Jeremiah

22 Said Jehovah, “Go down to the house of the king of Judah and speak this word there: 2 say ‘Hear Jehovah’s word, king of Judah, you who sit on David’s throne! you and your officers and your people, that come in at these gates! 3 Says Jehovah, Do lawfully and honestly, and take stolen goods out of a rapacious man’s hands, and do not ill-treat immigrant, orphan, and widow, do not violate their rights, and do not shed innocent blood in this place; 4* for if you shall do this thing, there shall come in at the gates of this house kings that David has sitting on his throne, riding chariots and ponies, they and their officers and their people; 5 but if you do not listen to these words, by myself I swear, quoth Jehovah, that this house shall become a ruin. 6* For Jehovah says of the house of the king of Judah “You are to me Gilead, the peak of Lebanon; depend upon it, I will render you a wilderness, an uninhabited nakedness, 7* and set ravagers at you, each with his tools, who will cut your choicest cedars and bring them down for fire. 8 And many nations will pass this city and say to each other ‘What did Jehovah do like that to this great city for?’ 9 and they will say ‘For their having quitted their God Jehovah’s covenant and done reverence to other gods and worshiped them.’”’”

10 Do not weep for him who is dead nor lament his lot; do weep for him who has gone, because he will never come back nor see his native city. 11 For Jehovah says to Shallum the son of Josiah, the successor of his father Josiah, who has gone out from this place, he will never come back to it, 12 but in the place they deported him to he will die, and never see this country again.

13 Ha, you who build your house unrightfully and your roof apartments unlawfully, using a fellowman’s work gratis and not giving him his pay; 14* you who say “I will build myself a large-sized house and spacious roof apartments” and cut yourself windows and put in cedar wainscoting and paint with vermilion! 15 Are you being king because you try for a record in cedar? Your father ate and drank and did the lawful and right thing, did he not? then he had a good time; 16 he gave verdicts for the downtrodden and needy; then it was all right; is not that what knowing me is? quoth Jehovah. 17 But your eyes and heart are on nothing but your revenue, and innocent blood to be shed, and persecution and denial of justice to be perpetrated. 18** So Jehovah says to Jehojakim the son of Josiah, the king of Judah, Woe to this man! they will not wail for him “Ah, brother! ah, sister!” they will not weep “Ah, lord! ah, the majesty of him!” 19 he will be given a donkey’s burial, dragged off and thrown away beyond the gates of Jerusalem.

20 Go up on the Lebanon and cry out, raise your voice on the Bashan, cry out from the eastern highlands, because all your lovers are broken. 21 I spoke to you in your prosperity, you said “I will not hear”; this has been your way since your girlhood, you have not obeyed me. 22* All your friends the wind will shepherd, and your lovers will go into foreign slavery; then you will be ashamed and humiliated at all your wickedness. 23 You that were living in the Lebanon, nested in the cedars, how you moan when birth-pains come to you, pangs like those of a woman in labor!

24 As I live, quoth Jehovah, if Coniah the son of Jehojakim were a signet-ring on my right hand, I would tear you off 25 and give you into the hands of those who are after your life and of those before whom you quail, into the hands of the Chaldeans, 26 and pitch you and your mother that gave you birth into another country where you were not born, and there you shall die. 27 And back to the country they count on coming back to they shall never come. 28 Is this man Coniah valueless damaged goods or an undesirable article? how comes it he and his issue are pitched out and thrown away to the country they did not know? 29 Land, land, land, hear Jehovah’s word. 30 Says Jehovah, Set this man down childless of manly issue; for of his issue there will not be a successful man sitting on David’s throne and ruling again in Judah.