Jeremiah 11:20 - Exposition

(Parallel passage, Jeremiah 20:12 .) Unto thee have I revealed my cause. This is the literal rendering, but a comparison of Psalms 22:8 and Proverbs 16:3 , suggests that the In meaning is Upon thee have I rolled my cause." This expression is certainly not only more forcible, but more appropriate than the other. Jeremiah's cause was not a secret which needed to be "revealed" to Jehovah, but a burden too heavy for so finely strung a nature to bear alone. Grammatically, the preferred meaning is quite justifiable, though less obvious, as there are other instances of an interchange of meanings between two classes of verbs (see on Jeremiah 33:6 ).