Buy my field, I pray thee.
Jeremiah’s faith
I. Faith is here illustrated as resting exclusively upon the word of God. All that Jeremiah did in this matter he did just because he had a command from the Lord. Whilst he was in prison, God told him that his cousin should come and offer him the redemption of a part at least of the family inheritance. The man came, and he “knew that this was the Word of the Lord”; therefore he bought the field. It is not to be supposed that he was rich. The probability is that he may have had to get the money for the purchase from his friend Baruch. Neither had he any expectation of himself obtaining any personal benefit from the purchase, for he believed that the city would be given into the hands of the Chaldeans, that the people would be taken for seventy years as exiles to Babylon. This is the very nature of true faith; it does the thing, or it receives the thing, it fears or it hopes, as the case may be wholly because God has spoken. If it embraces a promise, it rests its hope upon the Word of the Lord. If it is moved by fear, it is because God has denounced an impending punishment. If it acts in a particular way, it follows exactly the path which God has marked out. Resting as it does entirely upon the Word of God, it is altogether independent of reason, although it does not refuse to listen to its voice. Faith receives testimony; our faith in men leads us to receive the testimony of men. We often receive that testimony although we have no other evidence whatever of the facts we believe. Nay, we receive it although we have found the very persons whose testimony we are now relying upon to have been, in some instances, at least, mistaken. Faith in men goes thus far; it must go thus far; we are compelled to act in this way, or we should cut ourselves off from mankind and the activities of life. But if this be so, if we find it necessary and reasonable to act in this way, receiving the testimony of men, shall we not receive the testimony of God? When He speaks it is for us simply to listen. How wondrously has God spoken! “In the beginning” “God created the heavens and the earth. Going on from that primary revelation, He has revealed more and more of His truth; and in proportion as our minds rise, in proportion as our moral sense is cultivated, in proportion as we get free from the degrading power of evil which perverts our moral judgment, we find the revelation to be in accordance with everything we might expect. He speaks to us of things which are far beyond the reach of human knowledge and experience, testimony or deduction. He sets before us His own dear Son incarnate in our nature, and tells us of the great purpose for which He came.
II. This passage teaches us also that faith takes account of difficulties and improbabilities only so far as to refer them to him. We must pass on to a later portion of the chapter to illustrate this. When Jeremiah had purchased the field, and subscribed the deeds and sealed them, and they were deposited in the custody of Baruch in an earthen jar to be kept for a considerable time, he seems to have experienced what we all know, some kind of reaction Of feeling; and then, as if he almost felt that he had done something that he was hardly warranted in doing, he goes and lays the matter before God (verses 17-25). This must certainly have seemed strange to any person who did not understand that it was God’s Word. That a man who was in prison should buy an estate, believing as he did that before long the country would be in the hands of the Chaldeans, who would recognise no title-deeds whatever; that he should carefully go through the forms of Jewish law to acquire the estate, really appeared a most foolish thing. It seems as if those thoughts, so natural to us, came back upon Jeremiah’s mind, and he began to think of the difficulties and the probabilities of the case. You see that this is not a prayer for a blessing upon what he had done; it is not a prayer that the matter in which he had been engaged should be successful; but it is an utterance of wavering and distracted feeling; and that wavering and distracted feeling is rightly uttered to God. We all know perfectly well that faith as it exists in us is not complete in its power. Sometimes we can look over, we might almost say, the boundaries of our earthly horizon and see the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem and the hills of the celestial city, but at other times the depths of the valley of the shadow of death seem to hide it all from our view. Sometimes we can hold firmly to the truth which God has been pleased to set before us with unequivocal assertion, and with demonstration of power to our believing heart; but at other times our grasp upon it seems to relax, and it appears almost as if it would slip through our hands. When there is anything of this, what will a person who really has faith do, although that faith may not be in the most perfect state and in the fullest exercise? He will take all his difficulty to God. Do we find any difficulties about the way of salvation? Let us go and ask God to throw light, as far as that light is necessary, upon the truths whereby we are to be saved. Is there any question about my own connection with, or interest in, the work of Christ? Let me go and spread it before God, and ask Him to make my salvation clear to me. God never said that there should be no difficulty in the Christian’s path. God never told us that there should be nothing hard to understand in the truth that the Christian has to believe respecting Himself.
