"Come, and let us smite him with the tongue?" he asked, with a jeering laugh. He told them that they were fools to argue with the pest. He would show them how to deal with him.
Pashhur buckled up his mantle, gritting his teeth. He fairly ran to the open place where Jeremiah was speaking. He burst through the crowd with curses upon them all. Facing Jeremiah, he shouted:
"Thou—" but his anger and hate overcame him. He almost foamed at the mouth with rage and could not speak a word.
Before Jeremiah understood what the matter was, Pashhur slapped him on both cheeks with his hands. Then he struck him square on the jaw with his right fist—and Jeremiah dropped to the slabbed marble of the courtyard, where he had been standing.
The crowd was startled and amazed at what had happened. But Pashhur gave no opportunity for remonstrance. A number of the Temple guards, who had come up with their chief, dispersed the people with curses and blows.
Pashhur stood over the prostrate body of Jeremiah, like the victor over his defeated adversary—waiting for him to show signs of rising that he might strike him again. When Jeremiah regained consciousness, however, the brutal Pashhur had thought better of it. Another such blow and he would have killed the prophet—and Pashhur knew the law on shedding innocent blood.
Therefore, when Jeremiah had fully recovered and had once more risen to his feet, Pashhur arrested him and had him led to the upper Temple gate, which is the gate of Benjamin. There he put him into the stocks with his own hands.
That whole day and that whole night Jeremiah remained pilloried. Hundreds of people passed him. Some, urged on by the priests and the false prophets, mocked at him; some, pitying him from the depths of their hearts, sympathized with him; some spat upon him.
Near the pillory, all that day and night, there hovered a gray-haired Ethiopian who longed to speak a word of cheer and comfort to the unfortunate prophet and to give him water to drink and food to eat, but he dared not because of the guard that Pashhur had placed over him.
During all the terrible agony and shame, Jeremiah did not utter a loud word of complaint or condemnation.