Commentary - Jeremiah 20:1-6

Bird's-eye view

This passage presents a raw and vivid confrontation between the true prophet of God and the corrupt religious establishment. Jeremiah, having faithfully delivered God’s message of impending judgment, is physically punished by Pashhur, the chief officer of the temple. This is not a secular authority clamping down; this is the church police beating up the preacher for preaching. God’s response is immediate and severe. He does not just promise judgment on the nation; He pronounces a specific, personal, and terrifying judgment on Pashhur himself. God renames the man, transforming him from a symbol of institutional authority into a walking embodiment of the very disaster he sought to suppress. Pashhur’s name becomes Magor-missabib, "Terror on Every Side," signifying that the judgment he dismissed as Jeremiah’s ranting would become his own personal, inescapable reality. This incident serves as a microcosm of the larger conflict: God’s unyielding Word versus a compromised institution that prefers comfortable lies to hard truths.

The core of the passage is the absolute sovereignty of God’s prophetic word. Man can strike the prophet, lock him in the stocks, and humiliate him publicly, but he cannot silence the word the prophet carries. In fact, the attempt to silence it only results in that word becoming more potent, more personal, and more specific. The judgment moves from a general pronouncement against Judah to a direct sentence on Pashhur and his family. It is a stark lesson on the futility and foolishness of fighting against God.

Outline

Context In Jeremiah

This episode in Jeremiah 20 is the direct fallout from the events of chapter 19. There, Jeremiah, at God’s command, performed a dramatic sign-act. He smashed an earthen flask in the Valley of Hinnom before the elders and priests, declaring that God would similarly smash Jerusalem and its people. He then went to the temple court and repeated the message for all to hear. Chapter 20 opens with the reaction to this proclamation. Pashhur, as the "ruling overseer" or chief of the temple police, is the man responsible for order in the house of Yahweh. From his perspective, Jeremiah is a public nuisance, a rabble-rouser, a purveyor of treasonous and demoralizing rhetoric. So he does his job. This confrontation is a pivotal moment, showcasing the hardening of the leadership's opposition to Jeremiah's ministry and illustrating the personal cost of prophetic faithfulness. It also serves as a prelude to Jeremiah's famous lament that follows in verses 7-18, where the prophet pours out his personal anguish to God.

Key Issues

Terror on Every Side

When the Word of God is preached faithfully, it does not return void. It always accomplishes God's purpose, which is one of two things: it either softens hearts in repentance or it hardens them for judgment. There is no third option. In this passage, we see a classic case of the second outcome. Jeremiah preaches a hard word, a word of coming destruction, and the official representative of the religious establishment is hardened by it. Pashhur does not engage with the message; he attacks the messenger. This is always the tactic of those who love their sin and their comfortable institutions more than they love the truth. They cannot refute the message, so they seek to silence, discredit, or destroy the man who brings it. But as Pashhur is about to learn, you cannot put God's Word in the stocks.

Verse by Verse Commentary

1 Then Pashhur the priest, the son of Immer, who was ruling overseer in the house of Yahweh, heard Jeremiah prophesying these words;

Pashhur is identified by his lineage and his office. He is a priest, from the family of Immer, and he holds a high-ranking position as the chief of temple security. He is not some pagan outsider; he is an insider, a man of the cloth, a key figure in the religious administration of Judah. He represents the established order. And what does he do? He "heard Jeremiah prophesying." The Word of God had come to the house of God, and the man in charge of the house of God did not like what he heard. The words in question were the prophecies of utter destruction from the previous chapter. The truth had arrived, and the establishment found it intolerable.

2 and Pashhur had Jeremiah the prophet struck and put him in the stocks that were at the upper Benjamin Gate, which was by the house of Yahweh.

The response to the prophetic word is not theological argument but physical violence and public humiliation. Pashhur has Jeremiah beaten and then locked in the stocks. This was not a quiet arrest; it was a public spectacle. The stocks were likely a device that painfully contorted the body, and they were placed at a major gate of the temple complex for maximum visibility. The message Pashhur intended to send was clear: "This is what happens to those who speak against our city and our temple. This is what we do to doomsayers." It was an act of intimidation meant to silence Jeremiah and warn any who might be sympathetic to his message.

