrought and imaginative stanzas. The higher finish and somewhat artificial expansion of that passage leave little doubt that it was modelled upon the one before us. But the point to remember here is that both are lyrical effusions, expressed in language conditioned by Oriental rather than European standards of taste and usage. As the prophets were not inspired to express their thoughts and feelings in modern English dress, it is superfluous to inquire whether Jeremiah was morally, justified in using these poetic formulas of imprecation. To insist on applying the doctrine of verbal inspiration to such a passage is to evince an utter want of literary tact and insight, as well as adhesion to an exploded and pernicious relic of sectarian theology. The prophet’s curses are simply a highly effective form of poetical rhetoric, and are in perfect harmony with the immemorial modes of Oriental expression; and the underlying thought, so equivocally expressed, according to our ways of looking at things, is simply that his life has been a failure, and therefore it would have been better not to have been born. Who that is at all earnest for God’s truth, nay, for far lower objects of human interest and pursuit, has not in moments of despondency and discouragement been overwhelmed for a time by the like feeling? Can we blame Jeremiah for allowing us to see in this faithful transcript of his inner life how intensely human, how entirely natural the spiritual experience of the prophets really was? Besides, the revelation does not end with this initial outburst of instinctive astonishment, indignation, and despair. The poem is succeeded by a psalm in seven stanzas of regular poetical form-six quatrains rounded off with a final couplet-in which the prophet’s thought rises above the level of nature, and finds in an overruling Providence both the source and the justification of the enigma of his life. 1. Thou enticedst me, Iahvah, and I was enticed, Thou urgedst me, and didst prevail! I am become a derision all the day long. Every one mocketh at me. 2. For as oft as I speak, I cry alarm, Violence and havoc do I proclaim For Iahvah’s word is become to me a reproach, And a scoff all the day long. 3. And if I say, I will not mind it, Nor speak any more in His Name; Then it becometh in my heart like a burning fire prisoned in my bones. And I weary of holding it in and am not able. 4. For I have heard the defaming of many, the terror on every side! All the men of my friendship are watching for my fall; ‘Perchance he will be enticed, and we shall prevail over him, And take our revenge of him.’ 5. Yet Iahvah is with me as a dread warrior, Therefore my pursuers shall stumble and not prevail; They shall be greatly ashamed, for that they have not prospered, With eternal dishonour that shall not be forgotten. 6. And Iahvah Sabaoth trieth the righteous, Seeth the reins and the heart; I shall see Thy revenge of them, For unto Thee have I committed my quarrel. 7. "Sing ye to Iahvah, acclaim ye Iahvah! For He hath snatched the poor man’s life out of the hand of evildoers." The cause was of God. "Thou didst lure me, Iahvah, and I let myself be lured; Thou urgedst me and weft victorious." He had not rashly and presumptuously taken upon himself this office of prophet; he had been called, and had resisted the call, until his scruples and his pleadings were overcome, as was only natural, by a Will more powerful than his own. { Jeremiah 1:6 } In speaking of the inward persuasions which determined the course of his life, he uses the very terms which are used by the author of Kings in connection with the spirit that misled the prophets of Ahab before the fatal expedition to Ramoth Gilead. "And he said, Thou shalt entice, and also be victorious". { 1 Kings 22:22 } Iahvah, therefore, has treated him as an enemy rather than a friend, for He has lured him to his own destruction. Half in irony, half in hitter complaint, the prophet declares that Iahvah has succeeded only too well in His malign purpose: "I am become a derision all the day long; Every one mocketh at me." In the second stanza, the thought appears to be continued thus: "Thou overcamest me; for as often as I speak," I am a prophet of evil, "I cry alarm" ( ‘ez’ aq ; cf. ze’ aqah , Jeremiah 20:16 ); I proclaim the imminence of invasion, the "violence and havoc" of a ruthless conqueror. "Thou overcamest me" also, in Thy purpose of making me a laughing stock to my adversaries: "for Iahvah’s word is become to me a reproach, and a scoff all the day long" (the relation between the two halves of the stanza is that of coordination; each gives the reason of the corresponding couplet in the first stanza). His continual threats of a judgment that was still delayed, brought upon him the merciless ridicule of his opponents. Or the prophet may mean to complain that the monotony of his message, his ever-recurring denunciation of prevalent injustice, is made a reproach against him. "For as often as I speak I make an outcry" of indignation at foul wrongdoing; { Genesis 4:10 ; Genesis 18:21 ; Genesis 19:13 } "wrong and robbery do I proclaim" { Habakkuk 1:2-3 } -the oppression of the poor by the covetous and luxurious ruling classes. A third view is that Jeremiah complains of the frequent attacks upon himself: "For as often as I speak I have to exclaim; Of assault and violence do I cry"; but the first suggestion appears to suit best, as giving a reason for the ridicule which the prophet finds so intolerable. {cf. Jeremiah 17:15 } The third