Jeremiah 20:17 · Bible study
Jeremiah 20:17 Commentary: Cursing the Day of Birth
Hebrew · 7 what the commentators say
Meaning in one sentence
Explore Jeremiah's dark wish for death in the womb after praising God. Background, meaning, and pastoral application for honest lament.
Research Summary
- Meaning: Jeremiah wishes the messenger who announced his birth had killed him in the womb, so his mother’s womb would have become his permanent grave.
- Key words: מוֹתְתַנִי (he killed me), Hiphil perfect of מות, causative; ׳עוֹלָם (perpetuity), emphasizes endless duration, intensifying the wish.
- Main debate: Was Jeremiah in present despair or recording a past temptation? Both readings appear in supplied commentaries; the text does not resolve it.
- Theological theme: The freedom to lament before God without softening emotion; Scripture provides language for the darkest human experience.
- Best use: Pastoral care for the depressed or suicidal; preaching on honest prayer; small-group discussion on suffering and faith.
Translation Comparison
BSB Berean Standard Bible 2020
because he did not kill me in the womb so that my mother might have been my grave, and her womb forever enlarged.
WEB World English Bible 2000
because he didn’t kill me from the womb. So my mother would have been my grave, and her womb always great.
KJV King James Version 1769
Because he slew me not from the womb; or that my mother might have been my grave, and her womb to be always great with me.
ASV American Standard Version 1901
because he slew me not from the womb; and so my mother would have been my grave, and her womb always great.
YLT Young's Literal Translation 1898
Because he hath not put me to death from the womb, And my mother is to me--my grave, And her womb a pregnancy age-during.
Darby Darby Bible 1890
because he slew me not from the womb. Or would that my mother had been my grave, and her womb always great [with me]!
Douay-Rheims Douay-Rheims Bible 1899
Who slew me not from the womb, that my mother might have been my grave, and her womb an everlasting conception.
Translations in other languages (10 available)
Porque no me mató en el vientre, y mi madre me hubiera sido mi sepulcro, y su vientre concebimiento perpetuo.
Por ele não ter me matado no ventre, de modo que minha mãe teria sido minha sepultura, e o ventre uma gravidez perpétua.
Que ne m’a-t-on fait mourir dans le sein de ma mère!
Daß du mich doch nicht getötet hast im Mutterleibe, daß meine Mutter mein Grab gewesen und ihr Leib ewig schwanger geblieben wäre!
Dat Hij mij niet gedood heeft van de baarmoeder af! Of mijn moeder mijn graf geweest is, of haar baarmoeder als van een, die eeuwiglijk zwanger is!
poich’egli non m’ha fatto morire fin dal seno materno. Così mia madre sarebbe stata la mia tomba, e la sua gravidanza, senza fine.
O że mię nie zabił zaraz z żywota! Oby mi była matka moja grobem moim, a żywot jej wiecznie brzemiennym!
за то, что он не убил меня в самой утробе - так, чтобы мать моя была мне гробом, и чрево ее оставалось вечно беременным.
因 他在我未出胎 的時候不 殺我，使我母親 成了 我的墳墓，胎 就時常 重大。
Because he did not put me to death before my birth took place: so my mother's body would have been my last resting-place, and she would have been with child for ever.
Verse in Context
Original Language (Biblical Hebrew)
Old Testament · Biblical Hebrew · Jeremiah 20:17
Source: STEPBible TAGNT/TEHB (CC-BY 4.0). Click or tap a morphology code to see the full parsing.
Scholars' Consensus
Commentators across traditions agree this verse records the prophet's raw despair, not a divine oracle. Matthew Henry and Poole treat it as a past temptation Jeremiah later recorded to his own shame, noting the sudden shift from praise in v.13. Calvin calls it an expostulation of a man wholly desperate, even mad. Lange insists the cursing is merely a rhetorical form with no real object. All agree Jeremiah is not speaking as God’s spokesman here (1 Cor 7:25). The language echoes Job 3:10, 11, and the wish that his mother’s womb had become a perpetual grave is understood as an extreme figure of speech, not a literal desire for his mother’s suffering. The shared conclusion is that Scripture permits such unfiltered emotion before God, and that divine grace does not abandon the one who utters it.
How settled is the interpretation?
Interpretive difficulty: Medium
Main views:
- Past temptation recorded after victory: Matthew Henry and Poole argue the shift to praise in v.13 shows Jeremiah recounting a struggle he had already overcome.
