Because he did not
kill me in the womb; so my mother would have been my grave, and her womb
forever great (Jer. 20:17).
In her book Lamentations and the Tears of the World, Old Testament professor Kathleen
O’Connor writes, “Laments announce aloud and publicly what is wrong right now.
Laments create room within the individual and the community not only for grief
and loss but also for seeing and naming injustice.”
The prophet
Jeremiah was speaking lamentations when he said that he wished he’d never been
born and it would have been better to have been killed in his mother’s
womb.
What I find
interesting is the phrase, “kill me in the womb.” I thought the fetus was not a
person. One can only kill that which is
alive. If the fetus is not viable within
the womb, then how can it be killed?
I also find
interesting that it was before Jeremiah was actually formed in the womb that God
called him to be a prophet to the nations (cf. 1:5). Why would God call someone who is not even
formed in the womb let alone born? Unless of course, God sees the beginning and
the end at the same time and knows that such is a person with God-given
potential.
Jeremiah even mentions
how he prefers his mother’s womb to be his grave. These are the words of a man who is depressed
and burdened.
The safest place
for a viable human being not yet born is in the womb. Yet, we have laws that have turned a mother’s
womb into death chambers and graves.
