Jeremiah 32

1. The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD in the tenth year of Zedekiah king of 2 Judah, which was the eighteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar. Now at that time the king of Babylon’s army besieged Jerusalem: and Jeremiah the prophet was shut up in the court of 3 the guard, which was in the king of Judah’s house. For Zedekiah king of Judah had shut him up, saying, Wherefore dost thou prophesy, and say, Thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will 4 give this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall take it; and Zedekiah king of Judah shall not escape out of the hand of the Chaldeans, but shall surely be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon, and shall speak with him mouth to mouth, and his eyes 5 shall behold his eyes; and he shall lead Zedekiah to Babylon, and there shall he be until I visit him, saith the LORD: though ye fight with the Chaldeans, ye shall not prosper? 6, 7 And Jeremiah said, The word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Behold, Hanamel the son of Shallum thine uncle shall come unto thee, saying, Buy thee my field that is in Anathoth: for the right of redemption is thine to buy it. So Hanamel mine uncle’s son came to me in the court of the guard according to the word of the LORD, and said unto me, Buy my field, I pray thee, that is in Anathoth, which is in the land of Benjamin: for the right of inheritance is thine, and the redemption is thine; buy it for thyself. Then I knew that this 9 was the word of the LORD. And I bought the field that was in Anathoth of Hanamel mine 10 uncle’s son, and weighed him the money, even seventeen shekels of silver. And I subscribed the deed, and sealed it, and called witnesses, and weighed him the money in the balances. 11 So I took the deed of the purchase, both that which was sealed according to the law and 12 custom, and that which was open: and I delivered the deed of the purchase unto Baruch the son of Neriah, the son of Mahseiah, in the presence of Hanamel mine uncle’s son, and in the presence of the witnesses that subscribed the deed of the purchase, before all the Jews that 13, 14 sat in the court of the guard. And I charged Baruch before them, saying, Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Take these deeds, this deed of the purchase, both that which is sealed, and this deed which is open, and put them in an earthen vessel; that they 15 may continue many days. For thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall yet again be bought in this land. 16 Now after I had delivered the deed of the purchase unto Baruch the son of Neriah, I 17 prayed unto the LORD, saying, Ah, LORD GOD! behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and by thy stretched out arm; there is nothing too hard for thee: 18 which shewest mercy unto thousands, and recompenses the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children after them: the great, the mighty God, the LORD of hosts is his name: 19 great in counsel, and mighty in work: whose eyes are open upon all the ways of the sons of men; to give every one according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings: 20 which didst set signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, even unto this day, both in Israel 21 and among other men; and madest thee a name, as at this day; and didst bring forth thy people Israel out of the land of Egypt with signs, and with wonders, and with a strong hand, and 22 with a stretched out arm, and with great terror; and gavest them this land, which thou didst 23 swear to their fathers to give them, a land flowing with milk and honey; and they came in, and possessed it; but they obeyed not thy voice, neither walked in thy law; they have done nothing of all that thou commandedst them to do: therefore thou hast caused all this evil to 24 come upon them: behold the mounts, they are come unto the city to take it; and the city is given into the hand of the Chaldeans that fight against it, because of the sword, and of the famine, and of the pestilence: and what thou hast spoken is come to pass; and, behold, thou 25 seest it. And thou hast said unto me, O LORD GOD, Buy thee the field for money, and call witnesses; whereas the city is given into the hand of the Chaldeans. 26, 27 Then came the word of the LORD unto Jeremiah, saying, Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me? 28 Therefore thus saith the LORD: Behold, I will give this city into the hand of the Chaldeans, 29 and into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and he shall take it: and the Chaldeans, that fight against this city, shall come and set this city on fire, and burn it, with the houses, upon whose roofs they have offered incense unto Baal, and poured out drink offerings 30 unto other gods, to provoke me to anger. For the children of Israel and the children of Judah have only done that which was evil in my sight from their youth: for the children of 31 Israel have only provoked me to anger with the work of their hands, saith the LORD. For this city hath been to me a provocation of mine anger and of my fury from the day that they built

