Pashhur, and the Name Terror on Every Side
1 Now Pashhur, the son of Immer the priest, who was chief officer in Yahweh’s house, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things. 2 Then Pashhur struck Jeremiah the prophet and put him in the stocks that were in the upper gate of Benjamin, which was in Yahweh’s house. 3 On the next day, Pashhur released Jeremiah out of the stocks. Then Jeremiah said to him, “Yahweh has not called your name Pashhur, but Magormissabib. 4 For Yahweh says, ‘Behold, I will make you a terror to yourself and to all your friends. They will fall by the sword of their enemies, and your eyes will see it. I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will carry them captive to Babylon, and will kill them with the sword. 5 Moreover I will give all the riches of this city, and all its gains, and all its precious things, yes, I will give all the treasures of the kings of Judah into the hand of their enemies. They will make them captives, take them, and carry them to Babylon. 6 You, Pashhur, and all who dwell in your house will go into captivity. You will come to Babylon, and there you will die, and there you will be buried, you, and all your friends, to whom you have prophesied falsely.’”
The temple's chief officer beats the prophet and locks him up overnight, and is answered the next morning with a new name that becomes his sentence.
The man who arrests Jeremiah holds the senior policing role in the temple. The punishment he administers is both physical and public: a beating, then the stocks in the upper gate of Benjamin, inside the sanctuary precinct. A prophet is disciplined by the institution he was sent to, in its own building, at the gate where everyone passes. Nothing about the arrest was illegal in the ordinary sense. It was the routine exercise of authority over a man disturbing worship.
What happens on release is the reply. Jeremiah does not appeal, protest or accuse. He renames the officer — Yahweh has not called your name Pashhur, but Magormissabib, terror on every side — and then explains it. Renaming was a serious act in that world. The new name is a sentence rather than an insult, because the phrase is one Jeremiah uses repeatedly for the condition of a nation under invasion Jeremiah 6:25. A man who had just made himself the enforcer of official calm is given the name of the panic that is coming.
The content of the sentence is then spelled out, and its first clause is the strangest: I will make you a terror to yourself and to all your friends. Not merely a man who experiences terror, but one who becomes it. He is the source of the fear rather than only its object, watching with his own eyes as the friends he reassured fall by the sword. Then the treasures of the city, the gains, the precious things and the royal wealth all go to Babylon, itemized like an inventory being handed over.
The last verse closes it personally and quietly. Pashhur will go into captivity, come to Babylon, die there and be buried there, with all his friends to whom you have prophesied falsely. That final clause identifies him properly. He was not simply an administrator keeping order. He had been telling people the reassuring thing, and the men he reassured are named as the ones who go into the ground beside him in a foreign country. Jeremiah is beaten, released and left where he is, and he says nothing about his own vindication at all.
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