Jeremiah 22:1-30

YAHWEH spoke these words to Jeremiah: “Go to the palace of the king of Judah and give him my word. Say: ‘Listen to the word of YAHWEH, king of Judah, who occupies the throne of David, your officials, and people who enter these gates! YAHWEH says to you: Be concerned for justice and righteousness. Rescue the one who is robbed from his oppressor. Do not exploit or mistreat the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow. Stop the violence and do not shed the blood of the innocent in this place. For if you fulfill this command, then there will be kings of David’s lineage to pass through the city’s gates. The kings and their officials will be riding in chariots or riding horses and will be accompanied by the people. But I swear by myself as a witness, if you do not obey these commands, then this palace shall become a ruin, declares YAHWEH!’ ” Yes, listen to what YAHWEH thinks about Judah’s royal palace: “You are as glorious as Gilead to me, as beautiful as the summit of Lebanon; but I swear that I will make you as empty as a desert— like a ghost town. I will appoint a wrecking crew to destroy you, each member with his weapons and tools. They will cut down your pillars of choice cedar and set them on fire. “When many foreigners pass by this city and each one asks another, ‘Why did YAHWEH do this to such a great city?’ the reply will be, ‘Because they forsook the covenant with YAHWEH their God and worshiped and served other gods.’ ” Do not weep for King Josiah, who died, and do not mourn for him; rather, weep bitterly for King Jehoahaz, who is carried away as a captive, for he will never return to see the land of his birth. For this is what YAHWEH has said concerning Shallum son of King Josiah of Judah, who succeeded his father Josiah as king but was led away from here: “He will never return. He will die in the land of his exile, and he will never see his homeland again.” “Doomed is the one who builds his house with unrighteousness, and the upper chambers of his palace with injustice, who compels his fellow man to work for nothing and pays him no wages for his hard labor. Doomed is the one who says, ‘I’ll build a vast palace for myself with spacious upper chambers and large windows. I’ll panel it with cedar and paint it red.’ Does it make you a king just because you build a finer house of cedar than others? Your father lived a satisfying life, yet he dispensed justice and righteousness— and because of this, all went well with him. He upheld the rights of the poor and needy— and look how well he did. Whoever lives this way shows that he knows me,” declares YAHWEH. “But your eyes and heart are only interested in what brings you unjust profit, in violently oppressing your people even if it means shedding innocent blood.” Therefore, YAHWEH says to you, Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of Judah: “No one will cry at your funeral or say, ‘How terrible! How sad!’ No one will weep for you or say, ‘How sad! Why did his majesty have to die?’ He will have a donkey’s burial. He will be dragged outside the gates of Jerusalem and left on the ground to rot.” “Go up to the peaks of Lebanon, you people of Jerusalem, and cry out. Raise your voice in the heights of Bashan, cry out from the mountains of Moab, for all your lovers, the nations you trusted in, are crushed. I warned you in your prosperous times, but you said, ‘I don’t want to hear it.’ You have treated me like that ever since your youth, refusing to listen to me. Now you will be disgraced and humiliated because of all your evil. Your leaders will be swept away like dust in the wind, and your lovers, the nations you trusted in, will be captured and dragged into captivity. You, O  king, although you feel safely nested there in your palace of cedar pillars from Lebanon, you will be in pain and will groan like a woman giving birth!” YAHWEH declares, “As surely as I am the living God, listen, O King Jehoiachin son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah. Even if you were the royal signet ring I wear on my right hand, I would still pull you from my finger. I will hand you over to the power of those who seek your life, into the hands of those you dread—King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and the Babylonians. I will hurl you and the mother who bore you into a foreign land, where neither of you were born and where both of you will die. Your people will be in exile and will not return to the land to which they yearn to come back. “Is this man Coniah now thrown away like a worthless, broken pot that no one wants? Why are he and his offspring hurled out and taken away to a land they knew not? Land of Judah! My land! My land! Hear the word of YAHWEH!” YAHWEH decrees: “List this man as ‘Childless,’ one who will never succeed in his lifetime, for none of his offspring will be accepted to sit on the throne of David and rule in Judah again.”