Jeremiah 22

1 “This is what the Lord says: Go down to the house of the king of Judah and speak this word there,”

2 “and say: Hear the word of the Lord, king of Judah who sits on David’s throne — you and your house and your people, and all who come in through these gates.”

3 “This is what the Lord says: Do judgment and righteousness; rescue the man who has been robbed from the hand of the one wronging him. Do not oppress the newcomer, the orphan, and the widow; do not be ungodly; and do not shed innocent blood in this place.”

4 “For if you truly carry out this word, then kings who sit on David’s throne will come in through the gates of this house, riding chariots and horses — they and their servants and their people.”

5 “But if you do not carry out these words, then I have sworn by myself, says the Lord, that this house will become a desolation.”

6 “For this is what the Lord says against the house of the king of Judah: You are Gilead to me, the summit of Lebanon — yet I swear I will make you a wilderness, cities with no one living in them,”

7 “and I will bring against you a man bent on destruction, with his axe, and they will cut down your choice cedars and throw them into the fire.”

8 “And nations will pass through this city, and each will say to his neighbor, ‘Why has the Lord done this to this great city?’”

9 “And they will answer, ‘Because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord their God, and bowed down to foreign gods and served them.’”

10 “Do not weep for the dead man, and do not lament him. Weep hard instead for the one going away, for he will never return or see the land of his birth.”

11 “For this is what the Lord says about Shallum son of Josiah, who became king in place of his father Josiah, and who has gone out of this place: He will never return here,”

12 “but in the place where I have deported him, there he will die; and he will never see this land again.”

13 “Woe to the one who builds his house without righteousness and his upper rooms without judgment — who makes his neighbor work for free and will not pay him his wages.”

14 “You built yourself a well-measured house, with airy upper rooms, fitted with windows, paneled in cedar, and painted red.”

15 “Will you be king because you compete with your father Ahaz? They will not eat, and they will not drink. It would have been better for you to do judgment and fine righteousness.”

16 “They did not understand; they did not judge the case of the lowly or the case of the poor man. Is this not what it means that you do not know me? says the Lord.”

17 “Look — your eyes and your heart are not good; they are set on your greed, on innocent blood to shed it, on wrongdoing and on murder, to carry them out.”

18 “Therefore this is what the Lord says about Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of Judah: Woe to this man! They will not beat their breasts for him — ‘Ah, my brother!’ — and they will not weep for him — ‘Alas, lord!’”

19 “He will be buried with a donkey’s burial — dragged off and thrown outside the gate of Jerusalem.”

20 “Go up to Lebanon and cry out; lift your voice to Bashan; shout toward the far side of the sea, for all your lovers have been shattered.”

21 “I spoke to you at your stumbling, but you said, ‘I will not listen.’ This has been your way since your youth: you have not listened to my voice.”

22 “The wind will shepherd all your shepherds, and your lovers will go off into captivity. Then you will be ashamed and disgraced before all who love you.”

23 “You who live in Lebanon, nested in the cedars — how you will groan when pangs come on you, pangs like a woman’s in labor.”

24 “As I live, says the Lord, even if Jeconiah son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, were the seal on my right hand, I would pull you off from there,”

25 “and I will hand you over to those who seek your life — the men you shrink from — into the hands of the Chaldeans.”

26 “And I will throw you, and the mother who bore you, into a land where you were not born, and there you will die.”

27 “But to the land they long for in their souls — they will never return.”

28 “Jeconiah has been disgraced like a pot no one has use for; he has been thrown out, expelled into a land he did not know.”

29 “Land, land, hear the Lord’s word!”

30 “Write this man down as banished, for no man of his offspring will ever grow up to sit on David’s throne and rule again in Judah.”