stanza carries this plea for justice a step further. Not only was the prophet’s overwhelming trouble due to his having yielded to the persuasions and promises of Iahvah; not only has he been rewarded with scorn and the scourge and the stocks for his compliance with a Divine call. He has been in a manner forced and driven into his intolerable position by the coercive power of Iahvah, which left him no choice but to utter the word that burnt like a fire within him. Sometimes his fears of perfidy and betrayal suggested the thought of succumbing to the insuperable obstacles which seemed to block his path; of giving up once for all a thankless and fruitless and dangerous enterprise: but then the inward flame burnt so fiercely that he could find no relief for his anguish but by giving it vent in words. {cf. Psalm 39:1-3 } The verse finely illustrates that vivid sense of a Divine constraint which distinguishes the true prophet from pretenders to the office. Jeremiah does not protest the purity of his motives; indirectly and unconsciously he expresses it with a simplicity and a strength which leave no room for suspicion. He has himself no doubt at all that what he speaks is "Iahvah’s word." The inward impulse is overpowering; he has striven in vain against its urgency; like Jacob at Peniel, he has wrestled with One stronger than himself. He is no vulgar fanatic or enthusiast, in whom rooted prejudices and irrational frenzies overbalance the judgment, making him incapable of estimating the hazards and the chances of his enterprise; he is as well aware of the perils that beset his path as the coolest and craftiest of his worldly adversaries. Thanks to his natural quickness of perception, his developed faculty of reflection, he is fully alive to the probable consequences of perpetually thwarting the popular will, of taking up a position of permanent resistance to the policy and the aims and the interests of the ruling classes. But while he has his mortal hopes and fears, his human capacity for anxiety and pain; while his heart bleeds at the sight of suffering, and aches for the woes that thickly crowd the field of his prophetic vision; his speech and his behaviour are dominated, upon the whole, by an altogether higher consciousness. His emotions may have their moments of mastery; at times they may overpower his fortitude, and lay him prostrate in an agony of lamentation and mourning and woe; at times they may even interpose clouds and darkness between the prophet and his vision of the Eternal; but these effects of mortality do not last: they shake but cannot loosen his grasp of spiritual realities; they cannot free him from the constraining influence of the Word of Iahvah. That word possesses, leads him captive, "triumphs over him," over all the natural resistance of flesh and blood; for he is "not as the many" (the false prophets) "who corrupt the Word of God; but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God, he speaks." { 2 Corinthians 2:14 ; 2 Corinthians 2:17 } And still, unless a man be thus impelled by the Spirit; unless he have counted the cost and is prepared to risk all for God; unless he be ready to face unpopularity and social contempt and persecution; unless he knows what it is to suffer for and with Jesus Christ; I doubt if he has any moral right to speak in that most holy Name. For if the all-mastering motive be absent, if the love of Christ constrain him not, how can his desires and his doings be such as the Unseen Judge will either approve or bless? The fourth stanza explains why the prophet laboured, though vainly, to keep silence. It was because of the malicious reports of his utterances, which were carefully circulated by his watchful antagonists. They beset him on every side; like Pashchur, they were to him a " magor-missabib ," an environing terror, {cf. Jeremiah 6:25 } as they listened to his harangues, and eagerly invited each other to inform against him as a. traitor (The words "Inform ye, and let us inform against him!" or "Denounce ye, and let us denounce him!" may be an ancient gloss upon the term dibbah , " ill report," "calumny"; Genesis 37:2 ; Numbers 13:32 ; Job 17:5 . For the construction, cf. Job 31:37 . They spoil the symmetry of the line. That dibbah really means "defaming," or "slander," appears not only from the passages in which it occurs, but also from the Arabic dabub , " one who creeps about with slander," from dabba , " to move gently or slowly about." The Hebrews ragal, riggel , " to go about slandering," and rakil , " slander," are analogous). And not only open enemies thus conspired for the prophet’s destruction. Even professed friends {for the phrase, cf. Jeremiah 38:22 ; Psalm 41:10 } were treacherously watchful to catch him tripping. {cf. Jeremiah 9:2 ; Jeremiah 12:6 } Those on whom he had a natural claim for sympathy and protection, bore a secret and determined grudge against him. His unpopularity was complete, and his position full of peril. We have in the thirty-first and several of the following psalms outpourings of feeling under circumstances very similar to those of Jeremiah on the present occasion, even if they were not actually written by him at the same crisis in his career, as certain striking coincidences of expression seem to suggest. { Jeremiah 20:10 ; cf. Psalm 31:13 ; Psalm 35:15 ; Psalm 38:17 ; Psalm 41:9 ; Jeremiah 20:13 with Psalm 35:9-10 } The prophet closes his psalm-like monologue with an act of faith. He remembers that he has a Champion who is mightier than a thousand enemies. Iahvah is with him, not with them; {cf. 2 Kings 6:16 } their plots, therefore, are foredoomed to failure, and themselves to the vengeance of a righteous God. { Jeremiah 11:20 } The last words are an exultant anticipation of deliverance. We thus see that the whole piece, like a previous one, { Jeremiah 15:10-21 } begins with cursing and ends with an assurance of blessing. The Expositor's Bible Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.

