Jeremiah 20:12-18

The Message

¹²Oh, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, no one fools you.
You see through everyone, everything.
I want to see you pay them back for what they’ve done.
I rest my case with you.

¹³Sing to God! All praise to God!
He saves the weak from the grip of the wicked.

* * *

^14-18Curse the day
    I was born!
The day my mother bore me—
    a curse on it, I say!
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.)
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.
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.
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.