A Warning to Judah’s Kings
Thus says the LORD: Go down to the house of the king of Judah and speak there this word.
And say: Hear the word of the LORD, king of Judah, who sits on the throne of David — you and your servants and your people who come in by these gates.
Thus says the LORD: Do judgment and righteousness, and deliver the robbed one from the hand of the oppressor; and the sojourner, the orphan and the widow do not wrong, do not do violence; and innocent blood do not shed in this place.
For if you indeed do this word, then there will come in by the gates of this house kings sitting for David on his throne, riding in the chariot and on the horses — he and his servants and his people.
But if you do not hear these words, by myself I have sworn — the utterance of the LORD — that this house will become a ruin.
A Warning about the Palace
For thus says the LORD concerning the house of the king of Judah: Gilead you are to me, the head of Lebanon. Surely I will make you a wilderness, cities not inhabited.
And I will sanctify destroyers against you, each with his weapons; and they will cut down the choicest of your cedars and make them fall on the fire.
And many nations will pass by this city, and they will say each to his neighbor: For what has the LORD done thus to this great city?
And they will say: Because they forsook the covenant of the LORD their God and bowed down to other gods and served them.
A Warning about Shallum
Do not weep for the dead, and do not grieve for him. Weep bitterly for the one going away, for he will not return again and see the land of his birth.
For thus says the LORD concerning Shallum son of Josiah, king of Judah, who reigned in place of Josiah his father, who went out from this place: He will not return there again;
for in the place where they exiled him, there he will die, and this land he will not see again.
A Warning about Jehoiakim
Woe to him who builds his house without righteousness and his upper rooms without judgment; who makes his neighbor serve for nothing and does not give him his wage;
who says: I will build myself a house of measures and airy upper rooms — and he cuts out for himself windows, and it is paneled with cedar and painted with vermilion.
Do you reign because you compete in cedar? Your father — did he not eat and drink and do judgment and righteousness? Then it was good for him.
He judged the cause of the poor and the needy; then it was good. Is not that the knowing of me? — the utterance of the LORD.
For your eyes and your heart are on nothing but your unjust gain, and on shedding innocent blood, and on oppression and on violence, to do it.
Therefore thus says the LORD concerning Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of Judah: They will not lament for him — Ah, my brother! and, Ah, sister! They will not lament for him — Ah, lord! and, Ah, his majesty!
With the burial of a donkey he will be buried, dragged and thrown out beyond the gates of Jerusalem.
Go up to Lebanon and cry out, and in Bashan give your voice, and cry out from Abarim, for all your lovers are broken.
I spoke to you in your ease; you said: I will not hear. This has been your way from your youth, that you have not obeyed my voice.
All your shepherds the wind will shepherd, and your lovers will go into captivity. Surely then you will be ashamed and humiliated for all your evil.
Dweller in Lebanon, nesting in the cedars — how you will groan when pangs come to you, writhing like a woman giving birth!
A Warning to Coniah
As I live — the utterance of the LORD — even if Coniah son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, were a signet on my right hand, from there I would tear you off.
And I will give you into the hand of those who seek your soul and into the hand of those whose face you dread, and into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon and into the hand of the Chaldeans.
And I will hurl you and your mother who bore you onto another land, where you were not born; and there you will die.
And to the land to which they lift up their soul to return — there they will not return.
Is this man Coniah a despised, shattered image, a vessel with no delight in it? Why have they been hurled out, he and his seed, and thrown onto a land they have not known?
Earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the LORD!
Thus says the LORD: Write this man childless, a man who will not prosper in his days; for none of his seed will prosper, sitting on the throne of David and ruling again in Judah.