III. Again, we have this illustration of the nature and the power of true faith:--it joins obedience prompt and full with reliance implicit and abiding. Why does the inspired writer tell us the little particulars of the transaction? Would it not have been enough to say, “I bought the field”? No, because the object was to show that, in the full confidence that what God had said would come to pass, Jeremiah had left nothing whatever undone. There was no flaw in the document; all legal forms were complied with exactly; the two kinds of deeds that were always used, the one sealed and the other open, were provided; the earthen jar was obtained; the deeds were put in it and intrusted to a man of rank and standing; the money was paid; and all was done in the presence of witnesses, just as if Jeremiah had hoped to take possession of the little estates the very next day. This shows that the obedience of faith will be prompt and full and will omit nothing. Jeremiah never expected to get possession of that estate personally. He himself spoke of seventy years as the period of the captivity, and he did not therefore expect that he should ever be put in possession of the little piece of land, the reversion to which he had purchased. Faith does not bind its expectations to the present; it does not limit them to a man’s own life here; it looks beyond. And the faith of a Christian looks farther still than Jeremiah’s. It does not look merely to a deliverance at the end of seventy years, and a possession by some of our descendants or representatives at that time of a little spot in the earthly Canaan. It looks to the close of this mortal life, to the day of resurrection, and to glory with the risen Saviour throughout eternity. (W. A. Salter.)
Jeremiah’s purchase
I. The reasons for this purchase.
1. We may perhaps suppose that kindness to a kinsman, as Matthew Henry suggests, had something to do with it; for kindness is kinnedness, and it is very hard if we cannot show kindness to our kith and kin when they are in need. If Jeremiah has no need of the land, we may still infer, under the circumstances of Jerusalem in a state of siege, that his cousin Hanameel has great need of money. Some of us, perhaps, who maintain that business is business, and should be conducted always on the strictest business principles, may think that as to this matter of kindness to a kinsman, about the most inexpedient way of showing it is by mixing it with matters of business. As nearest kinsman his was the right of redemption, and it was already his in reversion in case of the death of his cousin; this cousin being, as we assume, in straits for want of money, and Jeremiah being a considerate, reasonable, and kind-hearted man, concedes to his cousin’s proposal, buying the land for what it is worth, and perhaps for something more. And if the opportunity should occur to us of helping a needy relative in some such way--if with anything like a reasonable prospect of success we can give him another chance, a new start in life, helping him to help himself--then, looking at the example of Jeremiah, I think we may all hear a voice speaking to us, and saying, “Go thou and do likewise.”
2. We may suggest, as another reason for this purchase, Jeremiah’s interest in future generations. Anathoth was one of the cities of the priests, and this field was ecclesiastical property. It might well be, therefore, that, unless Jeremiah bought it, it might in those confused times pass into other hands, by which it would become alienated from its sacred purposes, and so the law of Moses suffer violation. He was a Jew, and we know how the Jews looked on to the future and backward to the past, linking the past to the present and the present to the future, finding in the present a focus in which both past and future met, and so in the nation’s unity finding its immortality. We know how that great national anthem, that prayer of Moses the man of God, begins, “Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations”; and we know how it closes, “Let Thy work appear unto Thy servants, and Thy glory unto their children, and establish Thou the work of our hands upon us, yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it.” We have a more sure word of prophecy, we anticipate a more glorious future, and we also know that even as to this life the best that we can do for those who are to come after us is not by making “purchases,” not buying fields or houses, not saving fortunes for our children, but by living godly, devout, Christ-like lives, shall we leave to them the best inheritance.
3. Let us assume, again, that Jeremiah, magnifying his prophet’s office, would have it made plain that he himself believed in his own predictions. The land was indeed to be desolate for seventy years, to have its Sabbaths, and to lie fallow; but after that time the people were to return from their captivity, take joyful possession once more of houses, and fields, and lands: and this particular piece of land, Jeremiah believed, would then revert to its rightful owners, the priests and Levites. For ourselves, making no pretension to the prophet’s office--that is, in the sense of foretelling--yet let us take care that our practice shall not conflict with our theory, that we practise what we preach, and so adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things. “Let your conversation be as becometh the gospel of Christ.”
4. Lastly, as summing up all, we may say that Jeremiah evidently believed it to be the will of God. I marvel much how anyone calling himself a Christian, can ever hesitate as to doing what he believes to be the will of God, especially when the question is of something simple and easily done. I am asked sometimes, Is baptism necessary to salvation? and I answer, No, a thousand times, no. Salvation precedes baptism, and is in nowise a consequence of it; but surely, if we once admit that it is the will of God, that we have for it at once the example and precept of the Lord, that should be enough for us.
II. Jeremiah’s doubts and difficulties as to this purchase. No sooner was it completed than he seems to have been oppressed as with a burden, his brain clouded, and his nervous system rendered irritable by it.
1. Perhaps he is beginning to doubt whether after all he had rightly interpreted the vision, and the subsequent visits of Hanameel, as making it quite certain that he was to accept his kinsman’s offer. He still thinks so, as it would seem, upon the whole, but yet his mind is opening to a doubt, and he is in sore perplexity of spirit.
