What Does Jeremiah 20:15 Mean?
Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, A man child is born to you, making him very glad.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Cursed be the man who brought tidings to my father, saying, A man child is born unto thee; making him very glad.THE KEY
A birth announcement is a father’s joy and the speaker’s curse at the same time, so no single response owns the meaning of a beginning.
THE MEANING
A beginning can carry joy for one person and anguish for another. The father is made glad by the news, while the speaker curses its bearer; the verse holds both responses without flattening either one.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that a birth is good news to everyone touched by it. One person’s gladness does not make another person’s anguish false.
THE ROOT
בִּשֵּׂר
bisser
GROWS FROM
בשר
to announce or bear news, often good news
The same consonants also spell בָּשָׂר (basar, flesh); beside the announcement of a newborn, that echo joins the news to the body entering the world. The herald’s message carries the force of good tidings, sharpening the fracture: it gladdens the father while the speaker curses its bearer.
ALSO GROWS
besorah: news, tidings; often good news
בְּשׂוֹרָה
This branch makes the irony audible: the birth report carries the sound of glad tidings, yet the speaker experiences it as the beginning of pain.
mevaser: one who announces or brings news; a herald
מְבַשֵּׂר
It names the role of the man at the center of the verse: he carries the announcement that produces joy for the father and a curse from the speaker.
שִׂמְחָה שִׂמְּחֹו
simḥāh simməḥô
GROWS FROM
שמח
to rejoice, be glad, or make glad
“making him very glad” in this verse is simḥāh simməḥô. The Hebrew repeats the root: roughly, “he made him rejoice with joy.” That doubling intensifies the father’s gladness, setting it beside the speaker’s curse without letting either response erase the other.
ALSO GROWS
simḥāh: joy, gladness
שִׂמְחָה
The noun carries the same root as the verb that describes the father’s reaction, making his joy explicit.
sameaḥ: glad, joyful
שָׂמֵחַ
This familiar branch shows the root’s range from the state of gladness to the act of making someone rejoice.
THE PATTERN
The arrival of life can be named as joy by one person and as grief by another.
And Sarah said, God has made me laugh, and all who hear will laugh with me.Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night in which it was said, "A strong man has been conceived."And the messenger said to them, Do not be afraid, for look, I bring you good news of great joy, which will be for all the people.THE THREAD
Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night in which it was said, "A strong man has been conceived."Job places “a man child” and the words announcing his arrival inside a curse, closely echoing Jeremiah’s birth announcement. Jeremiah curses the bearer of the news; Job curses the moment it is spoken, carrying the grief back to the beginning.
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