32 it even unto this day; that I should remove it from before my face: because of all the evil of the children of Israel and of the children of Judah, which they have done to provoke me to anger, they, their kings, their princes, their priests, and their prophets, and the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And they have turned unto me the back, and not the face: and though I taught them, rising up early and teaching them, yet they have not hearkened to receive instruction. But they set their abominations in the house which is called by my name, to defile it. And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination; to cause Judah to sin. 36 And now therefore thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel, concerning this city, whereof ye say, It is given into the hand of the king of Babylon by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence: Behold, I will gather them out of all the countries, whither I have driven them in mine anger, and in my fury, and in great wrath; and I will bring them again unto this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God: and I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me for ever; for the good of them, and of their children after them: and I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; and I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me. Yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant them in this land assuredly with my whole heart and with my whole soul. For thus saith the LORD: Like as I have brought all this great evil upon this people, so will I bring upon them all the good that I have promised them. And fields shall be bought in this land, whereof ye say, It is desolate, without man or beast; it is given into the hand of the Chaldeans. Men shall buy fields for money, and subscribe the deeds, and seal them, and call witnesses, in the land of Benjamin, and in the places about Jerusalem, and in the cities of Judah, and in the cities of the hill country, and in the cities of the lowland, and in the cities of the South: for I will cause their captivity to return, saith the LORD.

32:6-8. The previous verses give us the circumstances of Jeremiah at the time of this transaction. It seems to have had no reference to the king, but was designed to encourage the pious portion of the people with the assurance that this pending captivity, though terrible, would yet have an end, and the land be yet repeopled. First, the Lord apprised Jeremiah that Hanameel would soon come and say, “Buy my field in Anathoth.” Hence, when he came, Jeremiah knew this was from the Lord. The right of purchase was in the nearest male relative. For the purpose of giving permanence to the location of the several tribes, as well as to restrain the people from removing their residences, the right to alienate their land was carefully restricted by law.

14,15. An earthen vessel would preserve these documents even if they should be buried in the earth for safe keeping. It was supposed by Jerome that this was the prophet’s intention. Verse 15 brings out on Divine authority the significance of this whole transaction. It was God’s testimony that houses, fields and vineyards should be again possessed in that land. This land, though now doomed to ruin, would arise from its desolation and shine again in the beauty of Eden. Jeremiah’s purchase evinced his enduring faith in God. Though he knew the city must be destroyed and the people driven into exile, yet he believed in God that they would yet return and rebuild this city. Moreover, since God Himself directed Jeremiah to do this thing, it became God’s own promise and prophecy of restoration to their country. H. C.

14. It would seem, from verses 10, 11, that clay came to be used in Judah as a writing material, just as it was at Babylon or Nineveh, the inner clay record of a contract being covered with an outer coating, on which was inscribed an abstract of its contents, together with the names of the witnesses. Jeremiah’s deed of purchase, moreover, was preserved in a jar, like the numerous clay deeds of the Egibi banking-firm, which existed at Babylon from the age of Nebuchadnezzar to that of Xerxes. These jars served the purpose of our modern safes. Sayce.

In his desperate extremity, Hanameel urged his cousin Jeremiah to take off his hands a property that was exposed to such terrible risk. That ancestral farm had been in his family from the conquest of the Holy Land by Joshua. It had been apportioned to his line by God’s own appointment, and registered in the great Doomsday Book of the Sacred Scriptures. It was the most precious of all the possessions of an Israelite, and was the last thing he would part with, losing his life itself rather than losing it; for it was this farm that was his charter to an inheritance in the Land of Promise, and his right to be numbered among God’s covenant people. Notwithstanding these solemn sanctions, however, Hanameel wished to part with this significant property in a panic of hopelessness. In such a time of disaster, the property would be greatly depreciated in value.

Jeremiah would not take the property at a depreciated value. He would give the full price for it. What a wonderful confidence he had in God’s faithfulness to His promises! It seemed at the time as if the end of the covenant people had come; as if Jerusalem and the Land of Promise, with all their sacred institutions, were to pass away from them forever, and to become the possession of their enemies. Every prospect was gloomy in the extreme. There seemed no hope of deliverance. And yet Jeremiah, with prophetic foresight, looked beyond the impending calamity to happier times. And with all the forms and technicalities of legal conveyancing, as if the times were perfectly prosperous and assured, he purchased the field of his fathers from his timorous and faithless kinsman. And then in a splendid oration—half prayer and half exhortation—he proceeded to show that this private domestic transaction was an acted parable of wonderful and far-reaching significance; for the purchase of his own ancestral field was an earnest of a coming time when every field in the land should be possessed in the same way, and the people should again sit each man under his own vine and fig-tree.

