Jeremiah 32

32 ¹The word to Jeremiah from our Father in Zedekiah king of Judah's tenth year, Nebuchadnezzar's eighteenth. ²At that time Babylon's army was besieging Jerusalem, and the prophet Jeremiah was locked in the guard's courtyard at the king of Judah's palace.

³For Zedekiah king of Judah had imprisoned him, saying, "Why do you prophesy and say, 'This is what our Father says: Look, I am about to give this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will capture it;

⁴"Zedekiah king of Judah will not escape the Babylonians; he will surely be handed to Babylon's king, speak with him mouth to mouth, and see him eye to eye. ⁵He will take Zedekiah to Babylon, where he stays until I attend to him, declares our Father. Though you fight the Babylonians, you won't succeed.'"

⁶And Jeremiah said, "The word of our Father came to me:

⁷Look, Hanamel son of Shallum, your uncle, comes to tell you: Buy my field at Anathoth, for the redemption right to buy it is yours."

⁸Then Hanamel my cousin came to me at the guard's court, as our Father had said, and told me, 'Buy my field at Anathoth in Benjamin, for the right of inheritance is yours, and yours the redemption; buy it.' Then I knew this was our Father's word.

⁹So I bought the field at Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel, weighing out about seven ounces of silver. ¹⁰I signed the deed and sealed it, called in witnesses, and weighed the money on the scales. ¹¹Then I took the sealed purchase deed, with its terms and conditions, and the open copy, ¹²I gave the purchase deed to Baruch son of Neriah, son of Mahseiah, before Hanamel my cousin, before the witnesses who signed it, and before all the Judeans sitting in the guard's court.

¹³And in their presence I charged Baruch:

¹⁴"This is what the Father of heaven's armies, our Father of Israel, says: Take these deeds—the sealed deed of purchase and the open deed—and put them in a clay jar to last a long time. ¹⁵For the Father of heaven's armies, our Father of Israel, says: Houses, fields, and vineyards will again be bought in this land."

Jeremiah's Prayer: Nothing Too Hard for You

¹⁶After giving the deed of purchase to Baruch son of Neriah, I prayed to our Father: ¹⁷"Ah, Sovereign Father! You yourself made heaven and earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm; nothing is too hard for you. ¹⁸You show faithful love to thousands, but repay parents' guilt into their children's laps after them—O great, mighty Father, the Father of heaven's armies is his name. ¹⁹Great in counsel, mighty in deed, your eyes open to all the ways of humankind, repaying each by his ways, by the fruit of his deeds. ²⁰You performed signs and wonders in Egypt, and to this day in Israel and among mankind, making a name for yourself, as it is today. ²¹You brought your people Israel from Egypt's land with signs, wonders, a strong hand, an outstretched arm, and great terror. ²²You gave them this land you swore to their ancestors to give them—a land flowing with milk and honey. ²³They entered and took it, but did not obey your voice or walk in your law; all you commanded them to do, they left undone. So you brought all this disaster on them. ²⁴Siege ramps have reached the city to capture it; it's given to the Babylonians fighting against it, because of sword, famine, and plague. What you spoke has happened—you see it. ²⁵Yet you, Sovereign Father, said, 'Buy the field for money, call witnesses'—though the city is given to the Babylonians."

²⁶Then the word of our Father came to Jeremiah:

²⁷"I am the Father of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me? ²⁸So says our Father: I am handing this city to the Babylonians, to Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and he will capture it. ²⁹The Babylonians attacking this city will come, burn it down with fire, and the houses where the people burned offerings to Baal and poured drink offerings to other gods on their roofs, provoking me to anger.

³⁰"The people of Israel and Judah have done nothing but evil in my sight from their youth; Israel has done nothing but anger me with the work of their hands, declares our Father.

³¹"This city has provoked my anger and wrath from the day it was built until now, so I will remove it from my sight, ³²for all the evil the people of Israel and Judah did to anger me—they, their kings, officials, priests, prophets, the men of Judah, and Jerusalem's residents. ³³They turned their back to me, not their face. Though I taught them again and again, they refused to listen or accept correction. ³⁴They set up their detestable things in the house called by my name, to make it unclean. ³⁵They built Baal's high places in the Valley of Ben-Hinnom, sacrificing their sons and daughters to Molech—something I never commanded or imagined, that they'd do this detestable thing and make Judah sin."

They Will Be My Children; I Will Be Their Father

³⁶"Now this is what our Father of Israel says about this city you say is handed to Babylon's king by sword, famine, and plague:

³⁷"I will gather them from every land where I banished them in my anger, my rage, and great wrath, bring them back to this place, and let them live securely. ³⁸They will be my children, and I will be their Father. ³⁹I will give them one heart, one way, to fear me always—for their good and their children's after them. ⁴⁰I will make an everlasting covenant with them, never turning from doing them good; I will put my fear in their hearts, so they never turn from me. ⁴¹I will rejoice over them, benefiting them, and truly plant them in this land, with all my heart and all my soul."

⁴²For our Father says: "As I brought all this great disaster on this people, so I'll bring on them all the good I'm promising. ⁴³Fields will be bought in this land you call desolate, without man or beast, given to the Babylonians. ⁴⁴Fields will be bought with silver, deeds written, sealed, witnessed—in Benjamin's land, Jerusalem's surroundings, Judah's towns, the hill country, the lowland, the Negev—for I will bring them back from captivity, declares our Father."