What Does Jeremiah 20:14 Mean?

(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.