Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 20

Pashur the son of Immer. The description must be remembered as distinguishing him from the son of Melchiah of the same name in Jeremiah 21:1. We may probably identify him with the father of the Gedaliah named in Jeremiah 38:1 as among the princes who at a later date opposed the prophet’s work, and with the section of the priesthood, the sixteenth, named in 1 Chronicles 24:14, as headed in the time of David by Immer. The name Immer here (like that of “the sons of Korah”) may simply indicate that he belonged to this section; or, possibly, the name of the patriarch (so to speak) who gave its name to it may have reappeared from time to time in the line of his descendants. The name of Pashur appears again, after the Captivity, in Ezra 2:37-38.

Chief governor. Better, deputy-governor. The word for governor is Nâgid, and this office was assigned to the high priest as the ruler of the house of God (1 Chronicles 9:11; 2 Chronicles 31:13). In the case of Zephaniah, who appears as Nâgid in Jeremiah 29:26, it was given to him as the second priest (2 Kings 25:18; Jeremiah 52:14).

Next in order to him was the Pakid, the deputy, or perhaps, better, superintendent. Here Pashur is described by the combination of the two titles, possibly implying that although he was a “deputy,” he was invested with the full powers of the “governor.” By some commentators, however, the relation of the two words is inverted, the Nâgid being added to the Pakid, to imply that Pashur was the chief warden or overseer.

On either view, Jeremiah’s act and words thus came under Pashur's official notice. That such words should be spoken in the court of the Temple to the assembled multitude was, we must believe, something new, and Pashur was resolved at any cost to prevent its repetition.

Then Pashur smote Jeremiah the prophet. —It is the first time that he has been so described, the office to which he was called being apparently named to emphasize the outrage which had been inflicted on him. Other prophets had, under Ahab or Manasseh, been slain with the sword, but none, so far as we know (with the one exception of Hanani the seer in 2 Chronicles 16:10), had ever before been subjected to an ignominious punishment such as this. It was so far analogous to the outrage against which St. Paul protested in Acts 23:2-3. The word “smote” implies a blow struck with the priest’s own hands rather than the infliction of the legal punishment of forty stripes save one (Deuteronomy 25:3).

The English word “stocks” expresses adequately enough the instrument of torture which, like the nervus of Roman punishment, kept the body in a crooked and painful position. The word here used occurs in the Hebrew of 2 Chronicles 16:10, as above, and in Jeremiah 29:26, but the A. V. there renders it as “prison-house.” In that humiliating position the prophet was left for the whole night in one of the most conspicuous places of the city, the temple-gate of Benjamin (the upper gate) on the northern side of the inner court, probably the higher or northern gate of Ezekiel 8:3; Ezekiel 8:5; Ezekiel 9:2.

Magor-missabib. —The words are a quotation from Psalm 31:13, and are rightly rendered, Fear is round about; they had already been used by the prophet in Jeremiah 6:25. We may venture to think that the Psalm had been his comfort in those night-watches of suffering, and that he now uttered the words which described the bitterness of the Psalmist’s sorrow, as at last feeling sure that they belonged to his persecutor rather than to himself.

It is scarcely necessary to seek a special significance in the name of Pashur as contrasted with this new nomen et omen; but Hebrew scholars, according to various, and admittedly, conjectural etymologies, have found in it the ideas of widespread joy, “joy round about,” or else of freedom and deliverance. The prophet repeats the combination in Jeremiah 46:5; Jeremiah 49:29; Lamentations 2:22, and it had evidently become a kind of “burden” in both senses of the word, weighing on the prophet’s thoughts and finding frequent utterance. The word that stands for “fear” is a rare one, and outside the passages now referred to is found only in Isaiah 31:9.

I will make you a terror to yourself, and to all your friends. —We should have looked for a different explanation, indicating that terrors from outside should gather around the cruel and relentless persecutor, but the prophet’s words go deeper. He should be an object of self-loathing, outer fears intensifying his inward terror and acting through him on others. He is the centre from which terrors radiate as well as that to which they converge.

All the strength. —i.e., the treasure or “substance” of the city.