Jeremiah 32:26 - Meaning and Application

Here is God’s answer to Jeremiah’s prayer. It was meant to calm his mind and make him rest in God’s will. It gives a full view of God’s anger against that generation and his grace for later generations. Jeremiah did not know how to put together mercy and judgment, but God teaches him to praise Him for both.

When we do not know how one part of God’s word fits with another, we can still be sure both are true. Both are pure, both will come to pass, and not one small part of either will fail. When Jeremiah was told to buy the field in Anathoth, he may have hoped God would cancel his judgment and make the Babylonians lift the siege. But God says, “No, the sentence will be carried out. Jerusalem will be destroyed.”

We should note this carefully: promises of future mercy are not guarantees that present trouble will end at once. Yet God also wanted Jeremiah to understand something else. Buying that field did not mean that all the mercy God planned for his people after the exile would only be the return of their land. It was also a sign of far greater spiritual blessings, which would be given to them in abundance and were far more valuable than fields and vineyards.

So in this word from the Lord to Jeremiah, we have some of the strongest warnings and some of the richest promises in the Old Testament. Life and death, good and evil, are both set before us here. We should consider them carefully and choose wisely.

The ruin of Judah and Jerusalem is now announced. The decision has been made, and it will not be taken back.

God first declares his own power and authority: “I am the Lord, the self-existing, all-sufficient One. I am the God of all flesh,” that is, of all mankind. He is called the God of all flesh because people are weak and cannot stand against him, and also because they are sinful and unwilling to obey him (Psalm 56:4). God made all things, and he uses them as he pleases.

The God of Israel is also the God of all people and of every human spirit. If Israel is cast off, he can raise up another people for his name from some other nation. If he is the God of all flesh, then nothing is too hard for him. What cannot he do, since all human strength comes from him, depends on him, and is governed by him? Whatever he intends to do, in wrath or in mercy, nothing can stop him or ruin his plan.

He stands by what he has often said about Jerusalem’s destruction by the king of Babylon. “I will hand this city over to him,” God says, “now that he is attacking it, and he will seize it and plunder it.” The Babylonians will come, set it on fire, and burn the city and all its houses. God’s house will not be spared, and neither will the king’s palace.

God then gives the reason for these severe acts against a city that had once enjoyed so much favor. It is sin, and nothing else, that destroys it. They were bold and shameless in sin. They offered incense to Baal, not in hidden places like people who were ashamed, but on their rooftops (Jeremiah 32:29), openly defying God’s justice.

They were also trying to insult God. They did it to provoke him to anger (Jeremiah 32:29). Again, God says that they have only provoked him with the work of their hands (Jeremiah 32:30). They could gain no real pleasure, profit, or honor from it. They did it on purpose to offend him. God says again that all the evil they had done was to provoke him to anger (Jeremiah 32:32). They knew he was a jealous God in matters of worship, and they chose to test that jealousy openly.

Their whole conduct was provoking to God. They had done evil before him from their youth, from the time they first became a people (Jeremiah 32:30). Their murmuring and rebellion in the wilderness prove that. As for Jerusalem, though it was the holy city, it had provoked the holy God from the day it was built until that very day (Jeremiah 32:31). How much reason we have to grieve over how little honor God receives in this world, and how much shame is done to him. Even in Judah, where he was known and his name was great, and in Salem, where his tabernacle was, something was always found that provoked him.

All ranks and classes of people shared in the guilt, and so all were justly included in the ruin. This was true not only of the children of Israel, who had broken away from the temple, but also of the children of Judah, who still stayed with it. It was true not only of the common people, the men of Judah and the people of Jerusalem, but also of those who should have corrected and restrained sin in others. Their kings and princes, their priests and prophets, were leaders in the same evil.

God had called them again and again to repent, but they refused to listen. They turned their backs on the one who called them, even though he was their Master, to whom they owed obedience, and their Benefactor, to whom they owed gratitude and trust (Jeremiah 32:33). God says he taught them carefully, as a tender parent teaches a child. He rose early to teach them, studied how to fit his teaching to them, and began while they were still young and most likely to respond. But it was all wasted. They would not even turn their faces toward him, much less listen. Instead, they turned their backs on him, which is a sign of deep contempt. As God called them, like stubborn children, so they went away from him (Hosea 11:2). They did not listen to receive instruction, and they ignored words meant for their own good.

