Jeremiah 22
1 This is another message that Yahweh gave [to me]: “Go down to the palace of the king of Judah and say this to him:
This is what the Lord has said: Go down to the house of the king of Judah and there give him this word,
2 ‘You are the king of Judah. You are the ruler [MTY], like King David was. You and your officials and your people must listen
And say, Give ear to the word of the Lord, O king of Judah, seated on the seat of David, you and your servants and your people who come in by these doors.
3 to what Yahweh says: “Act fairly and justly. Do what is right. Help those who have been robbed. Rescue people from those who oppress them. Stop doing evil things. Do not mistreat those who have come here from other countries, and do not mistreat orphans and widows. Stop murdering here [in Jerusalem] [MTY] those who (are innocent/have not done things that are wrong).
This is what the Lord has said: Do what is right, judging uprightly, and make free from the hands of the cruel one him whose goods have been violently taken away: do no wrong and be not violent to the man from a strange country and the child without a father and the widow, and let not those who have done no wrong be put to death in this place.
4 If you obey those commands carefully, there will [always] be some descendant of King David who will be ruling here [MTY] [in Jerusalem]. The king and his officials and other people will ride through the gates of the city in chariots and on horses.
For if you truly do this, then there will come in through the doors of this house kings seated on the seat of David, going in carriages and on horseback, he and his servants and his people
5 But if you refuse to pay attention to those commands, I, Yahweh, solemnly declare, with myself [MTY] as a witness, that this palace will become a pile of rubble.”’”
But if you do not give ear to these words, I give you my oath by myself, says the Lord, that this house will become a waste.
6 And this is what Yahweh says about the king’s palace: “[I like] this palace, like I like the forests in the Gilead [region] and the mountains in Lebanon. But I will cause this palace to become a desert, a place that no one lives in.
For this is what the Lord has said about the family of the king of Judah: You are Gilead to me, and the top of Lebanon: but, truly, I will make you waste, with towns unpeopled.
7 I will summon enemy troops who will destroy this palace; each of their soldiers will use his own tools [to wreck the building]. They will cut into pieces the beautiful big cedar [beams] and throw them into a fire.”
And I will make ready those who will send destruction on you, everyone armed for war: by them your best cedar-trees will be cut down and put in the fire.
8 People from many nations will walk past [the ruins of] this city and say to each other, “Why did Yahweh destroy this city that was [very] great?”
And nations from all sides will go past this town, and every man will say to his neighbour, Why has the Lord done such things to this great town?
9 And [other] people will reply, “[He did it] because his people stopped obeying the agreement that they had made with Yahweh their God. Instead, they worshiped [DOU] other gods.”
And they will say, Because they gave up the agreement of the Lord their God, and became worshippers and servants of other gods.
10 [Yahweh also says, ] “Do not mourn for King [Josiah]; do not cry because he has died. Instead, mourn for [King Jehoahaz, his son], [because] he will be captured and taken to another country, and he will never return to see his own country, [Judah], again.”
Let there be no weeping for the dead, and make no songs of grief for him: but make bitter weeping for him who has gone away, for he will never come back or see again the country of his birth.
11 Jehoahaz became king after his father, King Josiah, [died], but Jehoahaz indeed was captured and taken [to Babylonia]. And this is what Yahweh says about him: “He also will never return [to Judah].
For this is what the Lord has said about Shallum, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, who became king in place of Josiah his father, who went out from this place: He will never come back there again:
12 He will die in that far-away country and will never see his own country again.”
But death will come to him in the place where they have taken him away prisoner, and he will never see this land again.
13 [And Yahweh said to me], “Terrible things will happen to [King Jehoahaz’s brother, King Jehoiakim]. He unjustly [forced men to] build his palace. The rooms on the upper level were built [by men who were forced] unjustly [to do that work]; he forced his neighbors to work for nothing; he did not pay them anything.
A curse is on him who is building his house by wrongdoing, and his rooms by doing what is not right; who makes use of his neighbour without payment, and gives him nothing for his work;
14 He said, ‘I will [force my workers to] build a huge beautiful palace with very large rooms and [many] windows. They will cover the walls with [fragrant] cedar panels/timber and paint them bright red.’”
Who says, I will make a wide house for myself, and rooms of great size, and has windows cut out, and has it roofed with cedar and painted with bright red.
15 But it is certainly not [RHQ] having a beautiful cedar palace that causes a king to be great! Jehoiakim’s father, Josiah, also had [RHQ] plenty of things to eat and drink. But Josiah always did things that are right and just, and that is why God blessed him.
