A Warning to Judah’s Kings

1Thus says the Lord: “Descend to the house of the king of Judah, and there you shall speak this word. 2And you shall say: Listen to the word of the Lord, O king of Judah, who sits upon the throne of David: you and your servants, and your people, who enter through these gates. 3Thus says the Lord: Exercise judgment and justice, and free anyone who is oppressed by violence from the hand of a false accuser. And do not be willing to sadden the new arrival, or the orphan, or the widow, nor should you burden them unfairly. And you shall not shed innocent blood in this place. 4For if you will indeed accomplish this word, then there will enter through the gates of this house kings from the stock of David, sitting on his throne, and riding on chariots and on horses: they, and their servants, and their people. 5But if you will not listen to these words, I swear by myself, says the Lord, that this house will be in desolation.

A Warning about the Palace

6For thus says the Lord about the house of the king of Judah: You are to me like Gilead, the head of Lebanon. Certainly, I will make you desolate, with uninhabitable cities.

7And I will sanctify over you the destroying man and his weapons. And they will cut down your select cedars and throw them violently into the fire.

8And many nations will pass through this city. And each one will say to his neighbor: ‘Why has the Lord acted in this way toward this great city?’ 9And they will answer: ‘It is because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord their God, and they adored strange gods and served them.’

A Warning about Shallum

10You should not choose to weep for the dead, nor should you mourn over them with tears. Lament for him who is departing, for he will return no more, nor will he see his native land again.

11For thus says the Lord to Shallum, the son of Josiah, the king of Judah, who reigned in place of his father, who has departed from this place: He will not return here again. 12Instead, he will die in the place to which I have transferred him, and he will not see this land anymore.

A Warning about Jehoiakim

13Woe to one who builds his house with injustice and his upper rooms without judgment, who oppresses his friend without cause and does not pay him his wages.

14And he says: ‘I will build a broad house for myself, with spacious upper rooms.’ He makes windows for himself, and he builds the roof out of cedar, and he paints it with red ocher.

15Will you reign because you compare yourself to the cedar? Did your father not eat and drink, and act with judgment and justice, so that it would be well with him?

16He judged the case of the poor and the indigent for their good. Was this not because he knew me, says the Lord?

17Yet truly, your eyes and your heart are toward avarice and the shedding of innocent blood, and toward false accusations and the pursuit of evil deeds.

18Because of this, thus says the Lord toward Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah: They will not mourn for him by saying, ‘Alas,’ to a brother, or, ‘Alas,’ to a sister. They will not make a noise for him and say, ‘Alas,’ to a master, or, ‘Alas,’ to a nobleman.

19He will be buried with the burial of a donkey, having rotted and been thrown out of the gates of Jerusalem.

20Ascend to Lebanon and cry out! And utter your voice in Bashan, and cry out to those passing by. For all your lovers have been crushed.

21I spoke to you in your abundance, and you said, ‘I will not listen.’ This has been your way from your youth, for you have not listened to my voice.

22The wind will feed all your shepherds, and your lovers will go into captivity. And then you will be confounded, and you will be ashamed of all your wickedness.

23You who sit in Lebanon, and who nest in the cedars, in what way did you mourn when suffering came to you, like the suffering of a woman giving birth?

A Warning to Coniah

24As I live, says the Lord, if Jeconiah, the son of Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, were a ring on my right hand, I would remove him from there. 25And I will deliver you into the hand of those who seek your life, and into the hand of those whose face you dread, and into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, and into the hand of the Chaldeans. 26And I will send you, and your mother who conceived you, into a foreign land, in which you were not born, and there you shall die. 27And to the land about which they lift up their mind, thinking to return there, they shall not return.

28Is this man, Jeconiah, a broken earthenware vessel? Is he a vessel which is entirely unpleasing? Why have they been cast out, he and his offspring, cast out even into a land that they have not known?

29O earth, O earth, O earth! Listen to the word of the Lord!

30Thus says the Lord: Write: this man is barren; he is a man who will not prosper in his days. For there will not be a man from among his offspring who will sit upon the throne of David, or have authority in Judah, anymore.”