Jeremiah 20:14

Jeremiah 20:14 . Cursed be the day, &c. — If the reader be surprised at this sudden change of the prophet’s discourse, from joyful thanks for deliverance to bitter complaints, he must observe that the order of time is not strictly observed in the prophetic writings, nor does the discourse always go on in a regular series. Therefore, though these complaints are placed immediately following a thanksgiving, it does not follow that they were pronounced immediately after it. In the following chapters of Jeremiah, it is very evident the order of time is not kept; and it is not unlikely that these words of complaint were uttered before the foregoing, which are expressive of confidence in God and gratitude for deliverance; namely, at a time when his sense of present evils, or his prospect of those just at hand, produced in his mind the most pungent grief and the greatest perturbation. They represent, it seems, the melancholy thoughts which oppressed him while he was struggling with the malice of his enemies, and, as Lowth justly observes, are to be considered, not as expressions of indignation and malice, but rather of mourning and sorrow; or, as a lamentation written in a poetical strain, like a Lessus, Nænia, or mournful ditty, such as the mourning women used to sing, (see note on chap.

Jeremiah 9:17 ,) wherein strong poetical figures were wont to be used, and all the circumstances brought in, which were calculated to raise the passions, but which it would be extremely wrong to interpret in a strict and literal sense. The expressions here used are so similar to those in Job 3., that they seem to have been borrowed from thence; and the reader is referred to the notes on that chapter for our views of them. Bishop Lowth has cited other similar instances of grief, discharging itself in invectives and bitter wishes against objects equally blameless and undeserving with those which our prophet has singled out. Among the rest is the following exclamation in David’s celebrated lamentation over Saul and Jonathan, 2 Samuel 1:21 , “Ye mountains of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither rain upon you, nor fields of offering.” Upon which the bishop thus descants: “All which if you were to bring to the standard of cool and dispassionate reason, what could appear more absurd? But, if you have an eye to nature, and the ordinary flow of the passions, what more genuine, more exact? The falling upon a wrong cause, instead of the right, though a fault in logic, is sometimes an excellence in poetry; because the leading principle in the former is right reason, in the latter it is passion.” — De Sacr. Poes. Hebrews Prælect. 23.

Verses 14-18. - Jeremiah curses the day of his birth. The passage is a further development of the complaint in Jeremiah 15:10 , and stands in no connection with the consolatory close of the preceding passage. There is a very striking parallel in Job 3:3-12 , and the question cannot be evaded, Which is the original? It is difficult to believe that Jeremiah copied from an earlier poem. Deep emotion expresses itself in language suggested by the moment; and, even after retouching his discourses, Jeremiah would leave much of the original expression. But impressions of this sort cannot be unreservedly trusted. The argument from parallel passages is only a subsidiary one in the determination of the date of books. Jeremiah 20:14

14 . “The days of the year are not for the Hebrew mind mere marks of time, they are objective entities, each of which in its turn visits the world (cp. the twelve months in the fairy tale).” Pe. 14–18 . See summary at commencement of section. Cp. Job 3:3-12 . The latter passage is even more vehement than this and also bears traces of artificiality as compared with this natural and spontaneous outburst of a deeply moved human soul. We can hardly therefore doubt that the Job passage is based upon this one and not vice versâ . The words express in the intense language of Eastern emotions the bitterness of the pangs which ever and again seized upon the prophet’s mind and heart, as he contemplated his position and that of his country. Cp. 2 Samuel 1:21 .

(14) Cursed be the day wherein I was born . . . —The apparent strangeness of this relapse from the confidence of the two previous verses into a despair yet deeper than before is best explained by the supposition that it is in no sense part of the same poem or meditation, but a distinct fragment belonging to the same period, and placed in its present position by Jeremiah himself, or by the first editor of his prophecies. By some, indeed, it has been thought that we have here an accidental dislocation, and that Jeremiah 20:14-18 should stand before Jeremiah 20:7 . The prophet utters a cry of anguish yet keener than that which now precedes it, and borrows the language of that cry from the book of Job ( Jeremiah 3:3 ). The prophet turned in the depth of his suffering to the words in which the great representative of sufferers had “ cursed his day.” The question whether we are to blame or to palliate such utterances, how far they harmonise with Christian feeling, is one on which we need not dwell long.

It is enough to note (1) that, while we cannot make for them the half-evasive apology which sees in Jeremiah’s prayers against his enemies, and in the imprecatory psalms, prophecies rather than prayers, they indicate the same temper as those psalms and prayers indicate when taken in their natural sense, and so help us to understand them; and (2) that in such cases, while we give thanks that we have the blessing of a higher law and the example of a higher life, we are not called upon to apportion praise or blame. It is enough to reverence, to sympathise, to be silent.

The sense of this expression in Job is plain. He wished there never had been such a day, and then he would not have been born. It is impossible to vindicate these expressions in Job and Jeremiah, unless it be on the supposition that it is highly worked poetic language, caused by sorrow so acute that it could not be expressed in prose. We are to remember, however, if this seems to us inconsistent with the existence of true piety, that Job had far less light than we have; that he lived at an early period of the world, when the views of the divine government were obscure, and that he was not sustained by the hopes and promises which the Christian possesses now. What light he had was probably that of tradition, and of the result of careful observation on the course of events. His topics of consolation must have been comparatively few. He had few or no promises to sustain him. He had not had before him, as we have, the example of the patient Redeemer. His faith was not sustained by those strong assurances which we have of the perfect rectitude of the divine government.

Before we blame him too severely, we must place ourselves in imagination in his circumstances, and ask what our piety would have done under the trials which afflicted "him." Yet with all allowances, it is not possible to vindicate this language; and while we cannot but admire its force and sublimity, and its unequalled power and boldness in expressing strong passion, we at the same time feel that there was a lack of proper submission and patience. - It is the impassioned language of a man who felt that he could bear no more; and there can be no doubt that it gave to Satan the hope of his anticipated triumph. And the night in which it was said - Dr. Good renders this, "And the night which shouted." Noyes, "And the night which said." So Gesenius and Rosenmuller, "Perish the night which said, a man child is conceived." The Vulgate renders it, "The night in which it was said;" the Septuagint, "That night in which they said." The Chaldee paraphrases the verse, "Perish the day in which I was born, and the angel who presided ever my conception." Scott, quoted by Good, translates it, "The night which hailed the new-born man." The language throughout this imprecation is that in which the night is "personified," and addressed as if it were made glad by the birth of a son. So Schultens says, "Inducitur enim "Nox illa quasi conscia mysterii, et exultans ob spem prolis virilis." Such personifications of day and night are common among the Arabs; see Schultens.