Old Testament · Jeremiah

Jeremiah 22

A Warning to Judah’s Kings

1Thus says the LORD: Go down to the house of the king of Judah, and speak there this word, 2and say, Hear the word of the LORD, O king of Judah, who sits on the throne of David, you, and your servants, and your people who enter by these gates. 3Thus says the LORD: Do judgment^a and righteousness, and deliver the plundered from the hand of the oppressor; and do no wrong, do no violence to the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place.

4For if you indeed do this thing, then there shall enter by the gates of this house kings sitting for David on his throne, riding in chariots and on horses, he, and his servants, and his people. 5But if you will not hear these words, by myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, that this house shall become a desolation.

A Warning about the Palace

6For thus says the LORD 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 not inhabited.

7And I will sanctify destroyers against you, every man^b with his weapons; and they shall cut down the choice of your cedars, and cast them on the fire.

8And many nations shall pass by this city, and they shall say, every man to his neighbor, Why has the LORD done thus to this great city?

9And they shall say, Because they forsook the covenant^c of the LORD their God, and bowed down to other gods, and served^d them.

A Warning about Shallum

10Do not weep for the dead, nor bemoan him; weep bitterly for him who goes away, for he shall not return again, nor see the land of his birth.

11For thus says the LORD concerning Shallum the son of Josiah, king of Judah, who reigned instead of Josiah his father, who went forth from this place: He shall not return there again; 12but in the place where they have led him captive, there he shall die, and this land he shall not see again.

A Warning about Jehoiakim

13Woe to him who builds his house without righteousness, and his upper chambers without judgment; who works by his neighbor for nothing, and does not give him his wages;
14who says, I will build for myself a house of measurements, and spacious upper chambers, and he cuts out for himself windows, and it is paneled with cedar, and painted with vermilion.
15Do you reign because you compete in cedar? Did not your father eat and drink, and do judgment and righteousness? Then it was well with him.
16He judged the judgment^e of the poor and needy; then it was well. Is this not to know me? declares the LORD.
17But your eyes and your heart are on nothing but your dishonest gain, and on shedding innocent blood, and on oppression, and on violence, to do it.

18Therefore thus says the LORD concerning Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah: They shall not lament for him, Ah, my brother! or, Ah, sister! They shall not lament for him, Ah, lord! or, Ah, his majesty!

19With the burial of a donkey he shall be buried, dragged and cast forth beyond the gates of Jerusalem.
20Go up to Lebanon, and cry out, and in Bashan lift up your voice, and cry out from Abarim, for all your lovers are broken.
21I spoke to you in your prosperity, but you said, I will not hear. This has been your way from your youth, that you have not heard my voice.
22All your shepherds the wind^f shall shepherd, and your lovers shall go into captivity; surely then you shall be ashamed and confounded for all your evil.
23O inhabitant of Lebanon, nestled in the cedars, how you will be pitied when pangs come upon you, anguish like a woman giving birth!

A Warning to Coniah

24As I live^g, declares the LORD, though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah were a signet on my right hand, yet from there I would pull you off. 25And I will give you into the hand of those who seek your soul^h, and into the hand of those before whom you are afraid, even into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of the Chaldeans. 26And I will hurl you, and your mother who bore you, into another land, where you were not born; and there you shall die. 27But to the land to which they lift up their soul to return, there they shall not return.

28Is this man Coniah a despised, shattered idol? Is he a vessel in which there is no delight? Why are they hurled out, he and his seed, and cast into a land which they do not know?
29O land, land, land, hear the word of the LORD!

30Thus says the LORD: Write this man childless, a man who shall not prosper in his days; for none of his seed shall prosper, sitting on the throne of David, and ruling again in Judah.