Why…?
Why would someone purchase a piece of land just as a terrifying army is arriving to mercilessly take over everything in that region?
God Himself had told Jeremiah to deliver to the people a message that was completely contradictory to what the popular prophets of the day were saying… A message that God would not defeat the Assyrians, but that the Assyrians would conquer the land and carry the survivors far away into exile in Babylon.
God had determined to send judgment upon His people for their endless rebellion for a period of 70 years. And that meant it was going to happen…
But no one was listening to Jeremiah. In fact, right from the very day that God called Jeremiah, He told him that no one would listen…. and yet He still called Jeremiah to warn them. Over and over and over again.
And Jeremiah did what God asked him to do. Over and over and over again.
And Jeremiah would endure more hardship and heartbreak than anyone might possibly imagine that God could ask of someone.
But when God then tells Jeremiah that a family member is going to offer him a piece of land in his hometown and that Jeremiah should purchase the land and make sure the deeds are safely stored away to last a long long time, Jeremiah knows it is from God when his family member does approach him with the offer to buy the field in Anathoth.
And so he buys it.
And then he uses the moment to declare to all the witnesses there that God will eventually restore the whole land to them, even though they are about to be carried away by brutal, ruthless savages. The message nobody wants…
But many decades later, when Jeremiah is presumably dead and gone, the prophet Daniel, then an elderly exile in Babylon, would read the writings of Jeremiah and realize that the 70 years are finished and that it is time for the Israelite exiles to return to their land and to rebuild it….
A rebuilding that will signal the timing of the coming of their long awaited Messiah (see Daniel 9).
And so God’s plan endures…
Jeremiah’s decision to buy a piece of land that is about to be usurped makes little sense, but then, Jeremiah’s entire recorded life makes no sense whatsoever outside of the context of God’s grand plan for His people.
Do you want your life to make sense?
Then make sure you are living your life for God and for His eternal plan for mankind.
Otherwise your life is unfortunately meaningless.

(Psalm 138:8)