Jeremiah Buys a Field

Outside the walls, an enemy army is camped. Smoke rises from their fires. Inside the city, people are hungry and afraid. And in a prison courtyard, a man counts out silver coins, to buy a piece of land the enemy already holds.

It is the tenth year of King Zedekiah, around five hundred and eighty-seven before Christ. The army of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, has surrounded Jerusalem. The siege has gone on for months. For years the prophet Jeremiah has warned that Jerusalem will fall to Babylon if the people do not turn back to God. King Zedekiah does not want to hear it. So Jeremiah is being held in the courtyard of the guard, at the king's palace. Everyone knows how this ends. Land around Jerusalem is worthless now. Who would buy property in a country about to be conquered?

Then the word of the Lord comes to Jeremiah. Your cousin Hanamel is coming to see you, God says. He will ask you to buy his field at Anathoth, because you have the right to buy it and keep it in the family. Anathoth is Jeremiah's home village, just a few miles north of Jerusalem, out where the Babylonian soldiers are. And sure enough, Hanamel turns up in the prison courtyard, just as God said. “Buy my field, I pray thee, that is in Anathoth.” The right of redemption is yours, he says. Buy it for yourself. And Jeremiah says: then I knew that this was the word of the Lord.

So Jeremiah does something that must have looked ridiculous. He buys the field. He weighs out the money on the scales: seventeen shekels of silver. He signs the deed of purchase and seals it. Witnesses watch and sign too. Everything is done properly, by the law and the custom. There are two copies of the deed: one sealed shut, and one left open, so anyone could read it. Then Jeremiah hands both copies to his friend and helper Baruch, son of Neriah. All of this happens in front of Hanamel, the witnesses, and the Jews who are sitting in the courtyard of the guard. They are watching a man buy land in a war zone.

Then Jeremiah gives Baruch his instructions, in front of everyone. This is what the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, says. Take these deeds, the sealed one and the open one, and put them in a clay jar, so that they will last a long time. And then he explains why he has done this strange thing. “For thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Houses and fields and vineyards shall be possessed again in this land.” The city will fall. Jeremiah has never pretended otherwise. But it will not be the end. One day people will buy and sell land here again. They will plant vineyards, build houses, and live in peace. Jeremiah puts his money where his faith is. The silver is a promise: God's people have a future.

Storing scrolls in clay jars really did make them last. In nineteen forty-seven, near the Dead Sea, a shepherd found caves holding ancient clay jars. Inside some of them were scrolls more than two thousand years old, including the oldest known copies of books of the Hebrew Bible, among them the whole book of Isaiah. We call them the Dead Sea Scrolls. In the dry desert air, the clay jars had kept them safe for centuries.

You'll find this story in Jeremiah chapter thirty-two, verses one to fifteen. A prophet who bought a field with the enemy at the gates, because he believed God's promise. So here is a question to carry with you. What could you do today that shows you trust God for tomorrow?