₁The LORD spoke to me in the tenth year that Zedekiah was king of Judah, which was also the eighteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia. ₂At that time the army of the king of Babylonia was attacking Jerusalem, and I was locked up in the courtyard of the royal palace. ₃King Zedekiah had imprisoned me there and had accused me of announcing that the LORD had said, “I am going to let the king of Babylonia capture this city,

₆The LORD told me ₇that Hanamel, my uncle Shallum's son, would come to me with the request to buy his field at Anathoth in the territory of Benjamin, because I was his nearest relative and had the right to buy it for myself. ₈Then, just as the LORD had said, Hanamel came to me there in the courtyard and asked me to buy the field. So I knew that the LORD had really spoken to me. ₉I bought the field from Hanamel and weighed out the money to him; the price came to seventeen pieces of silver. ₁₀I signed and sealed the deed, had it witnessed, and weighed out the money on scales. ₁₁Then I took both copies of the deed of purchase — the sealed copy containing the contract and its conditions, and the open copy — ₁₂and gave them to Baruch, the son of Neriah and grandson of Mahseiah. I gave them to him in the presence of Hanamel and of the witnesses who had signed the deed of purchase and of the people who were sitting in the courtyard. ₁₃Before them all I said to Baruch, ₁₄“The LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, has ordered you to take these deeds, both the sealed deed of purchase and the open copy, and to place them in a clay jar, so that they may be preserved for years to come. ₁₅The LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, has said that houses, fields, and vineyards will again be bought in this land.”