In the last confession of Jeremiah, Jer 20,7–18, the individual complaint in vv. 7–13 and the poem of vv. 14–18 appear to have been put side by side without any obvious connection. The present study seeks to establish the relationship between these pericopes. A closer analysis of the complaint from a literary critical point of view suggests that vv. 7a.8–9 form the basic layer of the pericope, while vv. 10.12 and 11.13 should be considered as later expansions. Vv.