Their idol worship showed open contempt for God. They set their detestable idols, which they knew God hated most of all, in the house that bears his name, and so defiled it (Jeremiah 32:34). They had idols not only in high places and groves, but even in God’s temple itself.

They were also guilty of terrible cruelty toward their own children, because they sacrificed them to Molech (Jeremiah 32:35). Since they did not want to keep God in their knowledge, but exchanged his glory for shame, they were given up to vile desires and stripped of natural affection. Their glory was turned into shame.

What came of all this? They caused Judah to sin (Jeremiah 32:35). The whole land was poisoned by the idolatry and wickedness that spread from Jerusalem. They also brought ruin on themselves. It was as if they had acted on purpose to make God remove them from his presence (Jeremiah 32:31). They threw themselves out of his favor.

The restoration of Judah and Jerusalem is then promised (Jeremiah 32:36 and following).

God will remember mercy when he judges, and a time will come, a set time, to favor Zion. Notice, first, how far this people had finally sunk into despair. When judgment was only threatened from a distance, they did not fear it. When it actually came, they had no hope. They said about the city (Jeremiah 32:36) that it would be handed over to the king of Babylon, not because of any cowardice or bad leadership on their part, but because of the sword, famine, and disease. About the land they said in bitterness (Jeremiah 32:43), “It is ruined, with no people or animals left. There is no relief and no cure. It is given into the hand of the Chaldeans.”

Deep carelessness often ends in deep despair. But those who keep a holy fear of God at all times have a solid hope to hold them up in the worst days. God also gives them hope of mercy kept for later. Even though their bodies must fall in captivity, their children will again see this good land and see God’s kindness in it.

They will be brought back from captivity and settle again in this land (Jeremiah 32:37). They had been under God’s anger, fury, and great wrath, but now they would share in his grace, love, and great favor. He had scattered them and driven them into every country. Some fled and scattered themselves, and others were scattered by their enemies, who did this as a policy to stop them from joining together. God’s hand was in both. But now God will find them and gather them from all the countries where they were driven, just as he promised in the law (Deuteronomy 30:3, 4) and as the saints had prayed (Psalm 106:47; Nehemiah 1:9). He had banished them, but he will bring them back to this place, which they could not help loving. For many years in their own land they had lived under constant war scares, but now God says, “I will make them dwell safely.” Once they are changed and turned back to him, neither their own guilty consciences nor outside enemies will terrify them. He promises, “I will plant them in this land with certainty” (Jeremiah 32:41). That means not only that he will surely do it, but also that they will enjoy holy security and rest there. They will take root there, settled firmly, and not be uprooted and shaken again.

God will also renew his covenant with them, a covenant of grace. A covenant of grace is God’s saving promise to bless and change his people. Its blessings are spiritual, and they prepare people for the greater things God means to do for them. It is called an everlasting covenant (Jeremiah 32:40), not only because God will always keep it, but because its results will last forever. These promises look beyond Israel by blood and are sure to all believers, to every true Israelite. Good Christians may apply them to themselves, plead them with God, and take comfort in them.

God will claim them as his own and give himself to them as theirs (Jeremiah 32:38). “They shall be my people.” He will make them his by working in them the marks and character of his people, and then he will protect, guide, and rule them as his people. And to make them truly, fully, and forever happy, “I will be their God.” They will worship and serve God as theirs and cling to him alone, and he will prove himself to be theirs. All that he is and all that he has will be used for their good.

God will also give them a heart to fear him (Jeremiah 32:39). What he requires of those he brings into covenant with him is that they fear him. That means they honor his greatness, fear his wrath, stand in awe of his authority, give him homage, and give him the glory due to his name. What he requires, he promises to work in them, because he has chosen them as his people. As it is God’s right to shape people’s hearts, so it is his promise to his people to shape theirs rightly. A heart that fears God is indeed a good heart, a heart well formed. This is repeated in Jeremiah 32:40: “I will put my fear in their hearts.” That means he will work gracious qualities and dispositions in them that shape their whole life. Teachers can put good things into our minds, but only God can put them into our hearts. Only he can work in us both the will and the ability to do what is right.

He will also give them one heart and one way. To make them walk in one way, he will first give them one heart. As the heart is, so the path will be, and both will be one. First, each person will be united within himself. One heart is the same as a new heart (Ezekiel 11:19). The heart is one when it is fully set on God and wholly given to him. When the eye is single and God’s glory is the only aim, when our hearts are fixed, trusting in God, and our obedience is steady and complete, then the heart is one and the way is one. Unless the heart is steady like that, the steps will not be steady. This promise gives us both direction and encouragement to pray with David, “Unite my heart to fear your name” (Psalm 86:11), for God says, “I will give them one heart, that they may fear me.”

