5. But if you will not hear these words, I swear by myself,” says Yahweh, “that this house shall become a desolation.”’”
6. For Yahweh says concerning the house of the king of Judah: “You are Gilead to me, the head of Lebanon. Yet surely I will make you a wilderness, cities which are not inhabited.
7. I will prepare destroyers against you, everyone with his weapons, and they will cut down your choice cedars, and cast them into the fire.
8. “Many nations will pass by this city, and they will each ask his neighbor, ‘Why has Yahweh done this to this great city?’
9. Then they shall answer, ‘Because they abandoned the covenant of Yahweh their God, and worshiped other gods, and served them.’”
10. Don’t weep for the dead, neither bemoan him; but weep bitterly for him who goes away; for he shall return no more, nor see his native country.
11. For 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 shall not return there any more.
12. But in the place where they have led him captive, there shall he die, and he shall see this land no more.”
13. “Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness, and his rooms by injustice; who uses his neighbor’s service without wages, and doesn’t give him his hire;
14. who says, ‘I will build me a wide house and spacious rooms,’ and cuts out windows for himself; and it is ceiling with cedar, and painted with vermilion.
15. “Shall you reign, because you strive to excel in cedar? Didn’t your father eat and drink, and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him.