- Present crisis of despair: Calvin and Cambridge Bible read the curses as immediate emotional outpourings, not retrospective.
- Rhetorical form with no real object: Lange holds that cursing a past day is logically impossible; the language is a figure for utter desperation.
What is clear: Jeremiah is expressing extreme anguish, wishing he had never been born, and this lament is preserved as Scripture.
What Scholars Agree and Debate
| Topic | Agreed | Debated |
|---|---|---|
| Justification of the curse | Christians agree this is not a command or a divine word but a human cry of anguish. | Some argue Jeremiah sinned and later repented; others see it as permissible lament in the tradition of Job. |
| Identity of 'he' who should have killed him | The pronoun refers to the man cursed in v.15, not God. | A minority (some older Jewish commentators) refer it to God or the angel of death, but most see it as the messenger. |
| Temporal placement relative to v.13 | The chapter records both trust and despair within Jeremiah’s experience. | Matthew Henry and Poole view vv.14, 18 as a past temptation already overcome; Calvin and Cambridge Bible read them as present crisis. |
Historical & Cultural Context
Jeremiah 20 records events during the reigns of Jehoiakim (609, 598 BC) and Zedekiah (597, 586 BC). The chapter opens with the prophet being beaten and put in stocks by Pashhur, the temple overseer, for announcing Jerusalem’s coming destruction (Jer 20:1, 2). After release, Jeremiah pronounces judgment on Pashhur, then erupts into a personal lament that alternates between complaint and trust.
Verse 17 belongs to the final section (vv.14, 18), where the prophet curses the day of his birth. The context is acute suffering: Jeremiah stands alone as a traitor to his nation, hated by former friends (v.10). The lament genre was familiar in Israel and the ancient Near East, the Psalms contain many cries of abandonment, and Job’s curses of his own birth (Job 3) provide a direct literary parallel. Jewish tradition later read these verses not as weakness but as the cost of prophetic calling. The verse’s raw honesty shows that even a man who could praise God in one breath (v.13) could also wish he had never been born. This is not a diminished faith but a human one, placed on sacred record for the comfort of every person who has known such darkness.
Textual Notes
The supplied commentaries note no significant textual variants for Jeremiah 20:17. The Hebrew text (MT) is consistent across editions. The verse forms an integral part of the longer section 20:14, 18, which is well-attested in both the Masoretic tradition and the Septuagint.
Reception History
Early and medieval readers often struggled with this passage. Jerome records that some older rabbis interpreted the cursed day as a future day of judgment, not Jeremiah’s actual birthday. In the Reformation, Calvin used it to demonstrate human frailty even in prophets, while Matthew Henry saw it as a warning against allowing despair to speak. In more recent centuries, the verse has been cited in pastoral literature on depression and suicide prevention, offering a Scriptural validation of raw emotion. Alongside Job 3, it has become a key text for the recovery of Christian lament in modern worship and counseling.
Preaching This Verse
Three-point outline
- Despair is not unfaith: The same mouth that praised God (v.13) now curses his birth. Faith does not mean never doubting; it means never stopping the conversation. Jeremiah stays in dialogue with God even when that dialogue is raw accusation.
- Extreme speech, real pain: “Her womb always great” is not a literal wish about his mother, it is the cry of a man who cannot see how his life could ever be good. The hyperbole signals the depth of his wound. Scripture refuses to sanitize pain.
- God preserves the record: Jeremiah wrote this down, and the community preserved it. This means we are allowed to bring our darkest thoughts to God without shame. The Bible contains everything we need, including permission to say “I wish I had never been born.”
Five-point outline
- The surrounding context: beat by priests, mocked by friends, isolated as God’s messenger.
- The turn: from confident praise (vv.11, 13) to self‑curse (vv.14, 18). Matthew Henry says this is the record of a temptation already overcome, not a fresh fall.
- The content of the curse: not only the day but the messenger who brought news of his birth (v.15), a wish that the messenger had killed him instead.
- The grammar of pain: the Hebrew perfect “he killed me” (with a negated wish) imagines a past that never was.
- The hope beneath: even this lament is addressed to God, not away from him. The very act of writing it proves faith is still alive.
Illustration hooks
- The hospital waiting room: A family prays for healing, then questions why God allowed a loved one to be born with a painful condition. Faith can hold both petition and protest.
- The diary after the crisis: Someone who could later say “God was faithful” also once wrote, “I hate the day I was born.” Looking back doesn’t erase the earlier hurt, it shows God carried them through it.
