Why did Jeremiah say, "Cursed be the day I was born" (Jeremiah 20:14)?

(1) Job curses the day of his birth (vers. 1-9). Of only one man has it ever been said — by our Lord "It had been good for that man if he had not been born" (Matt. 26:24). Judas was an apostate, the "son of perdition," into whose heart Satan entered, and who sold his Master for thirty pieces of silver, betrayed Him by a kiss, and then filled with remorse went and hanged himself, and "went to his own place." For a child of God to wish he had never been born indicates a complete, if but temporary, eclipse of faith.

Jeremiah, utterly oppressed by the hardness of the people's heart, and seeing the inevitable ruin into which they were drifting, uses language somewhat similar to Job's (Jer. 20:14-18). He curses not only the day of his birth, but the man who brought his father the news instead of slaying the child, and wishes he were overthrown like Sodom and Gomorrha. There is this to be said of Jeremiah's outburst: it was not merely because of his own sufferings as obliged to bring a message which the people refused — and therefore hated the messenger; but is there not a measure of grief over the people's obduracy and inevitable doom? Like Moses before and Paul afterwards, he longed supremely for the people's blessing. Failing to see this, he had rather not have been born. We justify none of these expressions in God's beloved servants, but they seem to occupy a higher moral plane than Job does here.

Jeremiah 19 and 20 shew us the judgment of Jerusalem announced in terms that require little explanation; and we have in Jeremiah 20 a sample of the opposition of the priests, and of Jeremiah's sufferings. But this does not prevent Jeremiah's denouncing the priest himself, and repeating that which he had said of Jerusalem. Nevertheless we see the effect of these sufferings on his heart. He was compelled, as it were, by the Lord to bear this testimony. He has not (and it is the same with the remnant) the willing spirit that rejoices in tribulation by the power of the Holy Ghost. He was the subject of constant mockery. They watched for his halting, so that he would gladly have been silent; but the word of Jehovah was like fire in his bones. Alas! we understand all this — the deep iniquity of the men who are called the people of God; the way in which the feeble heart recoils before this iniquity, that has neither heart nor conscience; and how on these occasions the word is too strong in us to be shut up in our heart. Nevertheless with all this fear he had also the consciousness that Jehovah was with him, and he again asks for vengeance (which, in fact, is deliverance, and the only deliverance of those who have the testimony of Christ in such a position). This deliverance is celebrated in verse 13; but in verses 14-18, we see to what a point personal grief may drive those who are subjected to such a trial as this. See the same thing in Job — a picture of the same condition, that is to say, of a soul tried by all the malice of Satan, without the full knowledge of grace, in the sense of its own nothingness, and in the forgetfulness of self. This will be precisely the state of the remnant in the last days. Christ is the model of perfection in what answered to these circumstances of trial, the reality of which He thoroughly experienced and felt, when He had yet to undergo for others what laid the foundation of grace for them.

Then we have an historical passage (Jer. 19:14 — Jer. 20:18), dealing with the persecution of the prophet by the priests. Now Pashur, the son of Immer the priest, was extremely vexed, and he used personal violence towards the prophet. Jeremiah tells him that his name should be called Magor-missabib, that is, Fear round about. This man who was so bold against Jeremiah would soon be humbled and filled with fear because of what was about to come to pass upon him. This attack by Pashur leads Jeremiah to an unfolding of his deep inward feeling. His language is very beautiful to my mind. There was no kind of steeling his heart against the persecution. His mouth was like one of steel, no doubt, but his heart was very soft indeed, and experienced deep agony on account of what he was obliged to utter against his adversary. So the very man that seemed as if nothing could bend him in truth was bound in the greatest grief before God, and at last he vents it to the Lord. "Cursed be the day wherein I was born: let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed. Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, A man child is born to thee; making him very glad."

Jeremiah, however, is in wonderful contrast with the blessed Lord, Who, when most rejected, was most happy in a certain sense. The reason was that He sought not His own things, but, as He said in Spirit, "The reproaches of them that reproached Thee are fallen upon Me." He was here simply to magnify God. If the greatest suffering would magnify God the most, He was ready to receive it. He could not pray for what was worst of all; He could not desire that God should forsake Him. Such a plea was impossible. It would show real hardness, and not perfection; but the Lord Jesus was perfect in everything, and in every way.

But his grief overwhelms him. Perhaps he thought again of all the sneers and mockeries, of all the harsh words, the unfaithful friends and the physical pain he endured. He is occupied with himself and the soul struggle begins anew and culminates in a near collapse. He curses, as Job did, the day in which he was born.

A renewed outbreak of sufferings, however, combined with Satan’s efforts, brings distress back into his heart. “Cursed be the day wherein I was born ... Wherefore came I forth from the womb to see labor and sorrow, that my days should be consumed in shame?”

