Jeremiah (1-31) 20:3 Commentary and Bible Study

Jeremiah seems to have been released on the following day, and he immediately courted trouble. He speaks to him directly and gives God's word to Pashur that his name would be changed to ‘a terror’. The Lord hath not called thy name Pashur, but he assigns to him a new name, Magormissabib. The word is used five times in the book, and is usually translated as fear or terror all around, but here it is used as a name. That is going to be your name, says Jeremiah, and it will be a name that fits. The name is a form of prophecy which God gives to this enemy of his servant. The prophecy assigns to Pashur, a new kind of spirit and experience altogether. He will no longer be – if we are right to assume he was – the self-confident tyrannical individual, but he is going to be a fearful, anxious individual. He is going to be frightened of his own betrayal, his own skin, frightened of the people around him. This is even before the invasion. He is going to become an intensely nervous man. There is a measure of punishment that is going to be assigned to him straight away for what he has done: the humiliation of the prophet. ‘For thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will make thee’ – these words are spoken to Pashur – ‘a terror to thyself, and to all thy friends’, and then of course it goes into the fulfilment which will take place when the invasion comes. ‘And they shall fall by the sword of their enemies, and thine eyes shall behold it: and I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon’ – and so here now is Jeremiah's typical prophecy – ‘and he shall carry them captive into Babylon, and shall slay them with the sword.’ That captivity, as the following verses say, will go on and on beyond their death. It will be a long one. The attack on the prophet and on the word he has delivered has resulted in a fresh word from the Lord directed specifically against the one who has launched the attack. God takes note of every word spoken against his servants. Vengeance is mine, says the Lord, and his vengeance is far more comprehensive than anything that we could arrange.‘Moreover I will deliver all the strength of this city,’ all the military, all the powerful people, all the princes, ‘and all the labours thereof,’ all its measures and its efforts and its defences, ‘, and all the precious things thereof,’ the treasures, ‘and all the treasures of the kings of Judah will I give into the hand of their enemies, which shall spoil them, and take them, and carry them to Babylon.’ That continues down to verse 6. Pashur personally and all his household, his descendants, shall go into captivity. Later chapters tell us that Pashur will be a witness to the death of his son. ‘And thou shalt come to Babylon, and there thou shalt die, and shalt be buried there, thou, and all thy friends, to whom thou hast prophesied lies.’ Was Pashur a false prophet too, or is prophecy used here in the sense of the policies which he pressed upon the court and the people. Either way, they were lies. They were lies of his own and his compatriots to ever imagine that Egypt would be their ally, and would deliver them from the Assyrians. They were lies to believe that they had the power in the Judaean cities of refuge, and in the fortified city of Jerusalem, to withstand the Assyrians, and to throw back any invasion. Every slander that was made against Jeremiah and his words was a lie.