Questions your congregation is asking
- Is it a sin to wish I had never been born?
- How can I trust God when I feel like Jeremiah did?
- Why does the Bible include such raw passages without rebuking the speaker?
Leading a Discussion
Jeremiah 20:17 sits uncomfortably beside the praise of v.13. Yet the Bible does not hide it. Use this passage to open a conversation about the place of lament in Christian community. Before the discussion, acknowledge that some may have experienced or are currently experiencing deep despair. The goal is not to fix the pain but to give it language within the safety of faith.
Discussion questions
- Read Jeremiah 20:13 and then vv.14, 18. What surprises you about the shift in tone?
- Why do you think Jeremiah curses “the day” of his birth? Who or what is he really angry at?
- In what ways does this passage echo the book of Job (especially Job 3)? What does that parallel tell us about the Bible’s willingness to engage suffering?
- Some commentators (Matthew Henry, Poole) believe Jeremiah is recounting a past temptation he already overcame. Others (Calvin, Cambridge) see a present crisis. How does each reading affect how we relate to this text?
- Have you ever felt something like Jeremiah’s wish? How does seeing it in Scripture help or challenge you?
- How can our church group be a safer place for someone who is in the middle of such despair?
- What does the fact that God preserved this lament say about God’s character?
Word Study
The key original-language words in this verse. Select any word for its full lexicon entry — meaning, every occurrence in Scripture, and related words.
Cross-References
Source: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (TSK, public domain)
| Job 3:10 | because it didn’t shut up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor did it hide trouble from my eyes. |
| Job 3:11 | “Why didn’t I die from the womb? Why didn’t I give up the spirit when my mother bore me? |
| Job 3:16 | or as a hidden untimely birth I had not been, as infants who never saw light. |
| Job 10:18 | “‘Why, then, have you brought me out of the womb? I wish I had given up the spirit, and no eye had seen me. |
| Job 10:19 | I should have been as though I had not been. I should have been carried from the womb to the grave. |
| Ecclesiastes 6:3 | If a man fathers a hundred children, and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not filled with good, and moreover he has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better than he; |
Interlinear and lexical data from STEPBible (CC BY 4.0). Cross-reference data from OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0). Commentaries are public domain.
For personal reflection
Read the devotional page — prayer, application, and "for families"
What the Commentators Say
7 public-domain commentaries, condensed into plain language.
Calvin's Commentaries Reformed 1564
Calvin sees Jeremiah's complaint as furious madness, not righteous grief. Jeremiah's expostulation with God for letting him be born reveals such deep ingratitude that it is a form of rage against God himself. Life, even with all its sorrows, remains an evidence of God's invaluable favor, which Jeremiah here despises.
Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges Anglican 1880
The Cambridge Bible for Schools sees this passage as revealing the prophet's deepest emotions, swinging between despair and confident hope. It argues the final verses belong to the later days of Zedekiah, while the earlier ones fit Jehoiakim's reign. The commentator also notes that the similar lament in Job likely derives from Jeremiah's more spontaneous expression.
Geneva Bible Notes Reformed 1599
The Geneva note explains that the speaker wishes he had been killed at birth, so his mother's womb
Gill's Exposition of the Bible Baptist 1748
Gill stresses the shocking cruelty behind Jeremiah's curse. The prophet wishes the messenger had committed murder by killing him as a newborn, a wish that was itself deeply evil. Even worse, Jeremiah's second wish curses his own mother to an endless, painful pregnancy, an unnatural and unbearable evil.
Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Commentary Protestant 1871
JFB identifies the "he" in this verse as the same man mentioned in the previous verses, the bearer of news about Jeremiah's birth. The phrase "from the womb" does not mean before birth, but rather refers to that same time while Jeremiah was still in the womb.
Lange's Commentary Reformed 1857
Lange emphasizes that this entire passage is not a divine oracle but a subjective, private record of Jeremiah's human emotions. The prophet was compelled into his role against his will, and when he tried to stop, an unquenchable inner fire forced him to keep speaking. The abrupt shift from hope to despair reflects raw psychological turmoil, not settled faith.
Matthew Henry's Commentary Reformed/Presbyterian 1710
Henry interprets these verses not as Jeremiah's current sin but as his shamefaced record of past desperation. He suggests the prophet wrote down his outburst from the stocks after faith had recovered, humbling himself and warning others to guard their spirits, amazed that God did not take him at his word.