O Lord, Thou hast deceived me. Jeremiah 20:7 The arduous character of God's service forgotten Fausset. Too often the servants of God are impatient under present crosses, and give way to the infirmity of their old nature. Like Jeremiah, they complain as if God had done them some wrong, and had not let them know in entering His service what trials were before them. But it is not God who has dealt unfairly with them, but themselves who have lost sight of the appointed conditions of His service. The Lord never allures any to follow Him without plainly telling them the cross that awaits them. — ( Fausset. )He deals with them as brave Garibaldi did with his recruits. When Garibaldi was going out to battle, he told his troops what he wanted them to do. When he had described what he wanted them to do, they said: "Well, General, what are you going to give us for all this? "Well," he replied, "I don't know what else you will get; but you will get hunger and cold, and wounds and death." How do you like that? ( Revelation 2:10 .) The ideal and the real; or, does God deceive? T. R. Williams. A religious man in the nineteenth century is not accustomed to speak of God as a deceiver. And yet, once we allow for the difference of phraseology and get behind the words, we find that the experience which Jeremiah expressed here is one through which we ourselves have passed, and the problem which he tries to solve is still on our hands. He had now been preaching for several years. He had set out with all the ardour of young enthusiasm. His was no reckless rush into the ministry. Objections and difficulties there were, and he took account of them. But the impulse to preach was too strong to be resisted, and the young prophet had no doubt that that impulse was the voice of God. His obedience involved an expectation. He expected, of course, that his work would tell; the God who called him would be with him, and the "work of the Lord" would "prosper in his hands." After several years' hard, faithful work, what does he find? A people not only obdurate and disobedient, but revengeful and cruel. He had seen the reformation under King Josiah, and he had seen also the terrible relapse. It grieved his heart to see the fearful idolatrous practices restored in the Valley of Hinnom. He went down there one day to protest against it in the name of God. While he delivered his message he held in his hand a potter's earthen bottle, which, at one point in his discourse, he dashed to pieces on the ground, and assured his hearers that so the Lord would break them and their city in pieces. The result of this was not, as he might have hoped, the turning away of the people from sin. On the contrary, Pashur, the chief officer in the house of the Lord, struck Jeremiah and put him in stocks to be jeered at. Though liberated the next day, this treatment caused the prophet seriously to reflect upon the whole question of his mission. He looked upon that mission in the light of results, and he confessed to a great disappointment. That is what he expresses in the words, "Lord, Thou hast deceived me." Results seemed to tell him to give up, and he tried to give up. He said: "I will not make mention of Him, nor speak any more in His name." But what did he find? A burning fire in his heart, and he could not forbear. Here, then, was the prophet's dilemma. The language of actualities to him was "stop," but there was an imperative in his soul, and he could not stop. Now the practical question to him was — Which of these two conflicting voices was the voice of God? Was it the voice of history, or was it the prophetic impulse of his heart? If the latter, then there was the hard fact for him to face, that "the word of the Lord" made him a laughing stock, a derision, and a reproach. Jeremiah decided for the latter, spite of the tremendous odds against him, and preached on in the faith that God would some day vindicate his cause. The problem which Jeremiah had to solve for himself is still with us. There does appear to be a contradiction between the world as it is and the world as we feel it ought to be, which is very puzzling. To many minds that contradiction is altogether inexplicable. The so-called moral ideal is an illusion of the mind, and if we call it the voice of God, then God deceives men. There always have been ideals of justice and goodwill, but the real world is all the time in dead opposition to them. Now, which of these expresses the will of God? Is it the world of fact, or the world of aspiration? Is it in our sight of what is, or in our hope of what may be? Shall we learn His character from what He has actually done, or from an ideal which He has always promised but never realised? Does God deceive men? Reformers die with their holms unfulfilled; lives have been given to the cause of righteousness, and yet might remains right, and the tyrant prevails. Do our ideals simply mock us? If these are the voice of God, why do they not prevail? Is God defeated? What shall we say? Let us not try to escape the difficulty by denying it. We may