1 Now Pashhur the son of Immer, the priest, who also had been appointed chief of the house of the Lord, heard Jeremiah prophesying these words. 2 And he struck him and threw him into the dungeon at the gate of the set-apart upper house, in the house of the Lord. 3 When Pashhur brought Jeremiah out of the dungeon, Jeremiah said to him,“The Lord has not named you Pashhur, but Exile.” 4 “For this is what the Lord says: Look, I am giving you over to exile together with all your friends. They will fall by the sword of their enemies, and your eyes will see it. And I will give you and all Judah into the hands of the king of Babylon, and they will deport them and cut them down with swords.” 5 “And I will give all the strength of this city and all the fruit of its labor and all the treasures of the king of Judah into the hands of his enemies, and they will carry them off to Babylon.”
6 “And you and everyone who lives in your house will go into captivity. You will die in Babylon, and there you will be buried — you and all your friends to whom you prophesied lies.”
7 “You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived; you took hold, and you prevailed. I have become a joke; every day, without stop, I am sneered at.”
8 “For I laugh with my own bitter word; I cry out ‘Faith broken!’ and ‘Misery!’ — because the word of the Lord has become a disgrace to me, a mockery all my days.”
9 “Then I said, ‘I will not name the name of the Lord; I will not speak in his name anymore.’ But it became like a burning fire blazing in my bones, and I have gone weak on every side and cannot bear it.”
10 “For I heard the blame of many gathering all around: ‘Band together, and let us band against him, all you men who are his friends. Watch his thinking — maybe he will be deceived, and we will get the better of him and take our revenge on him.’”
11 “But the Lord is with me like a strong warrior. That is why they pursued and could not understand; they were deeply shamed, for they did not see their own disgrace — a disgrace that will never be forgotten.”
12 “Lord, you who test what is right, who understand the deepest thoughts and the heart — let me see your vengeance on them, for I have laid my defense before you.”
13 “Sing to the Lord! Praise him, for he has rescued the soul of the poor man from the hand of evildoers.”
14 “Cursed is the day I was born; the day my mother bore me — let it not be blessed.”
15 “Cursed is the man who brought my father the good news, ‘A boy has been born to you,’ and made him glad.”
16 “Let that man be like the cities the Lord overthrew in anger without a change of heart. Let him hear a cry in the morning and a war-shout at noon,”
17 “because he did not kill me in my mother’s womb — then my mother would have been my grave, her womb pregnant forever.”
18 “Why did I come from the womb only to see trouble and distress and spend my days in shame?”