Jeremiah 20:2 - Exposition

Pashur, being charged with the police of the temple, smites Jeremiah, i.e. causes stripes to be given him, and then orders him to be put into the stocks ; literally, that which distorts— some instrument of punishment which held the body in a bent or crooked position (comp. Jeremiah 29:26 ). The "stocks" were sometimes kept in a special house ( 2 Chronicles 16:10 ); these mentioned here, however, apparently stood in public, at the high—or rather, upper— gate of Benjamin , which was by—or, at— the house of the Lord . The gate, then, was one of the temple gates, and is called "the upper" to distinguish it from one of the city gates which bore the same name ( Jeremiah 37:13 ; Jeremiah 38:7 ). It is presumably the same which is called "the new gate of the Lord's house" ( Jeremiah 26:10 ; Jeremiah 36:10 ), as having been comparatively lately built ( 2 Kings 15:35 ).