1The LORD says: Go down to the house of the king of Judah and speak this word there.2And say, "Hear the word of the LORD, O king of Judah who sits on the throne of David—you and your servants and your people who come through these gates."3The LORD says: Do justice and righteousness, and rescue the robbed from the hand of the oppressor, the sojourner, the orphan, and the widow. Do not oppress, and do not shed innocent blood in this place.4For if you do this thing, and they come in the gates of this house, kings sitting for David on his throne, riding in chariot and on horses, he and his servants and his people.5And if you do not hear these words from me, I have sworn, says the LORD, that this house will become a ruin.6For thus says the LORD concerning the house of the king of Judah: You are to me Gilead, the head of Lebanon; if not, I will make you a wilderness, cities not inhabited.7And I will send against you destroyers, each man and his tools, and they will cut off the choice of your cedars and cast them down into the fire.8And many nations will pass by this city, and they will say, one man to his companion, “On account of what did the LORD do this to this great city?”9And they will say, “Because they abandoned the covenant of the LORD their God and bowed down to other gods and served them.”10Do not weep for the dead, and do not mourn for him; weep, weep for the one gone, for he will not return again and see the land of his birthplace.11For the LORD says this about Shallum son of Josiah king of Judah, the king who succeeded Josiah his father and went out from this place: he will not return there again.12For in the place where they exiled him, there he will die, and he will not see this land again.13Woe to him who builds his house without righteousness and his upper chambers without justice, who serves his neighbor free of charge and does not give him his work.14Who says, "I will build myself a house of measures and upper chambers of winds and tear for him his windows and panel it with cedar and smear it with vermilion"?15Do you reign because you vie with the cedar of your father? Was it not that he ate and drank and did justice and righteousness—then it was good for him?16He judged the judgment of the poor and needy—then good! Is it not this, knowing with me? says the LORD.17For your eyes and your heart are only on your greed and on the blood of the innocent to shed it and on the oppression and on the robbery to do them.18Therefore thus says the LORD to Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah: They will not lament for him, "Alas, brother!" They will not lament for him, "Alas, sister!" They will not lament for him, "Alas, lord!" or "Alas, beloved!"19The burial of a donkey—he will be buried: dragged off and thrown away from over there to the gates of Jerusalem.20Go up on Lebanon and cry out, and in Bashan give your voice and cry out from the crossings, for all your lovers are broken.21I spoke to you in your securities; you said, "No, I will not listen." This is your way from your youths, for you did not listen to my voice.22All your companions the wind will carry away, and your lovers will go into captivity; for then you will be ashamed and humiliated because of all your evil.23You dwelt in Lebanon, nesting in the cedars—how you will groan when pangs come upon you, pains like a woman in labor!24"As I live," declares the LORD, "if Coniah son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, is a signet on my right hand—for from there I will pull you out."25And I will give you into the hand of those seeking your nephesh and into the hand of those from whom you have fled, and into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babel and into the hand of the Chaldeans.26And I will hurl you and your mother who bore you onto another earth where you did not bear there, and there you will die.27And to the land to which they are lifting their nephesh to return there, there they will not return.28The idol, despised, rejected—this man Coniah. Is he a vessel in which there is no delight? Why were they cast—he and his Seed—and thrown upon a land that they did not know?29Earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the LORD.30The LORD says: Write down this man as childless, a man who will not succeed in his days, for no man from his seed will succeed, no man who sits on the throne of David and rules any more in Judah.