Are you to be a king because you make more use of cedar than your father? did not your father take food and drink and do right, judging in righteousness, and then it was well for him?
16 Josiah acted justly/fairly and helped poor and needy people, so things went well for him. Yahweh says, “That is [RHQ] the way a person should behave who knows me.
He was judge in the cause of the poor and those in need; then it was well. Was not this to have knowledge of me? says the Lord.
17 But [Jehoiakim], you [MTY] are greedy and desire only to obtain things by acting dishonestly. You murder [MTY] innocent people, you oppress poor people, and you treat people cruelly and violently.”
But your eyes and your heart are fixed only on profit for yourself, on causing the death of him who has done no wrong, and on violent and cruel acts.
18 Therefore, this is what Yahweh says about Jehoiakim, the son of King Josiah: “[When he dies], people will not mourn for him. They will not say to each other, ‘It is very sad; we are so sorry!’ The people whom he ruled will not mourn for him, saying, ‘We are sad that our king is dead; we are so sorry that the wonderful things [that happened while he was king are ended].’
So this is what the Lord has said about Jehoiakim, the son of Josiah, king of Judah: They will make no weeping for him, saying, Ah my brother! or, Ah sister! they will make no weeping for him, saying, Ah lord! or, Ah his glory!
19 [When he dies, people will do to] his corpse what they do to a dead donkey; his [corpse] will be dragged out of Jerusalem and dumped outside the gates!
They will do to him what they do to the dead body of an ass; his body will be pulled out and placed on the earth outside the doors of Jerusalem.
20 [You people of Judah], go to [the mountains in] Lebanon and weep, shout in the [mountains of the] Bashan [region], cry out in [the mountains of] Moab, because all your friends [in those areas] have been destroyed.
Go up to Lebanon and give a cry; let your voice be loud in Bashan, crying out from Abarim; for all your lovers have come to destruction
21 When you were prosperous, I warned you, but you replied, ‘We will not pay attention [to what you say].’ You have been acting like that since you were young; you have never obeyed me.
My word came to you in the time of your well-being; but you said, I will not give ear. This has been your way from your earliest years, you did not give attention to my voice.
22 [So, now I will punish] all your leaders; [it will be as though] they have been blown away by the wind. They will be captured [by your enemies] and taken to another country. When that happens, you will [truly] be ashamed and disgraced because of all the wicked things [that you have done].
All the keepers of your sheep will be food for the wind, and your lovers will be taken away prisoners: truly, then you will be shamed and unhonoured because of all your evil-doing.
23 [Now, your king] enjoys living in the cedar rooms in his palace, but [soon] he will be punished, and then he will groan like [SIM] a woman who is giving birth to a baby.”
O you who are living in Lebanon, making your living-place in the cedars, how greatly to be pitied will you be when pains come on you, as on a woman in childbirth!
24 Yahweh says this: “Jehoiachin, son of King Jehoiakim of Judah, as surely as I am alive, [I will punish you]. Even if you were the ring on my finger that shows that I am the king, I would pull you off.
By my life, says the Lord, even if Coniah, the son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, was the ring on my right hand, even from there I would have you pulled off;
25 You are afraid of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and his huge army, [because] they are wanting to kill you. I will enable them to capture you.
And I will give you into the hands of those desiring your death, and into the hands of those whom you are fearing, even into the hands of Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, and into the hands of the Chaldaeans.
26 I will expel you and your mother [from this land], and you will be taken to another country. Neither of you was born there, but you will both die there.
I will send you out, and your mother who gave you birth, into another country not the land of your birth; and there death will come to you.
27 You will never return to this land that you will very much desire to return to.”
But to the land on which their soul's desire is fixed, they will never come back.
28 [Someone said, ] “Jehoiachin will be [RHQ] like a broken pot that is despised and which no one wants. He and his children will be (exiled/forced to go) to a foreign land.
Is this man Coniah a broken vessel of no value? is he a vessel in which there is no pleasure? why are they violently sent out, he and his seed, into a land which is strange to them?
29 [I want] the people in this land to listen carefully to this message from Yahweh.”
O earth, earth, earth, give ear to the word of the Lord!
30 This is what Yahweh says: “[In the record about the kings of Judah, ] write down that [it will be as though] this man [Jehoiachin] had no children, and that he has not been successful during his life, because none of his children/descendants will [ever] become king to rule over [the people of] Judah.”
The Lord has said, Let this man be recorded as having no children, a man who will not do well in all his life: for no man of his seed will do well, seated on the seat of the kingdom of David and ruling again in Judah.
