Jeremiah 32: Buy Low...

Jeremiah receives an intriguing direction from the Lord in chapter 32: Buy a field in Anathoth while the capital city of Jerusalem is under siege and about to fall to the Babylonian army.

Talk about your lousy times to invest in real estate!  At any moment, the city was expected to fall and everything would be up in the air.  People were going to die.  Ownership of various parcels of land would be considered a quaint relic of the past to an invading army.  Jeremiah had been prophesying the doom of the city for some time, so he knew that its time of judgment was at hand.  Why, then, would God call him to invest in land at this very moment?

Even Jeremiah himself wondered this.  After reviewing the dire situation of Jerusalem with it being surrounded and siege ramps being built up against it, Jeremiah says, "Yet you, O Lord God, have said to me, 'Buy the field for money and get witnesses' - though the city has been given into the hands of the Chaldeans" (vs. 25).

The answer that comes to Jeremiah is that, while the nation may be conquered now, there is a sure and certain time of restoration coming when land transactions will again take place.  "For thus says the Lord: Just as I have brought all this great disaster upon this people, so I will bring upon them all the good fortune that I now promise them.  Fields shall be bought in this land of which you are saying, It is a desolation, without human beings or animals; it has been given into the hands of the Chaldeans.  Fields shall be bought for money, and deeds shall be signed and sealed and witnessed, in the land of Benjamin, in the places around Jerusalem, and in the cities of Judah, of the hill country, of the Shephelah, and of the Negeb; for I will restore their fortunes, says the Lord" (vs. 42-44).

By purchasing the land at this time of invasion, Jeremiah is practicing that time honored investment adage: "Buy low, sell high."  While it may look foolish and ridiculous to those whose eyes are trained on the destruction of the moment, Jeremiah is acting in ruthless hope in the Lord's word of a national restoration coming.  Defeat and exile is not the end; it is a pause from which Judah will return and recover her relationship with the Lord, stronger than ever thanks to the guiding hand of the Messiah.