3 Now it happened that on the next day, Pashhur released Jeremiah from the stocks. And Jeremiah said to him, “Pashhur is not the name Yahweh has called you, but rather Magor-missabib.

Pashhur likely expected a chastened, perhaps broken, Jeremiah to emerge from the stocks. He was mistaken. Jeremiah comes out not with a complaint, but with a fresh and fearsome prophecy from Yahweh, aimed directly at his tormentor. The first thing God does is strip Pashhur of his name. In the biblical world, a name represents one's identity, character, and destiny. God declares that Pashhur's name is no longer his own. Yahweh renames him Magor-missabib, which translates to "Terror on Every Side." This is not just an insult; it is a divine branding. God is marking this man, making him a living, breathing sign of the very judgment he tried to suppress.

4 For thus says Yahweh, ‘Behold, I am going to make you a terror to yourself and to all your friends; and while your eyes look on, they will fall by the sword of their enemies...

Here is the explanation for the new name. Pashhur, who thought he was a purveyor of order and security, will become a source of terror, even to himself. He will be filled with an internal dread that matches the external chaos. He will be forced to watch as his friends, the very people he falsely reassured, are killed by the Babylonian invaders. This is a profoundly just retribution. He tried to make Jeremiah an object of public shame; God will make him an object of terror to his own social circle. The prophecy then broadens: the entire nation of Judah will be given over to Babylon for exile and slaughter.

5 I will also give over all the wealth of this city, all the fruit of its labor, and all its precious things; even all the treasures of the kings of Judah I will give over to the hand of their enemies, and they will plunder them, take them away, and bring them to Babylon.

The judgment is total. It is not just a military defeat; it is an economic collapse. Everything they trusted in, everything that gave them a sense of security and pride, will be stripped away. The wealth, the productivity, the luxury items, the royal treasury, all of it will be plundered and hauled off to a foreign land. God is performing a divine repossession. The blessings of the covenant, which they had taken for granted and enjoyed while living in rebellion, will be revoked in the most tangible way possible.

6 And you, Pashhur, and all who live in your house will go into captivity; and you will enter Babylon, and there you will die, and there you will be buried, you and all your friends to whom you have prophesied lies.’ ”

The prophecy zooms back in for the final, personal sentence. "And you, Pashhur..." God makes it clear that the man who struck the prophet will not escape the consequences. He and his entire family will be deported. He will not die in the promised land, but in the pagan land of Babylon. He will be buried there, a sign of ultimate dispossession. And God gives the reason for this severe judgment: he had "prophesied lies" to his friends. Pashhur was not just a temple cop; he was a false prophet, one of the many who were telling the people what they wanted to hear, promising peace and safety when God had declared judgment. For this spiritual malpractice, his doom is sealed.

Application

The spirit of Pashhur is alive and well in the church today. It is the spirit of the religious bureaucrat who is more concerned with maintaining the institution's reputation and comfort than with proclaiming the hard truths of God's Word. It is the spirit that says, "Don't be so negative," when sin is called out. It is the spirit that prefers a soothing, therapeutic message over the sharp, two-edged sword of Scripture. The modern Pashhur may not use physical stocks, but he has other tools: ecclesiastical discipline against faithful pastors, social media campaigns to discredit truth-tellers, and the subtle pressure to compromise for the sake of a false unity.

This passage is a profound encouragement to the faithful. Persecution, especially from within the church, is a painful and disorienting experience. But God is not mocked. He is the defender of His prophets and the avenger of His Word. Those who oppose the truth will, in the end, become a terror to themselves. The Word of God cannot be bound. It will accomplish its purpose. Our job is not to make the message palatable, but to deliver it faithfully, just as Jeremiah did. We must speak the truth in love, but we must speak the truth.

And for all of us, this is a call to examine our own hearts. Do we secretly wish the preacher would tone it down a bit when he gets to the part about sin and judgment? Are we more comfortable with the lies of our culture than with the truth of God's Word? The choice is the same as it was in Jeremiah's day. We can either stand with Jeremiah and the Word of God, accepting the cost, or we can stand with Pashhur and the comfortable lies of the establishment. One path leads to life, and the other leads to becoming a terror to yourself, with a final resting place in Babylon.