Pashhur arrests Jeremiah
1Pashhur was the chief_priest at the temple and he heard what Jeremiah said. 2Then Pashhur beat the prophet Jeremiah and he arrested him and put him in the blocks of wood at the upper Benjamin Gate, that was in the temple area. 3The next morning when he came to take Jeremiah out of the blocks of wood, Jeremiah said to him: ‘The Lord says your name is not Pashhur anymore. Your name is now: “Magor-Missabib”. 4Yes, the Lord says: “I will make you afraid of yourself and your family will fear everything. You will see how your enemies kill them. I give all the people in the land_of_Judah to the king of Babylon. He will defeat them and kill some of the people and take some of them away to the land of Babylon. 5I give everything in this city to the enemies, all the treasures and beautiful things of the people and the kings_of_Judah. The enemies will take everything that they want and they will take it away to Babylon. 6And, Pashhur, you and everyone in your family will become prisoners in Babylon. You told lies when you said that it was God who had sent you. You will die in Babylon and your people will bury you there.” ’
Why was I born?
7Jeremiah said:
‘Lord, You have deceived me
and I believed what You said.
You were too strong for me,
and You have won. People laugh at me
all day, and everyone mocks me
8because every time I talk,
I must shout and tell them
that the enemies will come and destroy them.
That is why they are angry with me
and why they say bad things about me.
9But when I think that it
will be better to forget You
and I think that I want to stop
being your prophet
and telling people what You say,
then your message burns inside me like a fire.
I have tried to keep quiet
and to keep your words in me,
but I can not do that.
I am tired of trying to do it.
10Because I hear people
talking behind their hands
to each other and saying:
“He said everyone will fear
and we will be afraid of everything.
Let us tell everyone
what Jeremiah said. Let's accuse him.”
All my friends are also waiting
for bad things to happen to me.
They say: “Maybe we can seduce Jeremiah
to do something wrong,
and then we can catch and punish him
for the things that he has done.”
11But, Lord, You are the
Strong Soldier who protects me.
That is why my enemies will fall,
and they will not win. They will lose,
and they will not succeed in doing
what they want to do.
Everyone will mock them.
12Lord, You who rule over all,
You who know what people think,
please show me
how You punish my enemies,
because I have told You what they have done.’
13‘Israelites, you must sing to the Lord.
You must praise Him
because He saves people
who can not help themselves.
He saves them from people who are bad.
14I wish that I had never been born.
I wish that the day when my mother
gave birth to me had never come.
15I wish that the man would die
who came to my father to tell him
that he had a son,
on the day when my father became so happy.
16I wish that man would become
like the cities that God has destroyed.
No one must feel sorry for him.
I wish that he could hear how people
shout and ask someone to help them,
and that he could hear them blow the ram's-horn at noon.
17I wish that he would suffer
because he did not kill me before I was born.
Then my mother's womb
would have been my grave
and she would always have waited
for her baby to be born.
18Why was I born? Why do I suffer so much?
Why do I have to be ashamed all my life?’