2. It may be also that he is distressed at the thought that perhaps his very confidence in the promises of God, and his wish to show that he believed in his own predictions, may be turned against him. The sneering, who understand so well the motives of others, may be saying, “Don’t tell me that this man is so unselfish as to part with his money for a piece of land that somebody else seventy years hence is to enjoy! He knows better than that, and fully expects before very long to take possession of it himself”; and possibly, hearing such things, he might be in the confused condition of Bunyan’s Christian in the valley of the shadow of death, when the foul fiend whispered into his ear those terrible thoughts which he could hardly distinguish from his own. There is nothing at all unusual, moreover, in such an experience as this, that when a man, acting by such light as he has, has done what seems to him a wise thing and a good thing, there comes for a time a sort of morbid reaction, by which he sinks into despondency and gloom. And herein lies the difference between those who fall away and those who, enduring to the end, are saved: not that either is exempt from doubts, conflicts, and temptations; but that in the one case these are yielded to, and in the other, faith ultimately gains the victory over them.
III. How Jeremiah overcame and solved his doubts and difficulties. “I prayed unto the Lord.” Whether or not he prayed to the Lord about his purchase before he made it we are not told. Perhaps he did not. There are some things that seem so plain to us as matters of duty and of daily habit, that there is no need to pray for Divine direction concerning them. As the Lord said to Moses when Israel’s duty was so plain, “Wherefore criest thou unto Me? Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward.” But in any case we are sure that the spirit of prayer, the continued lifting up of the heart to God, was in all that Jeremiah had done. But when we find him bringing this matter of the “purchase” specially before the Lord, seeking as he does for help and strength and grace, in weakness, perplexity, and trouble, we are encouraged by his example to bring all our affairs to the throne of the heavenly grace, however commonplace, mechanical, and routine they may be. (J. W. Lance.)
A patriot’s faith in the future
This was bravely done, to make a purchase at such a time, when the enemy was seizing upon all. That Roman is famous in history who adventured to purchase that field near Rome wherein Hannibal had pitched his camp. But the Romans were nothing near so low at that time as the Jews were at this. A striking parallel to this confidence of Jeremiah, in the midst of near and present troubles, as to the ultimate glory of his nation, is furnished in the recently published Memoir of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whoso father, Gabriel Rossetti, an Italian patriot who sought asylum in this country, yet never lost faith in the future of his native land. His biographer says: “When he died in 1854, the outlook seemed exceedingly dark; yet heart and hope did not abate in him. The latest letter of his which I have seen published was written in September or October 1853, and contains this passage, equally strong-spirited and prophetic: ‘The Arpa Evangelica. .. ought to find free circulation through all Italy. I do not say the like of three other unpublished volumes, which all seethe with love of country and hatred for tyrants. These await a better time--which will come, be very sure of it. The present fatal period will pass, and serves to whet the universal desire Let us look to the future. Our tribulations, dear Madam, will not finish very soon, but finish they will at last. Reason has awakened in all Europe, although her enemies are strong. We shall pass various years in this state of degradation; then we shall rouse up. I assuredly shall not see it, for day by day--nay, hour by hour, I expect the much-longed-for death; but you will see it.’”
Into the ground to die
Whilst shut up in the court of the prison, perhaps fastened by a chain that restrained his liberty, Jeremiah received a Divine intimation that his uncle would shortly come to him with a request for him to purchase the family property at Anathoth. This greatly startled him; because he had so clear a conviction, which he cherished as divinely given, of the approaching overthrow of the kingdom, and the consequent desolation of the land. He gave, however, no outward sign of his perplexities; but when his uncle’s son entered the courtyard with his request, the prophet at once assented to the proposal, and purchased the property for seventeen shekels (about £2). In addition to this, Jeremiah took care to have the purchase recorded and witnessed with the same elaborate pains as if he were at once to be entering on occupation. The two deeds of contract--the one sealed with the more private details of price; the other open, and bearing the signatures of witnesses--were deposited in the charge of Baruch, with the injunction to put them in an earthen vessel and preserve them. They were probably not opened again until the return from the captivity. But Jeremiah was not a sharer in that glad scene. He did as God bade him, though the shadow of a great darkness lay upon his soul, for which he could only find relief, as the Lord on the Cross, in recourse to the Father. He fell into the ground to die, as the seed does, which holds at its heart a principle of life, that can only express itself through death, and can only bless men when its sowing, amid the depression and decay of autumn, has been complete.
