Jeremiah (1-31) 20:1 Commentary and Bible Study

This 20th chapter records the deep depression of Jeremiah, and it wasn't the only occasion he would be overcome with a depression – such was the hostility against him. At his call at the very beginning, the promises of God had been so powerful. He would be given such a voice; he would be made mighty; he would be the conqueror of his enemies. That is to say, his message would triumph over all their detraction, and he would be vindicated in the end. But none of this seemed to be coming to pass. Everyone was against him. We are sure that there would have been a remnant, but it was very small, and set against the reaction of the masses Jeremiah didn't seem to be able to see it, and take encouragement from it. ‘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.’ The prophet Jeremiah had been warning the people about idolatry, about their disregard of the sabbath, about the coming destruction that would fall upon them because of their continued disobedience and idolatry. Jeremiah's message was unchanging. It was the great warning of the judgment that would come upon Jerusalem from the Chaldeans, from Nebuchadnezzar Babylon, and the Babylonian Empire, and how Judah would be taken, and then after a while Jerusalem herself will be sacked and destroyed, and the people taken into captivity. These warnings have all kinds of subtleties as we have seen, and they include great appeals to the souls of the masses and to the souls of individual people, with amazing arguments and demonstrations, but always the message is the same, and it aroused fury from the priests. He had warned of the impossibility of defeating Nebuchadnezzar and the Chaldeans, and the need to capitulate and submit and accept anything that was laid upon them. The princess in particular resented and opposed his message. They were convinced that they could make some kind of a treaty with Egypt, and the mere existence of a treaty with Egypt would dissuade the Chaldeans from coming. But it was a foolish trust and a hopeless one. They did all they could to undermine Jeremiah and to have him disregarded. They slandered him so as to have him regarded as a complete fraud, and continually took measures against him. Pashur is described as also being chief governor in the house of the Lord. He was a chief priest, and it seems to have been his turn to supervise the various shifts of priests that looked after the government and the ceremonies in the house of God, and so for the time being, he is the prevailing chief priest, though not strictly holding that office, and he is a prince among the people, a person of great power. Though this is not explicitly stated, we can assume that he was a man filled with authority and self-confidence, something of a tyrant in the way he did things, but he is soon going to be reduced from that high position as we shall see. ‘Then Pashur smote Jeremiah the prophet.’ Here is an incident of great hostility. It is a small word ‘smote’. He hit the prophet; Jeremiah had to suffer. Pashur obviously did this in public, but whether it was a hard, but symbolic, slap with the back of the hand across the face, which was an act of utter contempt, or whether it was a punch to hurt and humiliate that way is debateable. ‘And put him in the stocks.’ Some translations read, ‘he put him in prison’, or ‘he put him in a dungeon’, but the balance of argument has it with the older translations that go for ‘stocks’, because the root word comes from something meaning to twist or to bend or to strain or to wrench, and the ancient stocks were like that. You didn't to sit on a seat and have your feet and hands comfortably locked between wooden bars as we see in our own church history, but these stocks were so made that your body was contorted in an impossibly uncomfortable position, a painful position. It was an act of humiliation and torment: the stocks of those times. ‘In the high gate of Benjamin which was by the house of the Lord.’ They were public stocks, so the prophet was publicly abased. He had transgressed according to Pashur in the house of the Lord, and he must be publicly humiliated in the gate that was nearest to it.