purchase a cheap optimism by blinking the ugly facts of the world. Let us admit to the full that the history of moral reform has its sore disappointments. The world has not only opposed the reformer, but it has always put him in stocks. It changes the kind of stocks as time goes on, but they are stocks all the same. Official religion and real religion are often engaged in deadly conflict, a conflict which frequently results to the reformer, as to Jeremiah, in a sore sense of disappointment. And every man who seeks to do good soon comes upon many discouraging facts. There are times when he says: "I have laboured in vain, and spent my strength for nought." Nor is it by ignoring such and similar facts, and dwelling only on the bright side, that we have to support faith. On the other hand, we must beware of the temperament which ever occupies itself with life's disappointments, and fails to see its progress and success. Now, I admit that if there were that complete breach between the real and ideal which appears to be, the problem would be utterly insoluble. But it is not so. In the first place, it is not correct to speak of the world of fact and the world of aspiration as separate and distinct, for the aspiration is one of the facts. It is a part of that unto which it aspires. The aspiration after goodness is itself good, and all prayer for spiritual excellence is part of its own answer. There is no clear line between the ideal and the real, for the ideal is a part of man as he is, and he is a part of the world as it is. When we ask whether we shall learn God's character from that which He has accomplished in the world, or from the ideal which stirs the soul, we forget that that soul with its ideal is a part of what He has done. Man, with his sense of duty, with all his yearnings for purer and diviner being, is a part of the world as it is; the ideal is partly actual; prophecy is history at its highest range. If only one man desired that society should be righteous and pure, society could not be judged without that man. The power of an ideal may culminate in a great person, find in him an exceptionally brilliant expression, and reach the point at which it commands the world; but he is always a sharer in the conditions he condemns, and the men he condemns have helped to make him what he is. He may be as different from the average society as the blossom is from the stem on which it grows, but that society conditions him as the stem conditions the blossom. This is the fact which the prophet is liable to forget. It was as true of Jeremiah as of Thomas Carlyle, that he made the blackness blacker than it was. Jeremiah was not as lonely as he himself thought he was. If that nation had been utterly faithless, such faith as his could not have been born in it. So, though the prophet must condemn the actual, because he is swayed by the ideal, and is a divinely discontented man, working for progress, yet his very existence proves that that progress has already been the order of God, and has produced him. That there is a contradiction between what is and what ought to be is true, but it is not the whole truth. Strictly speaking, nothing is, but everything is becoming. We are in the process of a Divine evolution in which the ideal is forever actualising itself. The contradiction is not ultimate, nor the breach complete. What cannot we hope, for instance, of a race that counts one Jesus among its members? He is, then, an example of what we may become, and our representative before God. In like manner, surely, when God judges the human race, He does not judge it with its best specimens left out; He takes its highest points into consideration. He does with the race what you and I do with the individual — takes its best as its real self, as that to which it shall one day fully attain. And when we think that Jesus, and all that He was, is a part of the actual history of the world, then we say that the richest ideals that ever sway our souls are justified by the history of our race — God is not deceiving us. Let us try to remember this when we come to bitter disappointments in life's work. When the prophet finds, as find he will, that multitudes do not listen, but mock and deride, let him nevertheless be sure that the good and the true must prevail. Some disappointments are inevitable. It is of the very nature of an ideal to make life unsatisfactory; a spirit so possessed can never rest in what is, but will forever press forward to that which is before. To be content with all things as they are is to obliterate the distinction between good and bad, between right and wrong. No high-souled man will settle matters so. But some of our bitterest disappointments come from the fact that the form in which the ideal shapes itself in our mind is necessarily defective, and that our scheme of work is consequently partial and one-sided. This was a constant source of trouble to the prophets of Israel. We get many of our disappointments in a similar way. Here are two men, for instance, whose souls are stirred by the ideal of a renovated world in which righteousness and love shall reign. Each think of bringing it about chiefly in one particular way, the former, perhaps by some scheme of social reform, the latter by a certain type of gospel preaching. Both will be very disappointed; the world will not come round to them as they wish. And yet while these two men are groaning under their disappointments, the fact is that the world is all the time advancing, though not in