Hanameel

Hanameel (meaning the grace that comes from God or gift of God) was the cousin of the prophet Jeremiah, the son of Jeremiah's uncle Shallum. During the final siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, while Jeremiah was confined in the court of the guard, Hanameel came to him and asked him to exercise the kinsman-redeemer's right by purchasing a field at Anathoth in Benjamin—the ancestral property that Hanameel wished to sell (Jer. 32:6–15).

Jeremiah's purchase of the field—weighing out seventeen shekels of silver, signing the deed, sealing it, and depositing it with Baruch in an earthen vessel for long-term preservation—was a deliberate prophetic sign-act performed at God's command. At the very moment when Jerusalem was falling and the land seemed lost, Jeremiah bought land as a public testimony that houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land (Jer. 32:15), affirming faith in the future restoration despite the present disaster.