Jeremiah 15:10
“Woe is me, my mother, that you have borne me, a man of strife, and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have not lent, neither have men lent to me; yet every one of them curses me.”
What does Jeremiah 15:10 mean?
Jeremiah is expressing deep despair about his calling as a prophet. He's not literally wishing he'd never been born, but rather pouring out the pain of being God's messenger in a time when people rejected his warnings about judgment. His complaint captures the loneliness of speaking truth that nobody wants to hear. The detail about lending is interesting: Jeremiah is saying he hasn't even engaged in the normal business transactions of life, yet still everyone curses him. This shows how thoroughly he's isolated, not because of anything he's actually done wrong, but simply because of the unpopular message he's been called to deliver. Many people who've taken difficult stands for what they believed to be right know this feeling of being rejected for doing what they felt they had to do.