their way. The man who thinks that his particular gospel is the only thing that can possibly save the world finds the world very indifferent to that gospel, and thinks that it is going to perdition, while all the time it is going onward and upward to higher and better things. But the truth is, that the world's progress is far too great to be squeezed into any one creed, or scheme, or ordinance, and you cannot measure it by any of these. Attempt that, and while you bemoan your discouragements and think ill of the world, humanity will sweep onward, receiving its marching orders from the throne of the universe. For practical purposes we must confine our energies chiefly to one or two ways of doing good, but if we only remember that when we have selected our way it is but a small fragment of what has to be done, that other ways and methods are quite as necessary, we shall save ourselves from much personal trouble, and from much ill-judgment of others. But even when we have done our best, there will still be some adverse results. These must not dishearten us. If there be in our heart "as it were a burning fire," and we become weary of silence and cannot contain, then let the fiery speech flow, however cold the world. We must obey the highest necessities of our nature. Our best impulses and purest desires are the word of God to us, which we have to preach. With this conviction we can go on with our work, disappointments notwithstanding. Nothing is more evident in reviewing history than the continuity of Divine purpose. It is the unfolding of a plan. It is full enough of evil and of sorrow, and yet "out of evil cometh good," and "joy is born of sorrow." It is full enough of error, and yet, somehow, even error has been used to preserve truth. Out of mistakes and superstitions have come some of the greatest truths. The greatest tragedy of history was the crucifixion of Jesus, yet Calvary has become the mount of our highest ascensions, and the altar of our best thanksgivings. So often, indeed, has the best come out of the worst, so often has the morning broken when the night was darkest, so often has peace come through war, that no discouragements of today shall weaken our faith, or bedim our hope, or mar the splendour of our expectation. We believe in God. There are dark places in history, tunnels through which we are not able to follow the train of the Divine purpose, but we saw it first on the one side, and then on the other, and conclude it must have gone through — the tunnel, too, was on the line of progress. The history of the world is an upward history. And those who know God are ever looking up; men with a Divine outlook are ever on the march. And, friends, whatever you do, cling to the ideal. Let no discouragement release your hold. Be active and practical; yes, but do not be bound within the limits of any one scheme. Climb the mount of vision, and have converse with God, and you will carry down with you a faith that can stand any disappointment, and hold itself erect amid the rush of the maddest torrent. ( T. R. Williams. ) Then I said, I will not make mention of Him nor speak any more in His name. Jeremiah 20:9 Jeremiah discouraged W. H. Cooper. I. JEREMIAH'S MOMENTARY RASHNESS. Oh! it was a rash speech — like the rashness of Job, like the petulance of Jonah. It is useful for us to have set before us the failings of the most distinguished of God's people. We learn from these failings, that after all they were mere men, and "men of like passions with ourselves," that they were encompassed with the same infirmity, that they carried about with them the same weakness, and that therefore the same grace which was triumphant in them in the result can be equally triumphant in our support and in our ultimate victory. II. HIS MANY AND GREAT DISCOURAGEMENTS. 1. They arose partly from the very nature of his message. His was not a pleasing burden. The message of God's Word is a message of wrath as well as of mercy; there are denunciations in it as well as promises. And we must be as faithful and as earnest in the delivery of the one as we are in the delivery of the other. 2. The unbelief and opposition which that message experienced. 3. Nor were the hearers of Jeremiah satisfied with the discouragement that would be occasioned by their opposition to and unbelief of the message of the prophet; they added to this bitter reproach, misrepresentation and persecution. What though earth meets us with its opposition? What though calumnies are flung against the cause in which we are engaged? We are not looking for earthly honours; we are not seeking the gratitude and encomiums of the world. Our record is with God; our reward is on high. We appeal to His judgment seat; we labour as in His sight. III. THE PERSEVERANCE, BY WHICH THE COURSE OF THE PROPHET WAS MARKED, NOTWITHSTANDING ALL. Mark, then, it was only a momentary fit of despondency. They are the moments of God's people, that are the seasons of their giving way; it is not the characteristic of their entire life. Though they may now and then say, "I will not make mention of Him nor speak any more in His name," follow them a little — they are at it again, and again, and again; and on to a dying hour, and with their dying breath, that name is on their lips; and when the tongue is silent, it is still engraven on the heart. ( W. H. Cooper. ) Pulpit experience Homilist. I. THE POWER OF THE OUTWARD TO INDUCE A GODLY MINISTER TO DISCONTINUE HIS WORK. I will state a few of the things which often induce this depressing state of mind 1. The momentous influences that must spring from our labours. In every sentence we touch cords that shall send their vibrations through the endless future; that shall peal in the thunders of a guilty conscience, or resound in the music of a purified spirit. 