Jeremiah 20

Pashhur son of Immer, the priest who was chief officer of the temple, hears Jeremiah prophesying and has him beaten and put in stocks in the upper Benjamin Gate of the temple — the first recorded physical punishment of the prophet in the book. Released the following day, Jeremiah renames him: not Pashhur but Terror on Every Side. The oracle against Pashhur is specific: he will be a terror to himself and all his friends; he will see them fall by the sword of their enemies; he and all Judah will go into the hands of the king of Babylon, including everything Pashhur owns. Pashhur himself will die in Babylon and be buried there.

The sixth confession follows immediately, and it is the most theologically daring passage in the book. Jeremiah addresses God with the accusation that he was deceived, enticed, overwhelmed — drawn into the prophetic calling by a power he could not resist and cannot escape. He has become a laughingstock; everyone mocks him; when he tries to stop prophesying, the word becomes fire in his bones and he cannot hold it. A brief interlude of trust — the Lord is with me as a dread warrior — leads not to resolution but to the seventh confession, the curse on his own birth: cursed be the day I was born, cursed be the man who told my father the news. That man should be like Sodom. Why did I come from the womb to see toil and sorrow, and spend my days in shame? The confessions end not in peace but in unresolved anguish. The chapter is the book's deepest exploration of the cost of a prophetic calling that cannot be refused.