Jeremiah 18:²⁰ Is evil a recompense for good? Yet they have dug a pit for my life. Remember how I stood before you to speak good for them, to turn away your wrath from them. ²¹ Therefore give their children over to famine; hurl them out to the power of the sword, let their wives become childless and widowed. May their men meet death by pestilence, their youths be slain by the sword in battle. ²² May a cry be heard from their houses, when you bring the marauder suddenly upon them! For they have dug a pit to catch me, and laid snares for my feet. ²³ Yet you, O Lord, know all their plotting to kill me. Do not forgive their iniquity, do not blot out their sin from your sight. Let them be tripped up before you; deal with them while you are angry.

Jeremiah is not happy. He has prayed for the Lord to have mercy on the people and what do they do to Jeremiah in return? They plot evil against him. To be fair, if I were one in Jeremiah’s presence hearing about God’s coming judgment… over and over and over… I’d probably want him to stop too. Dude – shut up! We heard you the first 50 times! But since they would not listen to Jeremiah, God keeps sending him with messages of doom.

There is no question that Jeremiah was an extraordinary man of God but this passage also reminds me that he was human. He’d had enough of the threats from people who’d had enough of him. This passage does not show him in the best light, but it’s a part of Jeremiah that I can understand. Lord give me grace to reign it in when someone has gotten on my last nerve. Amen.