OUR FATHER WHOSE WORD CANNOT BE BROKEN

Jeremiah chapter 32 verse 9 says this;

so I bought the field at Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel and weighed out for him seventeen shekels of silver.

At the time, Jerusalem was surrounded and besieged by the Babylonian army and against this backdrop, Jeremiah the prophet was warning king Zedekiah that fighting against the Babylonians would not succeed.

 Because he was declaring that Babylon was going to defeat the kingdom of Judah and take the king back to Babylon as a captive, Jeremiah had been detained by the king of Judah in the palace guard courtyard and the king, in verse 3, asked him, “Why do you prophesy as you do?

Jeremiah explained to the king that the word of the Lord came to him and the subsequent events  confirmed that it was indeed the Lord speaking.

First, the Lord told Jeremiah that his cousin name Hanamel was going to offer him some land to  buy and that he should by it. Just as the Lord said, Hanamel dropped in to see Jeremiah and offered some land for him to buy and Jeremiah bought the land in the presence of all the elders.

Jeremiah prophesied that Jerusalem would  return from being a worthless defeated land to being a desirable place to be and land and houses would become valuable again and thus the Lord had instructed Jeremiah to buy the land and to do so in a public way.

Jeremiah, continuing his explanation to the king, told him how he prayed to the Lord and recounted how much favor the Lord had granted the children of Israel including giving them the land of Judah. However, the Lord had made clear that they needed to obey his law and since they had not done so, the city was now surrounded by an invading army even as the Lord had said would happen.

The Lord told Jeremiah into buy land in a beseiged  Jerusalem when the land was almost  worthless and so Jeremiah was going to hang onto it because the Lord, in His goodness, was going to cause the children of Israel to return to the land that the Lord had given them.

Jeremiah chapter 32 verses 36 - 37 says it this way;

“You are saying about this city, ‘By the sword, famine and plague it will be given into the hands of the king of Babylon’; but this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: I will surely gather them from all the lands where I banish them in my furious anger and great wrath; I will bring them back to this place and let them live in safety.

Thus Jeremiah explained to the king why he was prophesying as he was and in fact, all he said from the Lord came to pass.

Amen.