And fields shall be bought in this land
After the return from the Babylonish captivity, which this respects; and of which the prophet's purchasing a field of his uncle's son was a pledge and token; in doing which, as a right thing, he is confirmed; as well as the cavils and objections of the Jews removed, who thought the destruction of the city, and such a practice, irreconcilable; and, moreover, this is mentioned as a pledge, earnest, and confirmation of the fulfilment of the above spiritual promises in Gospel times; for the people being returned at the end of the seventy years' captivity, and purchasing fields and vineyards, as was predicted, it might be strongly concluded, that since those temporal blessings promised were made good, spiritual ones would certainly be fulfilled; though some understand these words, in a spiritual sense, of the field of the church; for it is in the singular number, "a field shall be bought" F15; yea, "that field", emphatically, which was bought by the blood of Christ, and first planted in the land of Judea, as in ( Jeremiah 32:41 ) ; whereof ye say, [it is] desolate without man or beast;
so wasted and destroyed by the enemy, that neither man nor beast are left, but both carried off by him; and therefore no hope of what is above promised: it is given into the hand of the Chaldeans;
they are become the possessors of it, and therefore it is all over with us as to buying and possessing fields and vineyards; but notwithstanding this diffidence and despair in the present view of things, it follows: