IN many prisons and detention cells all over the world, there are people languishing and wasting away.  Why?  They were roped into crimes they did not aid and abet and circumstances conspired to prove they committed crimes they did not commit.  Some were locked up on trumped up charges. People who were not coup plotters are known to have been donned in the garb of coup plotters and summarily executed.

There have been cases where innocent civilian passers-by were caught  in the crossfire between cops and armed robbers and were killed.  Most pathetically this same phenomenon where the innocent suffer, also occurs in the spirit realm too.
(Concluded)

Jer. 15:10,18
WOE is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth! I have neither lent on usury, nor men have lent to me on usury; yet every one of them doth curse me.

Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable, which refuseth to be healed? Wilt thou be altogether unto me as a liar, and as waters that fail?
The meaning of the word “innocent” should be easy to access.  Nevertheless we will define it. It means to be blameless, harmless, still preserved in pristine form, not guilty of a particular crime or any crime for that matter.

It also implies that a man or woman is free from sin.  This “innocence” by implication means a state or quality of being guiltless.

“Suffering” means to undergo an ordeal that is terrible, negative, harrowing, painful or stressful.  Suffering could come in different forms.  It could be mental, psychological, physical, spiritual, marital, etc.

So when the innocent, that is someone who is guiltless of a crime, is suffering, that is made to undergo terrible and harrowing experiences for an offence he did not commit, it is paradoxical and ironical.  It is a situation that ought not to be but by some cruel twist of fate is. 

Thus, in the text quoted above a prophet was complaining.   Jeremiah from whose name the English word “jeremiad” was coined to describe those who readily weep and complain, was protesting his innocence in the face of suffering.  He said he had never given usury and had never taken one, yet every one around him was cursing him for what he did not know anything about.   In verse 18, he lamented three things. First, his perpetual pain – that is, he did not understand why he had to be undergoing terrible suffering as he was undergoing for an offence he did not commit.