Jeremiah (1-31) 20:7 Commentary and Bible Study

Now the tone changes. He is out of the stocks now, but he uses very disagreeable language. He seems to have fall into deep depression, if we may call it that, and terrible misery. ‘O Lord, thou hast deceived me.’ ‘Deceived me’ is probably not the best translation. An alternative way of translating it is – and this is quite popular and has been for many years in some of the older versions – ‘O Lord, thou hast persuaded me’; that will appear in the margins in some King James Versions. The idea is that Jeremiah was brought into the prophetic ministry without being warned what the cost would be, and what the consequences would be. ‘Deceived’ is not widely wrong, because it is persuaded in the sense of being convinced of something which he would not have accepted if he had known it, something that was contrary to what he initially believed: the words are resentful. He had expressed reluctance from the start about his calling. He had said, ‘I cannot speak: for I am a child’ (Jeremiah 1:6); he remembered his original reluctance. ‘Lord, you forced me; you persuaded me; you overwhelm me to think this would be true: that my words would prevail and I would appear as a victor and overpower with words my enemies and detractors.’ ‘Lord you overwhelmed me, and pressed me to believe and to understand that there was deliverance possible.’ Jeremiah is so low, he says to the Lord – he doesn't accuse God of being a liar, quite, but he says – he was stronger than me and I was overwhelmed by this call. I didn't realise that it wouldn’t work out quite in the way it has. ‘Thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed.’ But it is very improper of him to address God in this way. God had said, ‘Thou therefore gird up thy loins, and arise, and speak unto them all that I command thee: be not dismayed at their faces, lest I confound thee before them. ¹⁸ For, behold, I have made thee this day a defenced city, and an iron pillar, and brasen walls against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, against the princes thereof, against the priests thereof, and against the people of the land’ (Jeremiah 1:17-18). But actually that is not quite fair, because when God commissioned Jeremiah and gave these promises, he also warned him that he would face much opposition along the way – ‘And they shall fight against thee; but they shall not prevail against thee; for I am with thee, saith the LORD, to deliver thee’ (Jeremiah 1:19). Jeremiah’s complaint is that God commanded him to speak, and although he promised to protect him, it has involved the prophet experiencing great suffering, which naturally speaking he would have avoided.^So Jeremiah protests. He says to the Lord, in effect, ‘I can't do this. I'm not sufficient for this. I cannot cope with this.’ Then the complaints begin to be articulated: ‘I am in derision daily, every one mocketh me.’ It must have been terrible. It seemed to Jeremiah that there was no response whatsoever to his prayer for relief. He was slandered and mocked and abased, and derided, seemingly by everyone, every hour of the day.And then he goes on: ‘For since I spake from the very beginning, I cried out. I cried violence and spoil.’ The word ‘cried’ appears twice. In the Hebrew they are different words on each occasion. It is difficult to explain them, but it is as though Jeremiah is saying something like, ‘I warned on the one hand about terrible things to come if their behaviour didn't change. I warned, and I went further. I tried to make it as real as possible in my appeals to them. ‘I cried, violence and spoil.’ The way it is expressed, it is both a reproof of the people of Judah, because there was extortion going on at a massive scale, and it applies also to the violence, not only that they were carrying out, but would be carried out against them by the Assyrians: violence and spoil. They were doing it; it would be done to them. ‘Because the word of the LORD was made a reproach unto me, and a derision, daily.’ He goes back to the beginning, the complaint, and derision daily. ‘I cannot stand up to it, Lord; it is impossible. It's so far from the promise of chapter 1. It got him into increasing trouble.