Jeremiah 20:16

16 Let that birth notice be blacked out, deleted from the records, And the man who brought it haunted to his death with the bad news he brought.

Jeremiah 20:16 Meaning and Commentary

Jeremiah 20:16

And let that man be as the cities which the Lord overthrew,
&c.] In his fury, as the Targum and Septuagint add. Meaning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, who were utterly destroyed, and were never recovered: and repented not;
whose sentence God never repented of, nor revoked: this was very severe and uncharitable, to wish for so sore a destruction upon an innocent person; and let him hear the cry in the morning, and the shouting at noontide;
as soon as he is up in the morning, the first thing that salutes his ears, let it be the noise of an enemy invading the city he dwells in; and by noon let him hear the shouting of him, having broke in, and gotten the victory, seizing the plunder.

Jeremiah 20:16 In-Context

14 Curse the day I was born! The day my mother bore me - a curse on it, I say!
15 And curse the man who delivered the news to my father: "You've got a new baby - a boy baby!" (How happy it made him.)
16 Let that birth notice be blacked out, deleted from the records, And the man who brought it haunted to his death with the bad news he brought.
17 He should have killed me before I was born, with that womb as my tomb, My mother pregnant for the rest of her life with a baby dead in her womb.
18 Why, oh why, did I ever leave that womb? Life's been nothing but trouble and tears, and what's coming is more of the same.
Published by permission. Originally published by NavPress in English as THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright 2002 by Eugene Peterson. All rights reserved.