1Thus said the LORD: “Go down to the house of the king of Judah, and you shall speak there this word. 2And you shall say, Listen to the word of the LORD, king of Judah, who sits on the throne of David, you and your servants and your people who enter these gates. 3Thus said the LORD: Do justice and righteousness and release the robbed from oppression, and the sojourner, the orphan, and the widow do not wrong and do no violence to them, and do not shed the blood of the innocent in this place. 4For if indeed you do this thing, kings in the line of David sitting on his throne shall enter the gates of this house riding in chariots and on horses, the king and his servants and his people. 5And if you do not heed these words, by Myself do I swear, said the LORD, this house shall become a ruin. 6For this said the LORD concerning the house of the LORD:
the Lebanon summit.
But I will surely turn you to a desert,
uninhabited towns.
7And I will summon against you destroyers,
each man with his weapons,
and they shall cut down the pick of your cedars,
and pile them on the fire.
8And many nations shall pass by this city, and they shall say one to another: ‘Why did the LORD do this to this great city?’ 9And they shall say, ‘Because they forsook the covenant of the LORD their God and bowed down to other gods and served them.’
10Do not keen for the dead,
and do not grieve for him.
Keen constantly for him who goes,
for he will not come back and see
the land of his birth.”
11For thus said the LORD to Shallum son of Josiah reigning instead of Josiah his father, “Who has gone out from this place shall not go back there again. 12For in the place to which they exiled him he shall die, and this land he shall not see again.”
13Woe, who builds his house without righteousness
and his upper chambers without justice.
His fellow he makes work for nothing,
and his wages does not give him.
14Who says, “I shall build me a massive house,
with spacious upper chambers,
and break open for it my windows,
paneled in cedar,
painted in vermillion.”
15Would you be kings
Did not your father eat and drink
and do justice and righteousness?
Then it went well for him.
16He defended the rights of the poor and the needy.
Then it went well.
Is not that to know Me? said the LORD.
17For your eyes and your heart
are on naught but your gain
and on shedding the blood of the innocent,
and on oppression and violence, to do it.
18Therefore thus said the LORD to Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah.
They shall not lament him,
“Woe, my brother, woe, sister!”
They shall not lament him,
“Woe, master, woe, his majesty!”
19In a donkey’s burial he shall be buried,
dragged and flung beyond Jerusalem’s gates.
20Go up to Lebanon and cry out,
and to Bashan, lift up your voice.
And cry out from Abarim
for all your lovers are broken.
21I spoke to you when you were tranquil.
You said, “I will not listen.”
This is your way from your youth,
for you did not listen to My voice.
22All your shepherds the wind shall herd,
and your lovers shall go into captivity.
For then shall you be shamed and disgraced
by all your evil.
23You who dwell in Lebanon,
nesting among the cedars,
how will you groan when upon you come pangs,
shuddering like a woman in labor?
24“As I live,” said the LORD, “Should you, Coniah son of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, be a seal on My right hand, from there I would tear you away. 25And I will give you into the hand of those who seek your life and into the hand of those by whom you are terrified, and into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylonia and into the hand of the Chaldeans. 26And I will cast you and your mother who bore you into another land where you were not born, and there shall you both die. 27And the land to which they long to return, there they shall not return.
28Is he a smashed, rejected pot,
this man Coniah?
Is he a vessel no one wants?
Why have he and his seed been cast and flung
into a land they did not know?
29Land, land, land,
O hear the word of the LORD!
30Thus said the LORD:
Write this person down as childless,
a man who shall not prosper in his days.
For no man sitting on David’s throne shall prosper,
nor rule again in Judah.
CHAPTER 22 NOTES
Click here to advance to the next section of the text.
3. Do justice and righteousness. In the ancient Near Eastern polity, it was ultimately the responsibility of the king to administer justice (as the fable of Solomon’s judgment piquantly illustrates). Jeremiah, confronting the king, turns from his usual theme of cultic transgressions to raise issues of legal, social, and economic justice.
the sojourner. Throughout the Bible, this Hebrew word, ger, designates a resident alien, who as someone without inherited land or the protection of a clan, is vulnerable, as are the widow and the orphan.
4. shall enter the gates. The gates envisioned are the gates of the palace. The virtuous king, his courtiers, and the people will troop proudly through these gates in a regal procession.
