Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 32

In the tenth year of Zedekiah ... —We are carried over a period of six years from the prophecy of Jeremiah 28:1 to 589 B.C. By this time, the treacherous and intriguing policy of Zedekiah had provoked Nebuchadnezzar to besiege Jerusalem in the ninth year of the king of Judah’s reign. The king, irritated by Jeremiah’s continued predictions of defeat, then imprisoned him in the dungeon for state prisoners attached to the palace (Nehemiah 3:25).

It would appear from Jeremiah 37:15; Jeremiah 38:26 (both of an earlier date than this chapter) that he had previously been confined in the house of Jonathan the scribe as a private prison. The king had removed him from there intending to consult him on the probable outcome of the siege. He was not allowed to leave his prison, but friends were permitted to have access to him.

(3. 4) Behold, I will give this city into the hand of the king of Babylon ... —A comparison of these verses with Jeremiah 34:2-3; Jeremiah 38:23, shows that Jeremiah never for a moment varied in his tone.

To see the king of Babylon face to face, to stand before him in shame and confusion—that was to be the end of the king’s frantic resistance to the Divine purpose. The prophecy of Ezekiel (Ezekiel 12:13), and the fact that Nebuchadnezzar put out the eyes of the captive king (Jeremiah 39:7), give a special force to Jeremiah’s word. The face of the great king, in all the terror of his wrath, was to be the last object Zedekiah was to behold on earth (2 Kings 25:6–7; Jeremiah 39:6; Jeremiah 52:10–11).

There shall he be until I visit him... — The word for “visit” is ambiguous, being used elsewhere for both “punishing” and “delivering.” Its use in Jeremiah 29:10 is in favour of the latter meaning here.

The prophet looks forward to a general deliverance, or at least mitigation of suffering, for the exiles in Babylon, and, though he does not in distinct terms predict that Zedekiah will share in it, seems to cherish the hope that he will not be altogether excluded.

Of his fate after he arrived in Babylon we know nothing, but the absence of his name when Jehoiachin was released from his imprisonment (Jeremiah 52:31) by Evil-merodach suggests the conclusion that he was then dead.

Behold, Hanameel the son of Shallum ... —The teaching of the narrative that follows lies almost on the surface, and is brought out distinctly in Jeremiah 32:44. “With all the certainty of desolation, misery, exile in the immediate future, the prophet was to give a practical proof that he was as certain of the ultimate restoration. It was worthwhile to buy a field even for what might seem the contingency of that remote reversion.”

Roman history records a parallel act of patriotic faith in the purchase of land at Rome at its full market value, at the very time when the armies of Hannibal were marching to the gate of the city (Livy, xxvi. 11). Nothing more is known of the Hanameel who is here mentioned than that he was the first cousin of the prophet (Jeremiah 32:8–9). The word “uncle” in this verse therefore applies strictly to Shallum.

As the lands belonging to the priests and Levites as such could not be alienated (Leviticus 25:34), we must assume either that the land in question had come into the family by marriage and was private property, or that the law had been so far relaxed as to allow of the transfer of land within the limits of the family, and up to the date of the next year of jubilee.

In such a case, as in Ruth 3:12; Ruth 4:4, the option of purchase was offered in the first instance to the next of kin (the Goël, or “redeemer,” of the family), so that it might still be kept in the line of succession (Leviticus 25:24; Leviticus 25:32). The prophet naturally lays stress on the fact that he was warned beforehand of the visit of Hanameel and of its object. The coincidence was to him what the arrival of the messenger of Cornelius was to Peter (Acts 10:19–21).

Buy my field, I pray thee, that is in Anathoth ... —We are not told what led Hanameel to make the offer of sale. Probably, as in the Assyrian invasion (Isaiah 10:30), Anathoth was occupied and ravaged by the army of the Chaldeans, and the field seemed to its possessor little more than a damnosa hœreditas (“an inheritance of ruin”), which he was glad to get rid of at any price.

Perhaps, too, considering the part that Jeremiah had taken in urging submission to Nebuchadnezzar, it seemed prudent to transfer the ownership of the field to one whom the Chaldeans were disposed to protect, while, since Jeremiah was in prison, Hanameel might well expect to remain in occupation as his representative. The words the right of inheritance is thine indicate that Hanameel had no children. The description Anathoth, which is in the country of Benjamin, hardly natural from one cousin speaking to another, is missing from the Septuagint version and is traceable probably to the Jewish habit of writing in the text what we would consider notes in the margin.

Weighed him the money, even seventeen shekels of silver. —The Hebrew presents the singular combination, seven shekels and ten [pieces of] silver, and this is followed by the Septuagint and Vulgate. There is no reason to think that there is any difference between the coins or bullion so described, and the formula was probably one of the technicalities of Jewish conveyancing.

Regarding the price, it is not easy to estimate its value without any measurement of the field. However, speaking roughly, when compared with the four hundred shekels Abraham paid for the field of Ephron (Genesis 23:16), or the fifty David paid for the threshing floor and oxen of Araunah (2 Samuel 24:24; in 1 Chronicles 21:25 the price is fixed at six hundred shekels of gold), or with the thirty shekels paid for the potter’s field in Matthew 27:9, or with the market price of a slave varying from fifteen (Hosea 3:2) to thirty shekels (Zechariah 11:12), the price, under £2 sterling, would seem to have been far below its average market value. In this respect, the story falls short of the dignity of its Roman parallel (see Note on Jeremiah 32:7).

Hanameel, as mentioned above, was probably glad to part with it at any price. It is possible, however, that the smallness of the sum was because the sale, as suggested earlier, conveyed possession only for the unexpired term of a tenancy that was to end with the next year of Jubilee. On that assumption, the prophet’s motive in purchasing may have been to keep it in the family instead of letting it pass to a stranger who might be unwilling to surrender it when the year of Jubilee arrived. Since the prophet was unmarried, he had no son to inherit it.

The precise sum fixed, perhaps even the form in which the sum is stated, may have originated from Jeremiah’s wish to connect in this way the two numbers, ten and seven. When multiplied together, these produced the number he had fixed for the years of captivity and, therefore, for the term of restoration. Such an elaborate artifice of symbolism would, at least, be quite in character for a prophet who adopts the acrostic form in his Lamentations and the cipher of an inverted alphabet known as the Athbash. (See Note on Jeremiah 25:26.)