Jeremiah 32:9 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

Weighed him the money, even seventeen shekels of silver. — The Hebrew presents the singular combination, seven shekels and ten [pieces of] silver, and is followed by the LXX. and Vulg. There is no ground for thinking that there is any difference between the coins or bullion so described, and the formula was probably one of the technicalities of Jewish conveyancing. As regards the price it is not easy, in the absence of any measurement of the field, to form an estimate of its value; but, speaking roughly, as compared with the four hundred shekels paid by Abraham for the field of Ephron (Genesis 23:16), or the fifty paid by David 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 to the thirty shekels paid for the potter’s field in Matthew 27:9, or to 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, and in this respect the story falls short of the dignity of its Roman parallel (see Note on Jeremiah 32:7). Hanameel, as said above, was probably glad to part with it at any price. It is possible, however, that the smallness of the sum was owing to the fact that the sale, as above suggested, conveyed possession only for the unexpired term of a tenancy which 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. As 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 in Jeremiah’s wish to connect in this way the two numbers, ten and seven, which when multiplied together produced the number which 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 in a prophet who adopts the acrostic form in his Lamentations and the cypher of an inverted alphabet known as the Athbash. (See Note on Jeremiah 25:26.)