And is there not in our own religious experience in these days something that answers to the action of Jeremiah? We live in times of widespread unbelief. The enemies of the faith once delivered to the saints are assailing it with plausible arguments, drawn from the remarkable discoveries and theories of science. The treasure which our fathers have handed down to us has been thrown into the crucible of hostile criticism, and in the residuum we can find little of the precious ore. We are urged to part with much which past ages believed, and to which they attached the highest value; to give up a creed that is old and worn out and effete, and unsuitable to the times, that has no solid ground to rest upon, and that can yield us nothing but disappointment and despair. Shall we then in these troublous times, when so many are capitulating and giving way to the foe, part with our spiritual patrimony—with that which constitutes our dearest and most precious possession? No! We shall not act the faithless, cowardly part of Hanameel. We shall, like faithful Jeremiah, buy the truth and sell it not; for nothing that we could get in exchange would satisfy us. We shall hold fast the profession of our faith to the end; for no other faith—no scientific or philosophic creed—could make up to us for its loss. We shall keep, God helping us, that which our Saviour has bought for us with His own precious blood. We have succeeded to a great tradition of Divine truth, to which all the intervening ages have borne witness, whose grand principle is stability, and upon whose substance, however its forms and organizations may vary in adaptation to the requirements of each age, is stamped the seal of finality. Into that impregnable citadel we shall retire, and find there strength for faith and power to stand in the evil day. We know that the foundation standeth sure, and that the structure built upon it will abide the severest test, and will emerge only purer and more stable through the very ordeal of fire itself. We know that the present storm of doubt and unbelief will pass away, and there will be again faith upon the earth, and the spiritual atmosphere will be cleared of all its clouds, and the eternal verities of our faith will be made visible like a chain of Alpine peaks, stainless and serene in their untrodden snow, shining out against the infinite purity of the blue heavens, when the dark vapors that obscured them for a while have passed away. H. Macmillan.

Prayer of Jeremiah, Verses 16–25.

16. I prayed unto the Lord. And what a prayer! for weight of matter, sublimity of expression, profound veneration, just conception, Divine unction, powerful pleading, and strength of faith. Historical without flatness, condensed without obscurity, confessing the greatest of crimes against the most righteous of Beings, without despairing of His mercy or presuming on His goodness; a confession that in fact acknowledges that God’s justice should smite and destroy had not His infinite goodness said, I will pardon and spare. A. C.

17–25. In this prayer Jeremiah adores God and His infinite perfections, and gives Him the glory due to His name as the Creator, Upholder, and Benefactor of the whole creation, thereby owning His irresistible power, that He can do what He will, and His incontestable sovereignty, that He may do what He will (verses 17–19). When at any time we are perplexed about the particular methods and dispensations of Providence, it is good for us to satisfy ourselves with the doctrines of God’s wisdom, power and goodness. God is the fountain of all being, power, life, motion and perfection; He made the heaven and the earth with His outstretched arm; and therefore who can control Him? Who dares contend with Him? With Him nothing is impossible, no difficulty insuperable. Nothing is too hard for Thee; with God are strength and wisdom sufficient to master all opposition. He is a God of boundless, bottomless mercy; that is His darling attribute; it is His goodness that is His glory; “Thou not only art kind, but Thou showest lovingkindness, not to a few, to here and there one, but to thousands, thousands of persons, thousands of generations.” He is a God of impartial and inflexible justice. His reprieves are not pardons. He is a God of universal dominion and command; He is the great God, for He is the mighty God; and might among men makes them great. He is the Lord of hosts, of all hosts, that is His name, and He answers to His name, for all the hosts of heaven and earth, of men and angels, are at His beck. He contrives everything for the best, and effects everything as He contrived it; He is great in counsel, so vast are the reaches and so deep are the designs of His wisdom; and He is mighty in doing, according to the counsel of His will. Now such a God as this is not to be quarrelled with. His service is to be constantly adhered to, and all His disposals cheerfully acquiesced in.

