Let them be confounded that persecute me
With words with reproaches, with scoffs and jeers, saying, "where is the word of the Lord?" ( Jeremiah 17:14 ) ; let such be ashamed that scoffingly put such a question, by seeing the accomplishment of it:
but let not me be confounded;
who have delivered it out as the word of the Lord, that should be surely fulfilled; let not me be brought to shame by the failure of it and be reckoned as a false prophet:
let them be dismayed;
terrified and affrighted when they shall see the judgments of God coming upon them, which they have jeeringly called for:
but let not me be dismayed;
by their not coming, or when they shall come; but preserve and protect me:
bring upon them the day of evil;
of punishment; which they put far away, and scoff at; though the prophet did not desire the woeful day to come upon the people in general, yet upon his persecutors in particular. Jarchi interprets it of the men of Anathoth alone; and which desire of his did not arise from malice towards them, but from indignation at their sin and for the glory of the divine Being, whose name was blasphemed by them:
and destroy them with double destruction;
not with two sorts of judgments, sword and famine, as Jerom; but with an utter destruction, with breach after breach, destruction after destruction, until they were entirely destroyed; unless it should have regard to the two times of destruction, first by the Chaldeans, and then by the Romans.