O LORD, you have deceived me, and I was deceived: you are stronger than I, and have prevailed: I am in derision daily, everyone mocks me.
Read Chapter 20
George Leo Haydock
AD 1849
Thou hast deceived The meaning of the prophet is not to charge God with any untruth; but what he calls deceiving, was only the concealing from him, when he accepted of the prophetical commission, the greatness of the evils which the execution of that commission was to bring upon him. (Challoner)
Hebrew, "thou hast enticed me "when I declined the office. (Tirinus)
God never promised that he should suffer no persecution. (Haydock)
Jeremias might also have supposed that he was to be sent to the Gentiles, chap. i. 5. (St. Jerome in chap xxv. 18.)
The oriental languages are much more lofty than ours, and express common things in the strongest manner. (Calmet)
We may perceive the different emotions of fear and joy (Du Hamel) with which the prophet was actuated, like St. Paul, and our Saviour himself. The saints evince the weakness of man and the power of divine grace. (Calmet)
Hebrew, "If thou, Lord, hast deceived me, I am "(Tournemine)
The prophet says that he was deceived by the Lord because, when he heard the Lord say in the beginning, “I gave you as a prophet to the nations,” and, again, “Behold, I establish you today over nations and over kingdoms, that you may uproot and destroy and overthrow and dissolve and build and plant,” he believed that none of this was spoken against the people of Judea, but only against the various nations surrounding them, thus leading him to accept his prophetic mission willingly. To the contrary, however, as it turns out, he found himself preaching to a captive Jerusalem that suffered persecution and imprisonment. He also adds, “I have become an object of derision all the day; everyone mocks me,” because they all judged him to be a liar and everything that he had prophesied to them to be a lie. For, as the prophet thought that the future that the Lord predicted was to be realized immediately, the people also expected nothing further to be coming that did not arrive at once. And he co...