Jeremiah’s praise had scarcely left his lips when, like Job, he curses the day wherein he was born (v. 14), and the man also who brought the tidings of his nativity to his father, because he slew him not. He asks, “Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labour and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame” (v. 18). This deep depression is often seen with the godly souls of the Old Testament. It stands in complete contrast to what is characteristic of the New, where we have the blessed God fully revealed in the Son and the believer eternally blessed in Hun. Many pious people, however, go back to the experiences of the Psalms, and live there; only to rob themselves of the fullness of joy that is properly ours now in the elevating knowledge of the Father and the Son. This exalted privilege is ours continuously; no failure in the assemblies need be allowed to interrupt it, for there is no failure on the part of our living Lord in His present service of love for us; and it is pre-eminently in the last of the inspired writings, after failure had come in, that this fullness of joy and eternal life are made known for our faith to appropriate.

In like manner also we find Jeremiah, another of Christ's high-favoured workmen, when under the smitings of Pashur, and the derisive insults of the ungodly around him, giving vent to his feelings in such language as this, "O Lord, Thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived: Thou art stronger than I, and hast prevailed; I am in derision daily, every one mocks me. For since I spake, I cried out, I cried violence and spoil; because the word of the Lord was made a reproach to me, and a derision, daily. Then I said, I will not make mention of Him, nor speak any more in His name."

And, again, "Cursed be the day wherein I was born: let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed. Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, A man child is born to thee; making him very glad. And let that man be as the cities which the Lord overthrew, and repented not: and let him hear the cry in the morning, and the shouting at noontide, because he slew me not from the womb; or that my mother might have been my grave, and her womb to be always great with me. Wherefore came I forth out of the womb to see labour and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?" (Jer. 20:7-9, 14-18) Such was the language of the weeping prophet — language drawn forth, no doubt, by sharp rebuffs and sore disappointments in his prophetic ministry, but still the language of Jeremiah; and, ere we condemn him, let us see if we could acquit ourselves better under similar pressure.

This (Jer. 20) draws out the persecution of Pashur the son of Immer the priest, chief governor in the house of Jehovah, who smote Jeremiah and put his feet in the stocks. But the prophet on the morrow gave his adversary, from Jehovah, the name of Magor-missabib (i.e. fear round about), with a still more precise menace of speedy judgment on all Judah, and the strength of the city, and the treasures of the kings, which should go to Babylon. (Ver. 1-5.) "And thou, Pashur, and all that dwell in thine house shall go into captivity: 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."

The rest of this section is of deep interest, where the prophet bemoans his sad testimony and shows how truly the treasure was in an earthen vessel, that the excellency of the power might be of God and not of men. After all his inward conflicts, the result is his own fresh confidence in Jehovah. "But the Lord is with me as a mighty terrible one: therefore my persecutors shall stumble, and they shall not prevail: they shall be greatly ashamed; for they shall not prosper: their everlasting confusion shall never be forgotten. But, O Lord of hosts, that triest the righteous, and seest the reins and the heart, let me see thy vengeance on them: for to thee have I opened my cause. Sing to the Lord, praise ye the Lord; for he has delivered the soul of the poor from the hand of the evildoers." Even then however the chapter (ver. 14-18) closes with cursing the day of his birth and the messenger who congratulated his father on such a child, the prophet of woe for Israel. Certainly prophecy came not at any time by the will of man, but holy men spake as borne along by the Holy Ghost.

On his return from the Valley of Hinnom where he had broken the vessel in the sight of the elders and priests, Jeremiah again stands in the court of the Temple and warns the people of coming judgment. Hearing him prophesy these things, Pashur, a priest and chief officer in the house of God, strikes him and puts him in the stocks at the upper gate of Benjamin. The stocks were instruments of torture. Jeremiah on this occasion has to endure them for the rest of the day and the following night. These were hours of physical and mental sufferings. Their effects on his soul are expressed in chapter 20:10-18.

Pashur and Jeremiah (20:1-6) Jeremiah's great perplexity and complaint (20:7-18)

Verses 1-6. A great scene now follows the message in connection with the broken bottle. The great Pashur, the chief governor in the house of the LORD had heard of the message. He smites Jeremiah and puts him in the stocks, which must have been some form of cruel torture by which the victim was rendered helpless, besides being exposed to the vulgarity of the people who passed by and would taunt him. In this position Jeremiah remained all night before the high gate of Benjamin. In the morning he was released. He then speaks as only an inspired prophet can speak. His name Pashur (which means "most noble") should now be "Magor-missabib," which means "terror on every side." The awful fate of Pashur and his own is predicted. He is dumb, perhaps even then terror-stricken, as he looks into the flashing eyes of the man of God and listens to the fiery words.

Verses 7-18. What follows now is a most passionate outburst, revealing an unspeakable emotion of the soul, as perhaps nowhere else in the prophetic Scriptures. Even critics acknowledge this as "one of the most powerful and impressive passages in the whole of the prophetic literature, a passage which takes us, as no other, not only into the depths of the prophet's soul, but into the secrets of his prophetic consciousness." "LORD," he cries, "Thou has deceived me, and I was deceived." The Revised Version has translated it, "Thou has persuaded m," but that is not correct. He acknowledges himself deceived, or enticed. He is troubled with doubt. He speaks of his great trials. He is a laughing stock--he is a reproach and a derision all the day. He tried to stop mentioning Him and not to speak any more in His name; but he tried to turn back upon his commission. But then the fire burned within him; his conscience became as a burning fire. He had heard defaming, his best friends had said "We will denounce him." They thought of taking revenge on him.