10:18 “Why then did you bring me out from the womb?
I should have died 1
and no eye would have seen me!
10:19 I should have been as though I had never existed; 2
I should have been carried
right from the womb to the grave!
15:10 I said, 3
“Oh, mother, how I regret 4 that you ever gave birth to me!
I am always starting arguments and quarrels with the people of this land. 5
I have not lent money to anyone and I have not borrowed from anyone.
Yet all of these people are treating me with contempt.” 6
20:14 Cursed be the day I was born!
May that day not be blessed when my mother gave birth to me. 7
20:15 Cursed be the man
who made my father very glad
when he brought him the news
that a baby boy had been born to him! 8
1 tn The two imperfect verbs in this section are used to stress regrets for something which did not happen (see GKC 317 §107.n).
2 sn This means “If only I had never come into existence.”
3 tn The words “I said” are not in the text. They are supplied in the translation for clarity to mark a shift in the speaker.
4 tn Heb “Woe to me, my mother.” See the comments on 4:13 and 10:19.
5 tn Heb “A man of strife and a man of contention with all the land.” The “of” relationship (Hebrew and Greek genitive) can convey either subjective or objective relationships, i.e., he instigates strife and contention or he is the object of it. A study of usage elsewhere, e.g., Isa 41:11; Job 31:35; Prov 12:19; 25:24; 26:21; 27:15, is convincing that it is subjective. In his role as God’s covenant messenger charging people with wrong doing he has instigated counterarguments and stirred about strife and contention against him.
6 tc The translation follows the almost universally agreed upon correction of the MT. Instead of reading כֻּלֹּה מְקַלְלַונִי (kulloh mÿqallavni, “all of him is cursing me”) as the Masoretes proposed (Qere) one should read קִלְלוּנִי (qilluni) with the written text (Kethib) and redivide and repoint with the suggestion in BHS כֻּלְּהֶם (qullÿhem, “all of them are cursing me”).
7 sn From the heights of exaltation, Jeremiah returns to the depths of despair. For similar mood swings in the psalms of lament compare Ps 102. Verses 14-18 are similar in tone and mood to Job 3:1-10. They are very forceful rhetorical ways of Job and Jeremiah expressing the wish that they had never been born.
8 tn Heb “Cursed be the man who brought my father the news saying, ‘A son, a male, has been born to you,’ making glad his joy.” This verse has been restructured for English stylistic purposes.