He acknowledges the universal cognizance God takes of all the actions of the children of men, and the unerring judgment He passes upon them (verse 19)—Thine eyes are open upon all the sons of men, wherever they are, beholding the evil and the good, and upon all their ways, both the course they take and every step they take, not as an unconcerned spectator, but as an observing Judge, to give every one according to his ways and according to his deserts, which are the fruit of his doings, for men shall find God as they are found of Him.

He bewails the rebellions they had been guilty of against God, and the judgments God had brought upon them for these rebellions. God had done everything that He promised them to do, but they had done nothing of all that He commanded them to do (verse 23); they made no conscience of any of His laws, they walked not in them, paid no respect to any of His calls by His prophets for they obeyed not His voice. And therefore he owns that God was righteous in causing all this evil to come upon them. The city is besieged, is attacked by the sword without, is weakened and wasted by the famine and pestilence within (verse 24); it is given into their hands (verse 25). He compares the present state of Jerusalem with the Divine predictions, and finds that what God has spoken is come to pass. God had given them fair warning of it before; if they had regarded this the ruin had been prevented. He neither complains of God for what He had done, nor prescribes to God what He should do, but desires He would behold their case, and is pleased to think that He does behold it. H.

17. Thou hast made the heaven and the earth by Thy great power.** God has computed the mutual perturbations of millions of suns, and planets, and comets and worlds, without number, through the ages that are passed, and throughout the ages which are yet to come, with perfect and absolute precision. The universe is in motion—system rising above system, cluster above cluster, nebula above nebula—all majestically sweeping around under the providence of God, who alone knows the end from the beginning, and before whose glory and power all intelligent things, whether in heaven or on earth, should bow with humility and awe. O. M. Mitchell.

Think of the great natural forces revealed in our outlook on the structure and processes of the astronomical earth and heavens. The thunders and lightnings in their might, the winds and waves at their best, the uplift that sets mountains and continents on their high places, the fires that lap up forests and cities in an hour and turn the toughest metals into fluids and vapors, the forces implied in the annual output of vegetable life as well as in tornadoes, volcanoes and earthquakes—these are very impressive, but not so impressive as the forces implied in the rush of comets and planets, in the fierce disturbances seen in the photosphere of the sun, in the sweep of a system of millions of huge worlds at the rate of a million miles an hour, above all in the sum of the dynamics included in the universe system sweeping at about the same inconceivable rate around this centre of gravity. What a Power must He be who could originate, harness and keep well in hand such terrible forces! “The thunder of His power who can understand!"—how natural such a thought to a reasonable astronomer as he looks forth from his Uraniberg on the prodigious stellar movements! Burr.

In the Infinite Mind there can be no distinction of past, present and future. He is from eternity to eternity, and in every stage of development He is no less present than were each stage a fresh creation. Nay, it is a fresh creation; for the Omnipotent Will must be incessant, eternal, else not omnipotent. He is no less the Immanent Cause than the First Cause. The universe subsists, the vast design unrolls, by His unceasing fiat. Let that fiat be for one instant withhold, the universe vanishes like the shadow of a dream. Law is but a provisional fiction of philosophy—the non-religious name for the modes of administration of an orderly universe. Law has a real meaning only for conscious law-keepers—for men and angels, not for suns and stars and oceans—for intelligent causes, not for unintelligent effects. There is no power of obedience in the inanimate objects to which we apply that term. Cut them adrift from the infinite, unceasing Will-Power which holds them in their courses—there would remain for them no law but inertia, which would either arrest them in eternal stillness, or hurl them into internecine chaos. A. P. Peabody.

