Jeremiah;- He bought a field (ch32)

The penultimate section of Jeremiah, beginning from ch32, covers the period of the final siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, at the end of the reign of Zedekiah. This section is interrupted by a couple of chapters belonging to the reign of his predecessor Jehoiakim, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

The background of the story in this chapter is that we have reached the tenth year of Zedekiah’s reign. The Babylonian army is already besieging the city. Jeremiah has been proclaiming in the Lord’s name “I am giving this city into the hand of the king of Babylon and he shall take it.” Zedekiah himself would not escape, but would be taken to Babylon. Zedekiah’s question “Why do you prophesy and say these things?” should be taken as a formal legal charge. Jeremiah was shut up in the court of the guard, in order to restrain his activities (ch32 vv1-5).

However, this was a comparatively mild form of imprisonment. In later chapters, he found it preferable to some of the alternatives. He was permitted to receive visitors and send out messages. In this chapter he is able to negotiate the “redemption” of a field belonging to one of his relatives..

The right of redemption goes back to the laws designed to assist people who fall into poverty. “If your brother becomes poor and sells part of his property, then his next of kin shall come and redeem what his brother has sold” (Leviticus ch25 v25). Otherwise the original owner has the right to buy it back later, by paying the debt which remains after deducting the profit which the creditor has already made by holding the land in the interval.

But if we look closely at the procedure in v25, we don’t find it specified that the redeeming next of kin gives the land back to the original owner. By implication, he has the right to hold onto the land himself. The real benefit of the procedure is that the land at least stays within the kinship group, which is what matters. In other words, the duty of redemption easily turns into the right of redemption, that is, the right to pick up the land of a bankrupt relative on the cheap, by claiming the first right of purchase.

The point is illustrated by the story of Ruth. Her father-in-law Elimelech owned “a parcel of land” (Ruth ch4 v3). When he took his family abroad in a time of famine, this land must have been left abandoned but unsold. By the time Naomi returns to Israel with Ruth, Ruth has become the effective owner of the land, as the widow of Elimelech’s son and the representative of his line. The land is useless to her, of course, because it can’t be worked without money and masculine labour. Circumstances have also brought it under the law which insists that a childless widow must be married by a brother of her late husband. Part of the purpose of this law is, again, to keep her husband’s land within the kinship group. So in Ruth’s time the law was evidently being read as “brother or nearest male relative”.

Therefore the opportunity to marry Ruth is also the opportunity to acquire the “parcel of land”. They go together. That is one of the reasons why Boaz is pleased and grateful for the offer. At the same time, though, he recognises that the “nearest kinsman” duty is also a valuable right which must be offered first to the closer kinsman who has the better claim. Fortunately for David’s genetic line, the other man is put off by the “marry the widow” side of the commitment, and relinquishes his right in front of witnesses.

Jeremiah came from Anathoth in the tribe of Benjamin. His cousin Hanamel, son of his uncle Shallum (v7 and v9), needs to sell a field in Anathoth, because he is in debt or short of cash. In what must have become common practice, Hanamel decides to cut out the “selling to the creditor” stage of the process and sell direct to the potential redeemer. Jeremiah is the nearest kinsman, so he has the first right of refusal. If he decides not to take up the offer, it will probably be passed on to the next in line.

Jeremiah has already been forewarned by “word of the Lord”, so he knows that the Lord wants him to accept the offer and make the purchase. Normally a business transaction of this kind would be carried out at the town gate, as in Ruth’s time, but in this case the proceedings necessarily take place in the court of the guard. The seventeen shekels are formally weighed out on the spot. He signs and seals a formal deed of purchase, which is also signed by the official witnesses. As it happens , the ceremony is also witnessed by “all the Jews who were sitting in the court of the guard”, who may have started coming there in order to hear Jeremiah’s preaching.

Jeremiah then hands over the signed and sealed copy to his associate Baruch and publicly instructs him to preserve it safely in an earthenware vessel. This is for the benefit of “all the Jews who were sitting”, so that they can learn and testify to the symbolic meaning of the event as a prophetic action;
“Thus says the Lord of Israel; Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land” (v15).

When the kingdom was on the verge of destruction, and the people were confined within the walls of Jerusalem, the purchase of land outside the walls would have seemed like an empty gesture, a waste of money. So the deed of purchase was Jeremiah’s visible expression of faith in the Lord’s promise that normal life would be resumed and God’s people would continue to exist.

In the second half of the chapter, which must be the second half of the same scene, this implication is spelled out in more detail. Jeremiah prays to the Lord, asking him to explain himself, and reports the Lord’s response. This too must have been for the benefit of “all the Jews who were sitting”, but I will save that exchange for another time.