2. The incessant draw upon the vital energies of our being. To preach is to teach as well as to exhort and warn; and to teach the Bible requires a knowledge of the Bible, and to know the Bible requires the most earnest, continued, and indefatigable investigation. Physical labour tires some limb, but this labour tires the soul itself; and when the soul is tired, the man himself is tired. 3. The seeming ineffectiveness of his labours. 4. The inconsistent conduct of those who profess to believe the truth. II. THE STRONGER POWER OF THE INWARD TO INDUCE A GODLY MINISTER TO PERSEVERE IN HIS WORK. Look at this inner force; it is like a "fire." Fire! What a purifying, expanding power! it turns everything to its own nature. So it is with the Word of God. This fire was shut up in the bones of the prophet; it became an irrepressible force. The thoughts that passed his mind about resigning, feel as fuel to increase its force. If a man has God's truth really in him, he must speak it out. 1. This word kindled within him the all-impelling "fire" of philanthropy. Many waters cannot quench love. All the waters of ministerial annoyance, disappointment, anxieties, and labour, shall not quench this "fire," if the Word of God is "shut up in his bones." 2. This word kindled within him the all-impelling "fire" of piety. It filled him with love to God. David felt this "fire" when he said, "I beheld the transgressors, and was grieved." Paul felt this "fire" at Athens, when he "felt his spirit stirred within him." 3. This word kindled within him the all-impelling "fire of hope." The Word of God kindles within us a fire that lights up the future world, and makes us feel that what we are doing, however humble, is great, because it is for eternity. 4. This word kindled within him the strong "fire" of duty. "It is giving in trust," etc. "I am a debtor," says Paul. ( Homilist. ) The soul under discouragement C. Simeon, M. A. I. THE EFFECTS OF DISCOURAGEMENT AS A PIOUS SOUL. 1. In our labours for the good of others. 2. In our exertions for our own souls. Such apprehension is most enervating. II. THE EFFECT OF PIETY ON A DISCOURAGED SOUL. 1. To shame querulous impatience. 2. To resuscitate drooping energies.Conclusion: 1. Expect discouragements in every part of your duty. 2. Make them occasions for glorifying God the more. ( C. Simeon, M. A. ) Ministers, their discouragements and supports J. Redford I. MINISTERIAL DISCOURAGEMENTS DISTRESSINGLY FELT. 1. Here is a rash resolution formed. 2. An insuperable obstacle presented to his meditated abandonment of his work. II. POPULAR DETRACTION SENSITIVELY DEPLORED. 1. Explain the nature of popular detraction. 2. Adduce Scripture precepts respecting the evil of popular detraction. 3. Exhibit Scripture examples of individuals who have felt the scorpion's sting of popular detraction. 4. Analyse more particularly the ease of the prophet as exhibited in the text. III. DIVINE SUPPORT HAPPILY REALISED. 1. From a sense of the presence and power of God. 2. Expectation of the future failure and confusion of his opposers. 3. From a belief of the omniscience of God. 4. From the efficacy of prayer.Learn — (1) To expect detraction. (2) Follow the Saviour's rule: speak to the detractor alone. (3) Cultivate habits of circumspection. (4) Lay our cause before God. (5) Anticipate through the merits of Christ a world where there will be no defaming. ( J. Redford ) The burning fire F. B. Meyer, B. A. We have sometimes seen a little steamer, like The Maid of the Mist at the foot of the Falls of Niagara, resisting and gaining upon a stormy torrent, madly rushing past her. Slowly she has worked her way through the mad rush of waters, defying their attempt to bear her back, calmly and serenely pursuing her onward course, without being turned aside, or driven back, or dismayed. And why? Because a burning fire is shut up in her heart, and her engines cannot stay, because impelled in their strong and regular motion. Similarly, within Jeremiah's heart a fire had been lit from the heart of God, and was kept aflame by the continual fuel heaped on it. The difficulty, therefore, with him was, not in speaking, but in keeping silent — not in acting, but in refraining. ( F. B. Meyer, B. A. ) A heart on fire F. B. Meyer, B. A. But, after all, our main desire is to know how we may have this heart on fire. We are tired of a cold heart toward God. We complain because of our sense of effort in Christian life and duty; we would fain learn the secret of being so possessed by the Spirit and thought of God that we might be daunted by no opposition, abashed by no fear. The source of the inward fire is the love of God, shed abroad by the Holy Ghost; not primarily our love to God, but our sense of His love to us. The coals of juniper that gave so fierce a heat to the heart of a Rutherford were brought from the altar of the heart of God. If we set ourselves with open face towards the Cross, which, like a burning lens, focuses the love of God, and if, at the same time, we reckon upon the Holy Spirit — well called the Spirit of Burning — to do His wonted office, we shall find the ice that cakes the surface of our heart dissolving in tears of penitence; and presently the sacred fire will begin to