14. Doomed is the one who says,“I will build myself a mansionwith spacious rooms upstairs.”So he puts windows in his house,panels it with cedar,and paints it red.
15. Does it make you a better kingif you build houses of cedar,finer than those of others?Your father enjoyed a full life.He was always just and fair,and he prospered in everything he did.
16. He gave the poor a fair trial,and all went well with him.That is what it means to know the Lord.
17. But you can only see your selfish interests;you kill the innocentand violently oppress your people.The Lord has spoken.
18. So then, the Lord says about Josiah's son Jehoiakim, king of Judah,“No one will mourn his death or say,‘How terrible, my friend, how terrible!’No one will weep for him or cry,‘My lord! My king!’
19. With the funeral honours of a donkey,he will be dragged awayand thrown outside Jerusalem's gates.”
20. People of Jerusalem, go to Lebanon and shout,go to the land of Bashan and cry;call out from the mountains of Moab,because all your allies have been defeated.
21. The Lord spoke to you when you were prosperous,but you refused to listen.That is what you've done all your life;you never would obey the Lord.
22. Your leaders will be blown away by the wind,your allies taken as prisoners of war,your city disgraced and put to shamebecause of all the evil you have done.
23. You rest secure among the cedars brought from Lebanon;but how pitiful you'll be when pains strike you,pains like those of a woman in labour.
24. The Lord said to King Jehoiachin, son of King Jehoiakim of Judah, “As surely as I am the living God, even if you were the signet ring on my right-hand, I would pull you off
25. and give you to people you are afraid of, people who want to kill you. I will give you to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia and his soldiers.
26. I am going to force you and your mother into exile. You will go to a country where neither of you was born, and both of you will die there.