The Father Calls Kings to Justice
Our Father sends Jeremiah to the palace itself. Josiah defended the poor and it went well with him; his sons build with cedar and unpaid labor. Shallum will never see home again, Jehoiakim gets a donkey's burial, and Coniah is torn off like a signet ring.
22 1This is what our Father says: Go down to the house of Judah's king and speak this word there,
2and say: Hear our Father's word, king of Judah, seated on the throne of David—you, your servants, your people entering these gates. 3This is what our Father says: Do justice and right; rescue the robbed from the oppressor's hand. Wrong no foreigner, orphan, or widow, and do them no violence, and shed no innocent blood here. 4If you truly do this, kings on the throne of David will enter these gates, riding chariots and horses—the king, his servants, and his people. 5But if you won't listen to these words, I swear by myself, declares our Father: this house becomes a ruin.
6This is what our Father says about Judah's royal house: You are Gilead to me, Lebanon's peak—yet I will make you a desert, cities where no one lives. 7I will set apart destroyers against you, each with his weapons; they will cut down your choicest cedars and throw them into the fire.
8Many nations will pass this city and ask each other, "Why has the LORD done this to this great city?"
9They'll answer, "Because they abandoned their Father's covenant, worshiped other gods, and served them."
The Father Speaks of Shallum
10Do not weep for the dead or mourn for him; weep bitterly instead for the one who is going away, for he will never return to see the land of his birth.
11This is what our Father says about Shallum son of Josiah, king of Judah, who succeeded his father as king and has left this place: He will never return. 12He will die where they took him captive and never see this land again.
13Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness and his upper rooms by injustice, who makes his neighbor work for nothing and does not give him his wages, 14who says, "I will build myself a vast house with spacious upper rooms," and cuts out wide windows for it, panels it with cedar, and paints it bright red.
15Do you reign because you outdo others with cedar? Your father ate and drank, yet he did justice and righteousness, and then it went well with him.
16He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so it went well. Is this not what it means to know me? declares our Father. 17But your eyes and your heart are set only on your dishonest gain, on shedding innocent blood, and on practicing oppression and violence.
18So our Father says about Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of Judah: No one will mourn him: "Oh, my brother!" or "Oh, my sister!" No one will mourn him: "Oh, lord!" or "Oh, his majesty!" 19He will be buried with a donkey's burial—dragged off and thrown out beyond the gates of Jerusalem. 20Go up to Lebanon and cry out; raise your voice in Bashan; cry out from Abarim, for all your lovers are crushed. a a v20 Abarim is a mountain range east of the Jordan River, near the plains of Moab. 21I spoke to you in your times of ease, but you said, "I will not listen." This has been your way since your youth—you have not obeyed my voice. 22"The wind will shepherd away all your shepherds, and your lovers will go into captivity; then you will be ashamed and humiliated because of all your wickedness. 23You who dwell in Lebanon, nested among the cedars, how you will groan when labor pains come upon you, anguish like a woman giving birth!"
24As I live, declares our Father, even if Coniah son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, were a signet ring on my right hand, I would tear you off. 25"I will hand you to those seeking your life, those you dread—Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and the Babylonians. 26I will hurl you and your mother who bore you into another land, where neither was born—there you will die. 27As for the land they long to return to, they will never return there."
28Is this man Coniah a despised, shattered pot, a vessel no one wants? Why are he and his children hurled out and cast into a land they do not know? 29Land, land, land, hear the word of our Father!
30This is what our Father says: Record this man as childless, a man who will not prosper in his lifetime; for none of his offspring will prosper, none will sit on the throne of David or rule again in Judah.
