¹Like this Yahweh said: Go down to the house of the king of Judah, and you will speak there this word.

²And you will say: Hear the word of Yahweh, O king of Judah, who sits on the throne of David, you and your slaves and your people, those who come in by these gates.

³Like this Yahweh said: Do justice and righteousness, and snatch away the one who has been robbed from the hand of the oppressor; and do not maltreat the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow; do not treat them violently, and do not pour out the blood of the innocent in this place.

⁴For if you truly do this word, then kings who sit for David on his throne will come in through the gates of this house, riding in chariots and on horses, he and his slaves and his people.

⁵But if you do not listen to these words, I have sworn by myself, the utterance of Yahweh, that this house will become a ruin.

⁶For like this Yahweh said about the house of the king of Judah: You are Gilead to me, the head of Lebanon; surely I will make you a wilderness, cities that are not dwelt in.

⁷And I will set apart spoilers against you, each man with his implements, and they will cut down the choicest of your cedars and make them fall on the fire.

⁸Many nations will pass by this city and will say, each man to his neighbor: Why did Yahweh do thus to this great city?

⁹And they will say: Because they forsook the covenant of Yahweh their God, and bowed down to other gods and served them.

¹⁰Do not weep for the dead, and do not shake your heads for him; weep bitterly for the one who is going away, for he will not return again and see the land of his birth.

¹¹For like this Yahweh said to Shallum son of Josiah king of Judah, who reigned in place of Josiah his father, who went out from this place: He will not return there again.

¹²For in the place where they carried him into exile, there he will die, and he will not see this land again.

¹³Woe to the one who builds his house without righteousness, and his upper rooms without justice, who has his neighbor work for nothing, and does not give him his wage.

¹⁴who says: I will build myself a house of great size and spacious upper rooms, and tear out for myself windows, paneled with cedar and smeared with vermilion.

¹⁵Will you reign because you compete in cedar? Your father, did he not eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it went well with him.

¹⁶He pleaded the cause of the poor and needy; then it went well. Is not that the knowledge of me? The utterance of Yahweh.

¹⁷For your eyes and your heart are on nothing except your unjust gain, and on the blood of the innocent, to pour it out, and on extortion, and on crushing oppression, to do it.

¹⁸Therefore, like this Yahweh said concerning Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah: They will not lament for him: Alas, my brother! And alas, sister! They will not lament for him: Alas, lord! And alas, his splendor!

¹⁹With the burial of a donkey he will be buried, dragged and thrown out beyond the gates of Jerusalem.

²⁰Go up to Lebanon and cry out, and in Bashan give your voice; and cry out from Abarim, for all your lovers have been broken.

²¹I spoke to you in your ease; you said: I will not listen. This has been your way from your youth, that you did not listen to my voice.

²²The wind will shepherd all your shepherds, and your loved ones will go into captivity; for then you will be ashamed and humiliated by all your evil.

²³You who dwell in Lebanon, nested among the cedars, how you will groan when pangs come to you, anguish like a woman giving birth!

²⁴As I live, the utterance of Yahweh, even if Coniah son of Jehoiakim king of Judah were a seal on my right hand, yet from there I would tear you off.

²⁵And I will set you in the hand of those who seek your being, and in the hand of those whose faces you dread, and in the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and in the hand of the Chaldeans.

²⁶And I will hurl you and your mother who bore you into another land, where you were not born; and there you will die.

²⁷And to the land to which they lift up their being to return there, there they will not return.

²⁸Is this man Coniah a despised, shattered vessel, or a utensil in which there is no delight? Why have he and his seed been hurled out and cast onto a land that they did not know?

²⁹Land, land, land, hear the word of Yahweh!

³⁰Like this Yahweh said: Write down this man as childless, a man who will not prosper in his days; for none of his seed will prosper, sitting on the throne of David and ruling again in Judah.