⁷ Lord, you tricked me, and I certainly was fooled.
    You are stronger than I am, so you won.
I have become a joke.
    People laugh at me and make fun of me all day long.
⁸ Every time I speak, I shout.
    I am always shouting about violence and destruction.
I tell the people about the message that I received from the Lord.
    But they only insult me and make fun of me.
⁹ Sometimes I say to myself, “I will forget about him.
    I will not speak anymore in his name.”
But when I say that, his message is like a fire burning inside me!
    It feels like it is burning deep in my bones!
I get tired of trying to hold his message inside.
    And finally, I am not able to hold it in.
¹⁰ I hear people whispering against me.
    Everywhere, I hear things that frighten me.
    Even my friends are speaking against me.
People are just waiting for me to make a mistake.
    They are saying, “Let us lie and say that he did something bad.
Maybe we can trick Jeremiah.
    Then we will have him.
    We will finally be rid of him.
Then we will grab him
    and take our revenge on him.”
¹¹ But the Lord is with me.
    He is like a strong soldier.
So those who are chasing me will fall.
    They will not defeat me.
They will fail.
    They will be disappointed.
They will be ashamed,
    and they will never forget that shame.

¹⁴ Curse the day that I was born!
    Don’t bless the day my mother had me.
¹⁵ Curse the man who told my father the news that I was born.
    “It’s a boy!” he said.
    “You have a son.”
He made my father very happy
    when he told him the news.
¹⁶ Let that man be like the cities the Lord destroyed.^[a]
    He had no pity on them.
Let him hear shouts of war in the morning;
    let him hear battle cries at noontime,
¹⁷ because he did not kill me
    while I was in my mother’s womb.
If he had killed me then,
    my mother would have been my grave,
    and I would not have been born.
¹⁸ Why did I have to come out of her body?
    All I have seen is trouble and sorrow,
    and my life will end in shame.