Jeremiah Chapter 22    

¹Yahweh said this to me: “Go down to the house of the king of Judah and speak this word there.
  ²Say, ‘Hear the word of Yahweh, O king of Judah, who sits on the throne of David; you, and your servants, and your people who enter in by these gates.
  ³This is what Yahweh says: Do justice and righteousness; and rescue the one who has been robbed from the hand of his oppressor, and do no wrong nor do violence to the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow; and do not shed innocent blood in this place.
  ⁴For if you obey this word, then kings sitting on the throne of David will enter in by the gates of this house, riding in chariots and on horses; he and his servants and his people.
  ⁵But if you will not hear these words, I swear by myself, says Yahweh, that this house will become a desolation.’
  ⁶For this is what Yahweh says concerning the house of the king of Judah: ‘You are Gilead to me, the head of Lebanon. Yet surely I will make you a wilderness; cities that are not inhabited.
  ⁷I will prepare destroyers against you, each with his weapons, and they will cut down your choice cedars and cast them into the fire.
 

⁸Many nations will pass by this city, and every man will say to his neighbor, “Why has Yahweh done such a thing to this great city?”
  ⁹Then they will answer, “Because they forsook the covenant of Yahweh their God, and worshiped other gods and served them.”’”
  ¹⁰Do not weep for the dead, nor mourn for him; but weep bitterly for him who goes away into exile, for he will never return, or see his native land.
 

¹¹For this is what Yahweh says touching Shallum the son of Josiah, king of Judah, who reigned instead of Josiah his father, and who has gone forth out of this place: “He will return here no more.
  ¹²But in the place where they have led him captive, there he will die, and he will see this land no more.”
  ¹³“Woe to him who builds his house through unrighteousness and his upper rooms through injustice, who makes his neighbor serve him for nothing and does not give him his wages,
  ¹⁴who says, ‘I will build myself a wide house and spacious upper rooms,’ and who cuts out windows for himself, and panels it with cedar, and paints it with vermilion.
  ¹⁵Are you a king because you strive to excel in cedar? Your father, did he not eat and drink and administer justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him.
  ¹⁶He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well. Isn’t this what it means to know me? says Yahweh.
  ¹⁷But your eyes and your heart are for nothing except for your covetousness and for shedding innocent blood, and for oppression, and for doing violence.”
  ¹⁸Therefore this is what Yahweh says concerning Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah: “They will not lament for him, saying, ‘Ah my brother!’ or, ‘Ah sister!’ They will not lament for him, saying ‘Ah lord!’ or, ‘Ah his glory!’
  ¹⁹He will be buried with the burial of a donkey, dragged off and cast outside; beyond the gates of Jerusalem.”
  ²⁰“Go up to Lebanon, and cry out; and lift up your voice in Bashan, and cry out from Abarim, for all your lovers are destroyed.
  ²¹I spoke to you in your times of prosperity; but you said, ‘I will not hear.’ This has been your way from your youth, that you have not obeyed my voice.
  ²²The wind will shepherd away all your shepherds, and your lovers will go into captivity. Surely then you will be ashamed and confounded because of all your wickedness.
  ²³O inhabitant of Lebanon who makes your nest in the cedars, how you will groan when pangs come upon you, the pain as of a woman in labor!”
 

²⁴“As I live, says Yahweh, even if you, Coniah, the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, were the signet ring on my right hand, yet would I pull you off,
  ²⁵and I will give you into the hand of those who seek your life, and into the hand of those of whom you are afraid, even into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and into the hand of the Chaldeans.
  ²⁶I will hurl you, and your mother who bore you, into another country where you were not born, and you will die there.
  ²⁷And to the land that their soul longs to return to, they will not return there.”
  ²⁸Is this man Coniah a despised broken pot? Is he a vessel that no one wants? Why are he and his seed to be hurled out, and cast into a land that they do not know?
  ²⁹Land, land, land, hear the word of Yahweh.
  ³⁰This is what Yahweh says: “Write down this man as childless, a strong man who will not succeed in his days, for none of his seed will succeed in sitting on the throne of David and ruling any more in Judah.”