Jeremiah 20:14 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

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 Chapter s 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. Let not the day, wherein my mother bare me be blessed Let it not be celebrated with those good wishes and expressions of joy which are wont to be used on birthdays.