Why does Jeremiah end his prayer by saying, “Yet you, O Lord GOD, have said to me, ‘Buy the field for money and get witnesses’ – though the city is given into the hands of the Chaldeans”?

Jeremiah has already obeyed the Lord and bought the land (Jeremiah 32:1–15), and he knows the meaning of the transaction (Jeremiah 32:15). But he cannot reconcile the certainty of both the judgment and the grace of the Lord¹. Yet you O Lord God. These are not the words of rebellion or disagreement; they are the words of someone who is struggling to see how the Lord for whom nothing is too hard is going to save his people when destruction is inevitable. He cannot make sense of the command to buy a piece of the land when the land is about to be utterly destroyed.