4. "For I have heard the defaming of many, the terror on every side;[85] All the men of my friendship are watching for my fall; 'Perchance he will be enticed, and we shall prevail over him, And take our revenge of him.'
5. "Yet Iahvah is with me as a dread warrior, Therefore my pursuers shall stumble and not prevail; They shall be greatly ashamed, for that they have not prospered, With eternal dishonour that shall not be forgotten.
6. "And Iahvah Sabaoth trieth the righteous, Seeth the reins and the heart; I shall see Thy revenge of them, For unto Thee have I committed my quarrel.
7. Sing ye to Iahvah, acclaim ye Iahvah! For He hath snatched the poor man's life out of the hand of evildoers."
The cause was of God. _Thou didst lure me, Iahvah, and I let myself be lured; Thou urgedst me and wert victorious._ He had not rashly and presumptuously taken upon himself this office of prophet; he had been called, and had resisted the call, until his scruples and his pleadings were overcome, as was only natural, by a Will more powerful than his own (chap. i. 6). In speaking of the inward persuasions which determined the course of his life, he uses the very terms which are used by the author of Kings in connexion with the spirit that misled the prophets of Arab before the fatal expedition to Ramoth Gilead. _And he said, Thou shalt entice, and also be victorious_ (1 Kings xxii. 22). Iahvah, therefore, has treated him as an enemy rather than a friend, for He has lured him to his own destruction. Half in irony, half in bitter complaint, the prophet declares that Iahvah has succeeded only too well in His malign purpose: _I am become a derision all the day long; Every one mocketh at me_.
In the second stanza, the thought appears to be continued thus: _Thou overcamest me; for as often as I speak_, I am a prophet of evil, _I cry alarm_ (_`ez'aq_; cf. _zĕ`aqah_, vers. 16); I proclaim the imminence of invasion, the _violence and havoc_ of a ruthless conqueror. _Thou overcamest me_ also, in Thy purpose of making me a laughing-stock to my adversaries; _for Iahvah's word is become to me a reproach, and a scoff all the day long_ (the relation between the two halves of the stanza is that of coordination; each gives the reason of the corresponding couplet in the first stanza). His continual threats of a judgment that was still delayed, brought upon him the merciless ridicule of his opponents.
Or the prophet may mean to complain that the monotony of his message, his ever-recurring denunciation of prevalent injustice, is made a reproach against him. _For as often as I speak I make an outcry_ of indignation at foul wrongdoing (Gen. iv. 10, xviii. 21, xix. 13); _wrong and robbery do I proclaim_ (Hab. i. 2, 3)--the oppression of the poor by the covetous and luxurious ruling classes. A third view is that Jeremiah complains of the frequent attacks upon himself: _For_ _as often as I speak I have to exclaim; Of assault and violence do I cry_; but the first suggestion appears to suit best, as giving a reason for the ridicule which the prophet finds so intolerable (cf. xvii. 15).
The third stanza carries this plea for justice a step further. Not only was the prophet's overwhelming trouble due to his having yielded to the persuasions and promises of Iahvah; not only has he been rewarded with scorn and the scourge and the stocks for his compliance with a Divine call. He has been in a manner forced and driven into his intolerable position by the coercive power of Iahvah, which left him no choice but to utter the word that burnt like a fire within him. Sometimes his fears of perfidy and betrayal suggested the thought of succumbing to the insuperable obstacles which seemed to block his path; of giving up once for all a thankless and fruitless and dangerous enterprise: but then the inward flame burnt so fiercely, that he could find no relief for his anguish but by giving it vent in words (cf. Ps. xxxix. 1-3).