After Jeremiah had been imprisoned by King Zedekiah for prophesying that Zedekiah would lose the war and be taken to Babylon as one of the captives (Jeremiah 32:2-5), God revealed to Jeremiah that his cousin Hanamel was going to show up and try to sell him a field at Anathoth (32:6-7). Hanamel was trying to take advantage of his cousin with this mercenary scam: Anathoth and all the surrounding countryside was already fully occupied by the Babylonian army, and Jerusalem itself was about to fall, so Hanamel was trying to get useful money in exchange for a useless field.

Jeremiah had questions in his heart about the wisdom of this (32:24-25), yet he also “knew that this was the word of the Lord” (32:8). So he bought the field, creating two copies of the deed, signed in front of witnesses, protected in an earthenware jar so that they would last a long time (32:9-15).

This was because God was going to bring the grandchildren of the present generation back from captivity when the Exile was over (32:37-41). When that happened, Jeremiah’s heirs would have a clear deed indicating that they owned this farmland.

The irony in this is that Jeremiah had no children, since he had never married (16:2); his heirs after the Exile was over could well turn out to be his cousin Hanamel’s grandchildren. Whoever they were, they would be Jeremiah’s heirs; and he had signed and sealed the deed to the ranch for them, in the confidence that God would do good to them: “I will plant them in this land with faithfulness, with all my heart and with all my soul” (32:41).

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In the midst of the battle, O Lord, it is hard to think about the situation of descendants yet to be born decades in the future: yet you invite us to envision their life and to take action to bless them. We pray that, even when we are as perplexed as Jeremiah, you would give us the faith to create that blessing for that coming generation.

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