6. You are Gilead to Me, / the Lebanon summit. Both places are on heights with luxuriant growth. The idea is that for God, Israel, or the Land of Israel, was a proud and fruitful place, but now it will be turned into a desert.
7. the pick of your cedars. These may well be metaphorical cedars, emblems of the lofty and eminent members of Judahite society, though some interpreters think the reference is to the elaborate cedar paneling of the palace and the Temple.
8. And many nations shall pass by this city. This verse and the next one are a virtual citation of Deuteronomy 29:23–25.
10. Do not keen for the dead. The Masoretic Text shows “a dead [man],” but that vocalization is almost universally corrected to yield “the dead.” The particular dead person here, according to long-standing scholarly consensus, is Josiah, who was killed by Pharaoh Neco at Megiddo in 609 B.C.E. One should not keen for him because his fate of death is not so dire as the fate of his son Shallum (more commonly called Jehoahaz, who was placed on the throne by Neco after his father’s death, reigned only scant months, and then was sent down to Egypt as a prisoner). Thus Shallum-Jehoahaz is the one “who goes,” never again to see the land of his birth.
13. Woe, who builds his house without righteousness. The person excoriated is King Jehoiakim, and so the house is a royal palace (biblical Hebrew regularly calls this structure not a “palace” but simply “the king’s house”). His fellow he makes work for nothing. What is in view is the common practice of using forced labor for royal building projects.
14. a massive house. More literally, “a house of [great] measure.” In the story of the spies in Numbers, the Canaanites, perceived as giants, are called, literally in the Hebrew, “men of measure.”
my windows. Many correct this to “his windows” because the verb attached to it is in the third-person singular. But the received text actually makes sense: the grandiose king is still speaking, and the third-person verb serves as the equivalent of a passive (“my windows are broken open for it”).
15. by competing in cedar. Here the cedar does appear to refer to the wood paneling of the palace: Do you need the conspicuous palatial furnishings of cedar to establish your kingship in competition with surrounding monarchies?
Did not your father eat and drink / and do justice. That is, your father contented himself with the simple satisfaction of food and drink while devoting himself to justice. Jehoiakim’s father, Josiah, who oversaw the sweeping cultic reforms of 622 B.C.E., is regarded in the Book of Kings as one of the few morally exemplary kings.
18. Woe, my brother, woe, sister! These are the words of the lament that the people are enjoined not to say. That is equally true of the woe-saying in the next line.
19. In a donkey’s burial he shall be buried. This prophecy conflicts with the report in 2 Kings 24:6 that Jehoiakim “lay with his fathers,” an expression that indicates burial in the ancestral tomb. Either this is an unfulfilled prophecy, or there is something wrong with the notation in 2 Kings. Jehoiakim died at the time of the Babylonian siege in 598–597 B.C.E., but how he died is uncertain. Some have conjectured that he was assassinated in a palace coup.
20. Lebanon . . . / Bashan . . . / Abarim. These are all mountainous regions and hence aptly situated lofty places from which to cry out.
22. All your shepherds the wind shall herd. This reverses the repeated idiom for futility in Qohelet, “herding the wind.” Here the wind does the herding, and the “shepherds” are the rulers of the people.
your lovers. That is, your false allies.
23. You who dwell in Lebanon, / nesting among the cedars. It is possible, as some claim, that the reference is to the cedar-paneled palace, although it may be more likely that the cedars of Lebanon, here as elsewhere, are a stock metaphor for royal grandeur because of their loftiness.
24. Coniah. This is a shortened form of Jeconiah.
a seal on My right hand. Although “hand” is mentioned, the signet ring was worn on the finger. Since it was used to seal important documents, a dignitary would always have it with him.
26. there shall you both die. “Both” is added in the translation to indicate what is clear from the plural form of the Hebrew verb, that both Coniah and his mother are being addressed.
30. Write this person down as childless. According to other sources, Coniah had several sons, but the point appears to be that he is as good as childless because none of his sons will inherit the throne.
person . . . / a man. The two different words in the Hebrew text both mean “man.” In the next sentence, “no man” uses the same Hebrew word for “man” as in “a man.”
For no man sitting on David’s throne shall prosper. This appears to proclaim the end of the Davidic dynasty, but elsewhere Jeremiah speaks of its restoration. The evident sense is that no one directly descending from Coniah will inherit the throne.