Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 32:9

"And I bought the field that was in Anathoth of Hanamel mine uncle`s son, and weighed him the money, even seventeen shekels of silver." — Jeremiah 32:9 (ASV)

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.)