CHAPTER 32

¹The word that came to Jeremiah in the tenth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, which is the eighteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar. ²Then were the forces of the king of Babylonia besieging Jerusalem, and Jeremiah the prophet was imprisoned in the court of the guard which was in the house of the king. ³As Zedekiah king of Judah had imprisoned him, saying, “Why do you prophesy, saying, ‘Thus said the LORD: I am about to give this city into the hand of the king of Babylonia, and he shall capture it. ⁴And Zedekiah king of Judah shall not escape from the hand of the Chaldeans but shall surely be given into the hand of the king of Babylonia, and he shall speak to him mouth to mouth and see him eye to eye. ⁵And to Babylonia he shall take Zedekiah, and there he shall be until I single him out, said the LORD. Though you do battle against the Chaldeans, you shall not succeed.’?” ⁶And Jeremiah said, “The word of the LORD came to me, saying: ⁷Look, Hanamel the son of Shallum your uncle is coming to you, saying, ‘Buy for yourself my field which is in Anathoth, for yours is the right of redemption to buy.’ ⁸And Hanamel the son of my uncle came to me according to the word of the LORD, to the court of the guard, and said to me, ‘Buy for yourself my field which is in Anathoth, which is in the region of Benjamin, for yours is the right of inheritance and yours is the redemption. Buy it for yourself.’ And I knew that it was the word of the LORD. ⁹And I bought the field which is in Anathoth from Hanamel the son of my uncle and weighed out to him the silver, seventeen silver shekels. ¹⁰And I wrote it in a scroll and sealed it and had it witnessed and weighed the silver on the scales. ¹¹And I took the sealed scroll of purchase, the injunction and the stipulations, and the open copy. ¹²And I gave the scroll of purchase to Baruch son of Neriah son of Mahseiah before the eyes of Hanamel son of my uncle and before the eyes of the witness who signed the scroll of purchase before the eyes of all the Judahites sitting in the court of the guard. ¹³And I charged Baruch before their eyes, saying, ¹⁴Thus said the LORD of Armies, God of Israel: ‘Take these scrolls, this sealed scroll of purchase and this open scroll, and put them in an earthenware jar so that they may last many days.’ ¹⁵For thus said the LORD of Armies, God of Israel, ‘Yet shall houses and fields and vineyards be bought in this land.’ ¹⁶And I prayed to the LORD after I gave the scroll of purchase to Baruch son of Neriah, saying: ¹⁷Alas, O Master LORD! Look, You made the heavens and the earth through your great power and with Your outstretched arm. Nothing is beyond you, ¹⁸doing kindness for the thousands and paying back the crime of the fathers into the lap of their sons after them, great and mighty God, LORD of Armies is His name. ¹⁹Great in counsel, grand in acts, Whose eyes are open on all the ways of humankind to give to each man according to his ways and according to the fruit of his deeds. ²⁰You Who set out signs and wonders in the land of Egypt to this day in Israel and in humankind, and You have made You a name as on this day. ²¹And You brought out Your people Israel from the land of Egypt in signs and wonders and with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm and with great terror. ²²And You gave them this land that You vowed to their fathers to give to them, a land flowing with milk and honey. ²³And they came and took hold of it, but they did not heed Your voice and did not go by Your teachings. All that You charged them to do they did not do, and all this evil befell them. ²⁴Look, the siege-ramps have come against the city to capture it, and the city is given into the hands of the Chaldeans battling against it—because of the sword and the famine and the pestilence. And that which You spoke has come to be, and here You see it. ²⁵And You, You said to me, O Master LORD, ‘Buy for yourself the field with silver and summon witnesses when the city is given into the hands of the Chaldeans.’” ²⁶And the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah, saying: ²⁷“Look, I am the LORD, God of all flesh. Can anything be beyond Me? ²⁸Therefore, thus said the LORD: I am about to give this city into the hand of the Chaldeans battling against this city and into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylonia, and he shall capture it. ²⁹And the Chaldeans battling against this city shall come and set this city on fire and burn it, with the houses and the roofs on which they burned incense to Baal and poured libations to other gods so as to vex Me. ³⁰For the Israelites and the Judahites have been doing naught but evil in My eyes from their youth, for the Israelites have been vexing Me with the work of their hands, said the LORD. ³¹For to My anger and to My wrath this city has been to Me from the day they built it to this day, so as to remove it from before Me, ³²for all the evil of the Israelites and the Judahites that they have done to vex Me, they, their kings, their nobles, their priests, and their prophets, the men of Judah and the dwellers of Jerusalem. ³³They turned their backs to Me, and not their faces. I taught them constantly, but they have not heeded to accept discipline. ³⁴And they put their foul things in the house on which My name was called, to defile it. ³⁵And they built the high places for Baal which are in the Valley of of Ben-Hinnom to consign their sons and their daughters to Molech, which I did not charge them and which never came to My mind to do this abomination, so as to make Judah offend. ³⁶And so now, thus said the LORD God of Israel concerning this city of which you said, It is given into the hand of the king of Babylonia by the sword and by famine and by pestilence. ³⁷I am about to gather them from all the lands where I scattered them in My anger and in My wrath and in great fury, and I will bring them back to this place and make them dwell secure. ³⁸And they shall be My people and I will be their God. ³⁹And I will give them a single heart and a single way to fear Me always, so that it will be well with them and with their sons after them. ⁴⁰And I will seal with them an everlasting covenant, that I not turn back from them so that I do good for them, and My fear I will put in their heart, that they do not swerve from Me. ⁴¹And I will rejoice over them to do good for them, and I will plant them on this land truly, with all My heart and with all My being. ⁴²For thus said the LORD: As I brought upon this people all this great evil, so I am about to bring upon them all the good that I am speaking of them. ⁴³And the field shall be bought in this land about which you say, ‘It is a desolation without human beings and beasts; it is given into the hands of the Chaldeans.’ ⁴⁴Fields they shall buy with silver, writing on scrolls and sealing and summoning witnesses, in the region of Benjamin and in the environs of Jerusalem and in the towns of Judah and in the towns of the hill country and in the towns of the lowland and in the towns of the Negeb, for I will restore their fortunes, said the LORD.”