Lyrics · Jeremiah
A Fire in My Bones
Jeremiah 19:1-20:18
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This song belongs to the Jeremiah collection. One recording is available to play here, with the complete lyrics below.
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About the passage
Jeremiah 19: A broken vessel before public witnesses
Jeremiah 19 returns to pottery, but the object is no longer soft clay on a wheel. Jeremiah takes a finished earthen bottle and representative elders into the valley of Hinnom, a place already marked by innocent blood and the burning of children to Baal. The witnesses matter because the sign will be performed before public leadership, not merely reported from a private encounter. The valley is renamed through the slaughter that is coming, and siege is described as the destruction of even the most basic bonds of human care. Jeremiah then breaks the vessel. Unlike the clay remade in chapter 18, this bottle represents a city entering a judgment that will not leave its existing form intact. Rooftop worship brings Jerusalem's own houses under the valley's accusation, so sacred and prestigious locations cannot distance themselves from the practices condemned there. The final movement returns to the temple court, where Jeremiah repeats the warning and names stubborn refusal to hear as its cause.
Study Jeremiah 19 in depthJeremiah 20: Fire within, terror on every side
Jeremiah 20 places public humiliation and private lament in the same chapter without forcing either one to explain the other away. Pashur, a priest and temple official, strikes Jeremiah and confines him in stocks for speaking the warning from chapter 19. Release does not produce retraction. Jeremiah names Pashur "terror on every side" and announces Babylonian captivity. Then the speech turns inward. Jeremiah accuses God of overpowering him, says the word has made him a daily object of ridicule, and describes silence as impossible because the word becomes fire shut up in his bones. Confidence follows as he declares that his persecutors will not prevail and calls for praise. Yet praise does not get the final line. Jeremiah curses the day of his birth and asks why he ever came from the womb to see sorrow and shame. The Book of Jeremiah leaves that last question unanswered, refusing a neat progression from despair to triumph.
Study Jeremiah 20 in depth


