Jeremiah describes himself as a broken man, even a living dead. All his suffering has been too much for him: the loneliness, the years of imprisonment by his own people, the disbelief in his prophesies, the fall of the city and the temple, the famine, the death of so many children, and the deportation of his people. For all of these events he does not look to people as the cause. It is God (“he”) who has done it.
4 He has made my flesh and my skin waste away; he has broken my bones;