Jeremiah repeats the words of the Lord that explain the significance of his buying the land from Hanamel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.
Jeremiah’s act of buying the land is a sign that the day will come when normal economic activity would return to the land. The Babylonian invasion will bring normal life to an end in the land, but there is hope that life will return to normal again1. This public act of buying a piece of land is an answer to the question Zedekiah asks in Jeremiah 32:3. Judgment is coming, but it is not the end of the story for Jerusalem and Judah2.
The different parts of the narrative in Jeremiah 32:1–44 work together in a very important way. The setting in Jeremiah 32:1–5 not only explains Jeremiah’s arrest and gives a date for the purchase of the field in Jeremiah 32:6–15, but it also gives the background to the prayer that Jeremiah will pray in Jeremiah 32:16–25. Jeremiah is imprisoned in Jerusalem, which is besieged by the Babylonians who are about to invade and destroy the city. This means that the Lord’s instruction is that he must buy a field that he cannot get to or use in a land that that his people will be driven out of3.
15 For thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land.’