glow. When that love has once begun to burn within the soul, when once the baptism of fire has set us aglow, the sins and sorrows of men — their impieties and blasphemies, their disregard of God, of His service and of His day, their blind courting of danger, their dalliance with evil, will only incite in us a more ardent spirit. ( F. B. Meyer, B. A. ) An my familiars watched for my halting. Jeremiah 20:10-18 Pathetic experiences J. Parker, D. D. In these verses we have two distinct aspects of human experience. Within this brief section Jeremiah is on the hill top and in the deepest valley of spiritual dejection. How much depends upon circumstances for man's estimate of life! That estimate varies with climate, with incidents of a very trivial nature, and with much that is only superficial and transitory. Life is one thing to the successful man, and another to the man whose life is one continual series of defeats and disappointments. It is well, therefore, that all men should have a touch of failure, and spend a night or two now and then in deepest darkness that cannot be relieved: such experience teaches sympathy, develops the noblest faculties, brings into beneficent, exercise many generous emotions, and in the morning, after a long night's struggle with doubt, there may be tears in the eyes; but those tears denote the end of weakness and the beginning of strength. The year is not one season, but four, and we must pass through all the four before we can know what the year is. So with life: we must be with Jeremiah on the mountaintop, or with him in the deep valley; we must join his song, and fall into the solemn utterance of his sorrow, before we can know what the whole gamut of life is. How impossible it is to realise all the conflicting experiences at once, and to be wise. There is an abundance of information, there is a plentifulness of criticism that is detestable; but wisdom — large, generous wisdom, that understands every man's case, and has an answer to every man's necessity — oh, whither has that angel-mother fled? We need now and again to come into contact with those who know us altogether, and who can speak the word of cheer when we are cheerless, and the word of chastening when our rapture becomes riotous. Consider the vanity of life, and by its vanity understand its brevity, its uncertainty, its fickleness. We have no gift of time, we have no assurance of continuance; we have a thousand yesterdays, we have not one tomorrow. Then how things disappoint us that were going to make us glad! The flowers have been blighted, or the insects have fallen upon them, or the cold wind has chilled them, and they have never come to full fruition or bloom or beauty; and the child that was going to comfort us in our old age died first, as if frightened by some ghost invisible to us. Then the collisions of life, its continual competitions and rivalries and jealousies; its mutual criticisms, its backbitings and slanderings; its censures, deserved and undeserved: who can stand the rush and tumult of this life? Who has not sometimes longed to lay it down and begin some better, sunnier state of existence? And the sufferings of life, who shall number them? — not the great sufferings that are published, not the great woes that draw the attention even of the whole household to us in tender regard; but sufferings we never mention, spiritual sufferings, yea, even physical sufferings; sufferings that we dare not mention, sufferings that would be laughed at by unsympathetic contempt — but still sufferings. Add all these elements and possibilities together, and then say who has not sometimes been almost anxious to "shuffle off this mortal coil," and pass into the liberty of rest. Jesus Christ understands us all. We can all tell Jesus, as the disciples did, what has happened. He can listen to each of us as if His interest were entranced and enthralled. He knows every quiver of the life, every throb of the heart, every palpitation of fear, and every shout of joy. Withhold nothing from Him. You can tell Him all, and when you have ended you will find that you may begin life again. In your hope is His answer. ( J. Parker, D. D. ) Evil watchers J. Parker, D. D. "All my familiars watched for my halting": the original word does not mean my innermost friends, for true friendship can never be guilty of such treason, but the Hebrew word means, The men of my peace; the men who used to accost me on the highway with, "Is it peace?" — the men who salaamed me out of civility, but who never really cared for me in their souls: these men, behind their painted masks, watched for my halting; they all watched. Some men take pleasure when other men fall. What is the answer to all this watching of others? It is a clear, plain, simple, useful answer: Watch yourselves; be sober, be vigilant, for your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour. It is not enough that others watch you — watch yourselves; be critical about yourselves; be severe with yourselves; penetrate the motive of every action, and say, Is it healthy? Is it honest? Is it such as could bear the criticism of God? Dare we take up this motive and look at it when the sun burns upon it in its revealing glory? If a man so watch himself he need not mind who else watches him. Watch the secret places; watch the out-of-the-way doors, the postern gates, the places that are supposed to be secure against the approach of the burglar; be very careful about all these, and then the result may be left with God. He who