1 Thus says the LORD: "Go down to the house of the king of Judah and speak this word there:
2 say, 'Hear the word of the LORD, king of Judah, who sit on David's throne, you and your servants and your people who come in through these gates.
3 Thus says the LORD: Practice justice and righteousness, and rescue the robbed from the hand of the oppressor. Do not mistreat or do violence to the stranger, the orphan or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place.
4 For if you truly carry out this word, then through the gates of this house will come kings sitting for David on his throne, riding in chariots and on horses, he and his servants and his people.
5 But if you do not listen to these words, by myself I swear, declares the LORD, this house will become a ruin.'"
6 For thus says the LORD about the house of the king of Judah: "Gilead you are to me, the top of Lebanon; yet I will surely make you a desert, towns uninhabited.
7 I will set apart destroyers against you, each man with his weapons; they will cut down your finest cedars and cast them into the fire.
8 "Many nations will pass by this city and say to one another, 'Why has the LORD dealt like this with this great city?'
9 And they will say, 'Because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD their God and bowed down to other gods and served them.'"
10 Do not weep for the dead, and do not grieve for him; weep bitterly for the one who goes away, for he will return no more to see the land where he was born.
11 For thus says the LORD about Shallum the son of Josiah, king of Judah, who became king in place of Josiah his father and who went out from this place: "He will not come back here again.
12 In the place to which they have exiled him, there he will die, and this land he will not see again."
13 "Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness and his upper rooms by injustice, who makes his neighbor serve for nothing and does not give him his pay,
14 who says, 'I will build myself a wide house with airy upper rooms,' and cuts windows in it, paneled with cedar and painted with vermilion.
15 Does it make you a king, that you strive in cedar? Your father, did he not eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him.
16 He judged the case of the poor and needy; then it was well. Is that not what knowing me is? declares the LORD.
17 But your eyes and your heart are on nothing but your unjust gain, on shedding innocent blood, and on oppression and crushing, to do them."
18 So thus says the LORD about Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah: "They will not mourn for him, 'Ah, my brother!' or 'Ah, sister!' They will not mourn for him, 'Ah, lord!' or 'Ah, his splendor!'
19 With the burial of a donkey he will be buried, dragged and flung out beyond the gates of Jerusalem."
20 "Climb Lebanon and cry out; in Bashan give out your voice; cry out from Abarim, for all your lovers are shattered.
21 I spoke to you when you were at ease; you said, 'I will not listen.' This has been your way since your youth: you have not listened to my voice.
22 The wind will shepherd all your shepherds, and your lovers will go into captivity; then you will be ashamed and humiliated for all your evil.
23 You who live in Lebanon, nesting in the cedars, how you will groan when pangs come on you, anguish like a woman in labor!"
24 "As I live, declares the LORD, though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, were a signet ring on my right hand, even from there I would tear you off
25 and give you into the hand of those who seek your life, into the hand of those you fear, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and of the Chaldeans.
26 I will fling you, and the mother who bore you, into another land where you were not born, and there you will die.
27 But to the land they long in their soul to return to, there they will not return."
28 Is this man Coniah a despised, shattered jar, a vessel no one wants? Why are he and his offspring flung out and thrown into a land they have not known?
29 O land, land, land, hear the word of the LORD!
30 Thus says the LORD: "Write this man down as childless, a man who will not succeed in his days; for none of his offspring will succeed in sitting on the throne of David and ruling again in Judah."