I. Hours of midnight darkness. It is only in service that anything reaches its fullest life. A bit of iron is condemned to solitude and uselessness till it becomes part of a great machine. A man who lives a self-contained life, of which the gratification of his own ambition and selfhood is the supreme aim, never drinks the sweets of existence, nor attains his full development. It is only when we live for God, and, in doing so, for man, that we are able to appropriate the rarest blessedness of which our nature is capable, or to unfold into all the proportions of full growth in Christ. In the deepest sense, therefore, Jeremiah could never regret that he had given the strength and measure of his days to the service of others. But none can give themselves to the service of others except at bitter cost of much that this world holds dear. This will explain the privations and sorrows to which Jeremiah was subjected. Death wrought in him, that life might work in Israel, and in all who should read the Book of his prophecy.
1. He died to the dear ties of human love. “Thou shalt not take thee a wife, neither shalt thou have sons or daughters in this place,” was early said to him. What he held in his heart belonged to the race, and might not be poured forth within the narrower circle of the home, of priestly temple-duty, or of the little village of Anathoth.
2. He died to the goodwill of his fellows. None can be indifferent to this. It is easy to do or suffer, when the bark of life is wafted on its way by favouring breezes, or the air thrills with expressions of love and adulation. Then a man is nerved to dare to do his best. It was his bitter lot to encounter from the first an incessant stream of vituperation and dislike. “Woe is me, my mother,” he cried sadly, “that thou hast borne me a man of strife and contention to the whole earth. I have not lent on usury, neither have men lent to me on usury; yet every one of them doth curse me.”
3. He died to the pride of national patriotism. No patriot allows himself to despair of his country. However dark the louring storm clouds and strong the adverse current, he believes that the ship of State will weather the storm. He chokes back words of despondency and depression, lest they should breed dismay. But Jeremiah was driven along an opposite course. A loftier patriotism than his never hazarded itself in the last breach. His belief in Israel was part of his belief in God. But he found himself compelled to speak in such a fashion that the princes proposed, not without show of reason, to put him to death, because he weakened the hands of the men of war.
4. He died to the sweets of personal liberty. A large portion of his ministry was exerted from the precincts of a prison. Repeatedly we read of his being shut up and not able to go forth.
5. He died, also, to the meaning he had been wont to place on his own prophecies. Up to the moment when Jehovah bade him purchase the property of Hanameel, he had never questioned the impending fate of Jerusalem. It was certainly and inevitably to be destroyed by sword, famine, pestilence, and fire. But now the Word of God, demanding an act of obedience, seemed to indicate that the land was to remain under the cultivation of the families that owned it.
II. Jeremiah’s behaviour. But amid it all he derived solace and support in three main directions.
1. He prayed. Take this extract from his own diary: “Now, after I had delivered the deed of the purchase unto Baruch, the son of Neriah, I prayed unto the Lord, saying, Ah, Lord God!” There is no help to the troubled soul like that which comes through prayer.
2. He rested on the word of God. The soul of the prophet was nourished and fed by the Divine word. “Thy words were found,” he cries, “and I did eat them: and Thy words were unto me the joy and the rejoicing of my heart.”
3. He faithfully kept to the path of duty. “And I bought the field.” It does not always happen that our service to men will be met by rebuff, ill-will, and hard treatment; but when it does there should be no swerving, or flinching, or drawing back. The fierce snow-laden blast, driving straight in your teeth, is not so pleasant as the breath of summer, laden with the scent of the heather; but if you can see the track, you must follow it. To be anywhere off it, either right or left, would be dangerous in the extreme. Such are the resorts of the soul in its seasons of anguish.
III. Compensations. To all valleys there are mountains, to all depths heights; for all midnight hours there are hours of sunrise; for Gethsemane, an Olivet. We can never give up aught for God or man, without discovering that at the moment of surrender He begins to repay as He foretold to the prophet; “For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I will Bring silver, and for wood brass, and for stones iron.” Nor does God keep these compensations for the new world, “where light and darkness fuse.” It were long to wait, if that were so. But here and now we learn that there are compensations. The first movement from the selfish life may strain and try us, the indifference of our fellows be hard to bear; hut God has such things to reveal and give, as pass the wildest imaginings of the self-centred soul. So Jeremiah found it. His compensations came. God became his Comforter, and wiped, away his tears; and opened to him the vista of the future, down whose long aisles he beheld his people planted again in their own land. He saw men buying fields for money, and subscribing deeds and sealing them, as he had done. There was compensation also in the confidence with which Nebuchadnezzar treated him, and in the evident reliance which his decimated people placed in his intercessions, as we shall see. So it will be with all who fall into the ground to die. God will not forget or forsake them. The grave may be dark and deep, the winter long, the frost keen and penetrating; but spring will come, and the stone be rolled away; and the golden stalk shall wave in the sunshine, bearing its crown of fruit; and men shall thrive on the bread of our experience, the product of our tears, and sufferings, and prayers. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)