The Most Ancient still works before our eyes. Events succeed to-day in the same orders as in the past. We anticipate the events of to-morrow; we project thought into the coming ages; we see in imagination the great events which will transpire after our bodies sleep in the dust. We read beforehand the scroll of history destined to be unrolled when our race has passed away—when our earth is worn out—when our sun is exhausted—when the stars have decayed and new stars have been set in a new firmament. And yet the power of God works on—the power of the same God who was, and is to be, and always is. And it is this Eternal God, this tireless worker, this all-comprehending intelligence, who works to-day under our observation—in the springing grass, in the flowing tide, in the smoking mountain, in the silently rolling planet, in the flames of the burning suns—works in our homes, works in our hearts, stills our fears, sustains our hopes. Great God, and good! Is this, then, Thy creation—Thy immensity, Thy verdant fields, and do we ask why we should contemplate Thy works? Art Thou in reality here, and are these the proofs of Thy presence and the displays of Thy intelligence, and do we ask if we shall be profited by looking on Thy operations and learning what are Thy ways, what Thy disposition toward the works of Thy hands and the creatures of Thy love? A. Winchell.

26-29. The Lord answers. He has power adequate to any result that His wisdom deems it best to secure. The city will indeed, as is already indicated, be given up to the Chaldeans, and they will burn and utterly destroy it. Note here how the judgment points its index finger toward the sin which has brought it down. The Chaldean fires will burn those houses because on their roofs the infatuated people had offered incense to Baal.

30-35. These verses recite again those provocations of Israel which had aroused the indignation of the Lord. These points have often appeared in the course of Jeremiah’s prophecies. Indeed they constitute their burden.

36-41. The strain of these promises is exceedingly rich. While they refer primarily to the restoration under Zerubbabel, yet their outlook is far beyond that event. Their spiritual fulness bears us onward into those latter days described so fully in the previous chapter. These great promises are remarkably coincident with those in chap. 31:33, 34: “They shall be My people, and I their God;” “I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear Me forever,” with steadfast, unwavering consecration; “Will make an everlasting covenant with them,” in contrast with that first covenant which they broke, and it was, therefore, transient; and “I will put my fear in their heart, that they shall not depart from Me.” Fear of God in the Old Testament sense is true piety—not differing, therefore, from “writing God’s law in the heart” (31:33). H. C.—God will renew His covenant with them, a covenant of grace, the blessings of which are spiritual, and such as will work good things in them to qualify them for the great things God intended to do for them. God will own them for His, and make over Himself to them to be theirs (verse 38)—They shall be My people. He will make them His by working in them all the characters and dispositions of His people, and then He will protect and guide and govern them as His people. And to make them truly, completely and eternally happy, I will be their God. They shall serve and worship God as theirs and cleave to Him only, and He will approve Himself theirs. All He is, all He has, shall be engaged and employed for their good. God will give them one heart and one way. In order to their walking in one way, He will give them one heart; as the heart is so will the way be, and both shall be one. The heart is then one when it is fully determined for God and entirely devoted to God; when the eye is single and God’s glory alone aimed at; when our hearts are fixed, trusting in God, and we are uniform and universal in our obedience to Him; then the heart is one and the way one. H.

42-44. These verses serve to connect Jeremiah’s recent purchase in Anathoth with this strain of glorious promise. That fact became the occasion of these promises. It was done to be a historic memorial of God’s faithfulness to the believing Jews of those times. They might bear the memory of it with them into their captivity, and be assured that the land from which they were then driven is still the Lord’s land, where promise and prophecy are still to have a fulfilment, glorious to the love and faithfulness of their God. H. C.

The story of Jeremiah will not be lost upon us if it teaches us the duty of submission to the will of God. It was not the yoke of Babylon that was at fault in the days of Jeremiah, so much as the yoke of unforsaken sin; it was not by turning to Egypt for help that Judah could be saved, but by turning to the God whom they had forsaken; let them bow the neck to His law and accept His rule, and all would be well. But the old struggle continually repeats itself. Whose will is to be supreme—the will of God or the will of man? All spiritual conflict is practically the battle of the wills; and only in a full and unreserved acceptance of the Divine will can we find happiness and peace. E. Bayley.

JERUSALEM DESTROYED AND JUDAH TAKEN TO CAPTIVITY IN BABYLON. TEMPLE FURNITURE AND PARTS OF THE STRUCTURE CARRIED AWAY. BRIEF REFLECTIONS OF THE CHRONICLER. JEREMIAH PROTECTED AND EBED-MELECH DELIVERED.