Second, they will be one with each other. All true Christians will be joined into one body. Jews and Gentiles will become one flock, and as far as they are made holy, they will have a desire to love one another. The gospel they confess gives the strongest reasons for mutual love, and the Spirit living in them is the Spirit of love. Though they may differ on smaller matters, they will be one in the great things of God, being renewed in the same image. Though they may have many paths in smaller matters, they have only one way, the way of serious godliness.

God will also make sure they keep going in grace, and that the covenant between him and them continues. They would have been happy when they were first planted in Canaan, like Adam in paradise, if they had not turned away from God. So now that they are restored to happiness, they will be kept in it by being protected from turning away from him. That will complete their blessedness. First, God will never leave them or stop doing them good: “I will not turn away from them to do them good.” Earthly rulers are changeable, and their closest favorites have fallen under their anger. But God’s mercy lasts forever. Those he loves, he loves to the end. God may seem to turn away from this people (Isaiah 54:8), but even then he does not turn away from doing them good or planning good for them. Second, they will not leave or forsake him. That is the danger we face. We have no reason to distrust God’s faithfulness and steadiness, but we do have reason to distrust our own. So here God promises to give them a heart to fear him forever, all their days, to be in his fear every day and all day long (Proverbs 23:17), and to continue that fear to the end of their lives. He will put such a principle in their hearts that they will not depart from him.

Even those who have devoted themselves to God will turn away if they are left to themselves. But when the fear of God rules in the heart, that keeps a person from falling away. Nothing else will do this. If we keep close to God and remain faithful, it is entirely because of his mighty grace, not because of our own strength or determination.

God will also pass this blessing on to their children. He will give them grace to fear him, for the good of them and of their children after them. If their turning away from God had harmed their children, then their staying faithful to God will benefit their children. We cannot better seek the welfare of future generations than by setting up and maintaining the fear and worship of God in our homes.

God will take pleasure in their well-being and will do everything to promote it (Jeremiah 32:41). “I will rejoice over them to do them good.” God will surely do them good because he rejoices over them. They are precious to him. He takes pride in them, and so he will not only do them good, but delight in doing them good. When he punishes them, he does so reluctantly. “How can I give you up, Ephraim?” But when he restores them, he does it gladly, and he rejoices in doing them good. So we should serve him gladly and rejoice in every chance we have to serve him. He is a cheerful giver, and he loves a cheerful servant.

“I will plant them,” says God, “with my whole heart and with my whole soul.” He will be fully committed to it and will take delight in it. He will make it the work of his providence to settle them again in Canaan, and all his dealings will work together toward that end. In the end, everything will show that all things have been working for the good of the church, and people will say that the ruler of the world has been entirely occupied with the care of his church.

These promises will be fulfilled just as certainly as the earlier warnings were. The people’s present stubbornness did not stop the judgments from coming, and their present despair should not stop them from expecting these blessings either (Jeremiah 32:42). “As I have brought all this great evil upon them,” according to the warnings, and for the honor of divine justice, “so I will bring upon them all this good,” according to the promise, and for the honor of divine mercy. God is faithful to his warnings, and he will be even more faithful to his promises. He will comfort his people in proportion to the time he has afflicted them. The churches will have rest after days of trouble.

As a sign of all this, houses and lands will again be worth something in Judah and Jerusalem. Right now they are hard to sell, but then there will again be enough buyers (Jeremiah 32:43, Jeremiah 32:44). Fields will be bought in this land, and people will want land here more than anywhere else. Land will sell everywhere, not only around Jerusalem, but also in the cities of Judah and Israel, whether on the hills, in the valleys, or in the southern country. People will buy fields and sign deeds. Trade will come back, because they will have money to buy land. Farming will come back, because those with money will want to invest it in land. Legal business will also return to normal, because they will sign deeds and seal them.

This is mentioned to reassure Jeremiah about his own purchase. He had bought a field and could not even go to see it, yet he must believe that this was a sign of many future purchases. Even those purchases were only faint pictures of the lasting inheritance in heavenly Canaan, reserved for all who have the fear of God in their hearts and do not turn away from him.