Judgment Against Evil Kings
Jeremiah 22YHWH said, “You are to go down to the house of the king of Judah and speak this word there: ‘You must listen to the word of YHWH, king of Judah, who sits on David’s throne—you, your servants, and your people who enter in by these gates. YHWH says: “Y’all are to do what is just and righteous. Y’all must deliver whoever is robbed from the hand of the oppressor. Y’all must not exploit or mistreat the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow. Y’all must not shed innocent blood in this place. For if you will do-do these commands, then kings who sit on David’s throne will enter through the gates of this house, riding in chariots and on horses with their servants and their people. But if y’all won’t obey to these commands, I swear by myself,” says YHWH, “that this house will become a desolation.”’”
For YHWH 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 which are not inhabited. I will prepare destroyers against you, everyone with his weapons, and they will cut down your choice cedars, and cast them into the fire.“Many nations will pass by this city, and they will each ask his neighbor, ‘Why has YHWH done this to this great city?’ Then they will answer, ‘Because they abandoned the covenant of YHWH their God, worshiped and served other gods.’”
Y’all must not weep for the dead. Y’all must not grieve for the king. Rather y’all must weep-weep for the one how has gone away, for he will never return, or see his native country.
For YHWH says about Shallum the son of Josiah, king of Judah, who reigned instead of Josiah his father, and who went out of this place: “He will never return there. But he will die in the place where they have led him captive. He will see this land no more.”
“Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his rooms by injustice; who uses his neighbor’s service without wages, and doesn’t give him his hire; who says, ‘I will build myself a wide house and spacious rooms,’ and cuts out windows for himself, with a cedar ceiling, and painted with red.“Should you reign because you compete in cedar? Didn’t your father eat and drink, and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy, so all went well. Isn’t this what it means to know me?” says YHWH. But your eyes and your heart are only for your covetousness, for shedding innocent blood, for oppression, and for doing violence.”
Therefore YHWH says concerning Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah:
“They won’t mourn for him, saying, ‘Alas my brother!’ or, ‘Alas sister!’ They won’t lament for him, saying ‘Alas lord!’ or, ‘Alas his glory!’ He will be buried with the burial of a donkey, drawn and cast out beyond the gates of Jerusalem.”“You are to go up to Lebanon and cry out. Lift up your voice in Bashan, and cry from Abarim, for all your lovers have been destroyed. I spoke to you in your prosperity, but you said, ‘I will not listen.’ This has been your way from your youth, that you didn’t obey my voice. The wind will shepherd all your shepherds, and your lovers will go into captivity. Surely then you will be ashamed and confounded for all your wickedness. Inhabitant of Lebanon, who makes your nest in the cedars, how greatly to be pitied you will be when pangs come on you, the pain as of a woman in travail!
Pronouncement to Coniah
“As I live,” says YHWH, “though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah were the signet on my right hand, I would still pluck you from there. I would give you into the hand of those who seek your life, and into the hand of them of whom you are afraid, even into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of the Chaldeans. I will cast you out with your mother who bore you into another country, where neither of y’all were born, and there y’all will die. But to the land to which their soul longs to return, there they will never return.”
Is this man Coniah a despised broken vessel? Is he a vessel in which no one delights? Why are they cast out, he and his offspring, and cast into a land which they don’t know? O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of YHWH! YHWH says, “Y’all must record this man as if childless, a man who will not prosper in his days, for none of his descendants will prosper, sitting on David’s throne and ruling in Judah.”