Jeremiah 20

Pashhur the priest, son of Immer, who was chief officer in the house of the LORD, heard Jeremiah prophesying these words. Pashhur struck Jeremiah the prophet and put him in the stocks at the Upper Benjamin Gate of the LORD’s house. The next day Pashhur released Jeremiah from the stocks. Jeremiah said to him, “The LORD has not named you Pashhur, but Magor-missabib. For this is what the LORD says: ‘Look, I will make you a terror to yourself and to all your friends. They will fall by the sword of their enemies while your eyes look on. I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will carry them into exile in Babylon and strike them down with the sword. I will give all the wealth of this city, all the fruit of its labor, and all its precious things; I will give all the treasures of the kings of Judah into the hand of their enemies. They will plunder them, take them, and carry them to Babylon. And you, Pashhur, and all who live in your house will go into captivity. You will come to Babylon; there you will die and there you will be buried, you and all your friends to whom you prophesied lies.’” You enticed me, LORD, and I was enticed;
you overpowered me and prevailed.
I have become a laughingstock all day long;
everyone mocks me. For whenever I speak, I cry out;
I proclaim, “Violence and destruction!”
For the word of the LORD has become a reproach and a mockery to me all day long. When I say, “I will not mention him or speak any more in his name,” it is like a burning fire in my heart, shut up in my bones.
I grow weary of holding it in, and I cannot. For I hear the whispering of many: “Terror on every side!
Denounce him, and we will denounce him!”
All my close friends watch for my stumbling: “Perhaps he can be enticed;
then we can prevail over him and take our revenge on him.” But the LORD is with me like a fearsome warrior.
Therefore my persecutors will stumble and will not prevail.
They will be greatly ashamed because they have not succeeded;
their everlasting disgrace will not be forgotten. LORD of hosts, who test the righteous, who see the inward parts and the heart, let me see your vengeance on them, for I have laid my case before you. Sing to the LORD;
praise the LORD!
For he has delivered the life of the needy from the hand of evildoers. Cursed be the day I was born!
Let the day my mother gave birth to me not be blessed. Cursed be the man who brought my father the news, “A son, a boy, has been born to you!”
and made him very glad. Let that man be like the cities the LORD overthrew without relenting.
Let him hear a cry in the morning and a battle shout at noon, because he did not kill me in the womb, so that my mother would have been my grave and her womb pregnant forever. Why did I come out of the womb to see toil and sorrow, and my days end in shame?

Rights and attribution