The young men shall die by the sword;
Their sons and their daughters shall die by famine,
And there shall be no remnant of them.
For I will bring evil upon the men of Anathoth
In the time when I visit them.—Jer. xi.
It was fearfully accomplished on this city of the priests; but so was also the word spoken at the purchase of the field of Hanameel; for at the return from the captivity one hundred and twenty-eight men undertook to rebuild the city of their fathers.[[15]]
Helon’s ancestors, strictly speaking, derived their extraction from this city of the priests in the tribe Benjamin, and therefore he regarded this as his own city. He imagined a resemblance between himself, as he was now about to assume the sacerdotal office, and the calling of the prophet Jeremiah, and repeated the account of it to his uncle, as they returned from seeing the field of Hanameel.
The word of the Lord came unto me, saying,
“Before I formed thee in the womb I knew thee,
And before thou camest forth out of the womb I had chosen thee,