1Yahweh said, “Go down to the house of the king of Judah, and speak this word there:
2‘Hear Yahweh’s word, king of Judah, who sits on David’s throne—you, your servants, and your people who enter in by these gates.
3Yahweh says: “Execute justice and righteousness, and deliver him who is robbed out of the hand of the oppressor. Do no wrong. Do no violence to the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow. Don’t shed innocent blood in this place.
4For if you do this thing indeed, then kings sitting on David’s throne will enter in by the gates of this house, riding in chariots and on horses—they, their servants, and their people.
5But if you will not hear these words, I swear by myself,” says Yahweh, “that this house will become a desolation.”’”
6For Yahweh says concerning the house of the king of Judah:
7I will prepare destroyers against you,
8“Many nations will pass by this city, and they will each ask his neighbor, ‘Why has Yahweh done this to this great city?’
9Then they will answer, ‘Because they abandoned the covenant of Yahweh their God, worshiped other gods, and served them.’”
10Don’t weep for the dead.
11For Yahweh says touching Shallum the son of Josiah, king of Judah, who reigned instead of Josiah his father, and who went out of this place: “He won’t return there any more.
12But he will die in the place where they have led him captive. He will see this land no more.”
13“Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness,
14who says, ‘I will build myself a wide house and spacious rooms,’
15“Should you reign because you strive to excel in cedar?
16He judged the cause of the poor and needy;
17But your eyes and your heart are only for your covetousness,
18Therefore Yahweh says concerning Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah:
19He will be buried with the burial of a donkey,
20“Go up to Lebanon, and cry out.
21I spoke to you in your prosperity,
22The wind will feed all your shepherds,
23Inhabitant of Lebanon,
24“As I live,” says Yahweh, “though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah were the signet on my right hand, I would still pluck you from there.
25I 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.
26I will cast you out with your mother who bore you into another country, where you were not born; and there you will die.
27But to the land to which their soul longs to return, there they will not return.”
28Is this man Coniah a despised broken vessel?
29O earth, earth, earth,
30Yahweh says,