does not watch will be worsted in the fray. He who does not watch cannot pray. He who watches others and does not watch himself is a fool. ( J. Parker, D. D. ) But the Lord is with me as a mighty terrible one. The best Champion John Trapp. (as a mighty terrible one): — As a strong giant, and mine only Champion on whom I lean. Here the spirit begins to get the better of the flesh, could Jeremiah but hold his own. But as the ferryman plies the oar, and eyes the shore homeward where he would be, yet there comes a gust of wind that carrieth him back again; so it fared with our prophet (vers. 14, 15). ( John Trapp. ) Cursed be the day wherein I was born. Existence regretted D. Pledge. Job and Jeremiah were alike in wishing they had never been born. They were both men of sorrow. I. A PREFERENCE ALIKE IRRELIGIOUS AND IRRATIONAL. 1. Good men should not for a moment think that non-existence is preferable to life and being. These were both good men, children of God; existence was therefore a blessing to be prized, not an evil to be mourned over. Had they been versed in the design and results of Divine dispensations, as Paul, they would have said, "Our light affliction," etc. With such a destiny before them, instead of cursing the day of birth, they would have blessed it as the dawn of an eternal existence, to be hereafter crowned with a glory that fadeth not away. 2. Ungodly men may with some degree of reason prefer non-existence; because in trouble they have no Divine support, in death no good hope, in eternity no expectation but the penalty of sin. II. NON-EXISTENCE IS PREFERABLE TO EXISTENCE UNLESS EXISTENCE POSSESS MORE PLEASURE THAN PAIN. 1. If every ungodly man lived out threescore years and ten, and the whole was spent in pleasure, yet, as that period is but momentary as compared with his eternal existence, and as that existence is to be one of pain, he might curse the day of his birth. 2. Existence, eternal existence, is a blessing to all unfallen ones, and also to such fallen ones as are redeemed by the death of Christ. 3. But perpetuity of existence can be no blessing to "the angels who kept not their first estate," nor to those of the human race who by impenitence and unbelief reject the great salvation and bring upon themselves the double condemnation of the law and the Gospel. III. HELL AND HEAVEN ARE TWO GREAT TEACHERS. 1. Hell teaches — the folly of wickedness, the full enormity of sin in the penalty it has entailed, and leads all its victims amid the consequences of their depravity to curse the day they were born. 2. Heaven teaches — the wisdom of holiness, the full benefits of redemption in the felicity it has secured, and leads all the ransomed to bless the day of their birth as the morn of their noontide of glory. IV. GOD IS NOT WILLING THAT ANY SHOULD HAVE OCCASION FOR PREFERRING NON-EXISTENCE. 1. He has devised and carried out a costly plan by which the existence of fallen ones might be made an eternal blessing. 2. Every man who now wishes for a glorious existence has only to look to Jesus and be saved. ( D. Pledge. ).

20:1-6 Pashur smote Jeremiah, and put him in the stocks. Jeremiah was silent till God put a word into his mouth. To confirm this, Pashur has a name given him, Fear on every side. It speaks a man not only in distress, but in despair; not only in danger, but in fear on every side. The wicked are in great fear where no fear is, for God can make the most daring sinner a terror to himself. And those who will not hear of their faults from God's prophets, shall be made to hear them from their consciences. Miserable is the man thus made a terror to himself. His friends shall fail him. God lets him live miserably, that he may be a monument of Divine justice. 20:7-13 The prophet complains of the insult and injury he experienced. But ver. 7 may be read, Thou hast persuaded me, and I was persuaded. Thou wast stronger than I; and didst overpower me by the influence of thy Spirit upon me. So long as we see ourselves in the way of God, and of duty, it is weakness and folly, when we meet with difficulties and discouragements, to wish we had never set out in it. The prophet found the grace of God mighty in him to keep him to his business, notwithstanding the temptation he was in to throw it up. Whatever injuries are done to us, we must leave them to that God to whom vengeance belongs, and who has said, I will repay. So full was he of the comfort of God's presence, the Divine protection he was under, and the Divine promise he had to depend upon, that he stirred up himself and others to give God the glory. Let the people of God open their cause before Him, and he will enable them to see deliverance. 20:14-18 When grace has the victory, it is good to be ashamed of our folly, to admire the goodness of God, and be warned to guard our spirits another time. See how strong the temptation was, over which the prophet got the victory by Divine assistance! He is angry that his first breath was not his last. While we remember that these wishes are not recorded for us to utter the like, we may learn good lessons from them. See how much those who think they stand, ought to take heed lest they fall, and to pray daily, Lead us not into temptation. How frail, changeable, and sinful is man! How foolish and unnatural are the thoughts and wishes of our hearts, when we yield to discontent! Let us consider Him who endured the contradiction of sinners against himself, lest we should be at any time weary and faint in our minds under our lesser trials.