Evil kings condemned
22
📚Thus says the LORD: “Go down to the house of the king of Judah, and speak there this word 2 📚and say, Hear the word of the LORD, O king of Judah, who sits on the throne of David, you and your servants and your people who enter by these gates. 3 📚Thus says the LORD: Administer justice and righteousness, and deliver those plundered out of the hands of the oppressor; and do no wrong, no violence to the foreigner, the fatherless, or the widow 📖, and shed no innocent blood in this place. 4 📚For if you really do this, then kings who sit on the throne of David will enter by the gates of this house, riding in chariots and on horses, each one with his servants and his people. 5 📚But if you will not hear these words, I swear by myself, says the LORD, that this house will become a desolation”.
22:4-5 God will not forever permit wicked rulers who have contempt for His laws to rule over His people and His earth.⚜
6 📚For thus says the LORD to the house of the king of Judah:
“You are like Gilead to me
and the summit of Lebanon.
But I will certainly make you
a wilderness,
and uninhabited cities.
7 📚And I will prepare destroyers against you,
every one with his weapons;
and they will cut down your choice
cedars and throw them
into the fire.
22:6-7 Gilead and Lebanon were elevated areas of beautiful forests. The cedar beams for the king’s palace came from one or the other of these places.⚜
8 📚“And many nations will pass by this city, and each man will say to his neighbour, ‘Why has the LORD done thus to this great city?’ 9 📚Then they will answer, ‘Because they forsook the covenant of the LORD their God, and worshipped other gods, and served them.’
10 📚“Do not weep for the dead,
or mourn him, but weep bitterly
for the one who goes away;
for he will not return again
or see his native country”.
11 📚For thus says the LORD concerning Shallum the son of Josiah king of Judah, who reigned in the place of his father Josiah, who has gone out of this place: “He will not return here again, 12 📚but will die in the place where they have led him away captive, and will see this land no more.
22:10-12 The one who had died was King Josiah (2 Chron 35:23-25). He was a good king and died on the battlefield. His son Shallum, also called Jehoahaz, reigned only 3 months. He was captured by the king of Egypt and taken to that country (2 Chron 36:1-4). He never returned to Israel. The meaning of v 10 is this: Do not weep for the honored dead but for those being punished for their sins.⚜
13 📚“Woe to him who builds his house
through unrighteousness,
and his rooms through wrong,
who uses his neighbour’s service
without wages, and gives him
nothing for his work,
14 📚Who says, ‘I will build a spacious house
and large rooms for myself’,
and cuts out windows for it,
and panels it with cedar,
and paints it with vermilion.
15 📚Will you reign, because you enclose
yourself with cedar?
When your father ate and drank
and administered justice
and righteousness,
was it not well with him?
16 📚He justly judged the cause
of the poor and needy;
then it was well with him.
Is this not what it means
to know me? says the LORD.
17 📚But your eyes and your heart are
for nothing except your greed for gain,
and for shedding innocent blood,
and for perpetrating oppression
and violence.
18 📚“Therefore thus says the LORD
concerning Jehoiakim the son
of Josiah king of Judah:
“They will not lament for him,
saying, ‘Alas my brother!’
or, ‘Alas sister!’ They will not lament for him,
saying, ‘Alas master!’ or,
‘Alas his glory!’
19 📚He will be buried with a donkey’s burial,
dragged away and thrown out beyond
the gates of Jerusalem.
22:13-19 These verses are concerning Jehoiakim (v 18). He was the brother of Jehoahaz, who became king after the exile of Jehoahaz (2 Chron 36:4-8). Apparently he built a new palace for himself and refused to pay the laborers (see Deut 24:14-15). Actually the king should have been seeking God and trying to create a just administration, and not building a palace. Leaders should do what is just and right and not try to outdo one another in erecting splendid buildings for themselves (v 15). In verses 15 and 16 observe what it means to know God (Jam 1:27; Deut 10:12-13; Hos 6:6; Micah 6:8). The true knowledge of God will result in lives of justice and honesty and mercy and obedience. If we say we know God and do not practice these things we are deceived (1 John 2:3-4; 3:6).⚜
22:19 Jehoiakim was treated as he had treated others (2 Chron 36:5-6. The king of Babylon bound him to take him to Babylon, but it seems he changed his mind and killed him near Jerusalem).⚜
20 📚Go up to Lebanon, and cry out,
and lift up your voice in Bashan,
and cry out from the mountain
passages; for all your lovers are destroyed.
21 📚I spoke to you in your prosperity,
but you said,
‘I will not listen.’
This has been your way from
your youth, not obeying my voice.
22 📚The wind will consume all your
shepherds, and your lovers will go
into captivity.
Surely then you will be ashamed
and dismayed for all your wickedness.
23 📚O inhabitant of Lebanon,
who makes your nest in the cedars,
how you will be pitied when pangs
come on you, pain like a woman in labour!
22:20-23 It is very difficult to determine whether these verses were spoken to King Jehoiakim, or to some other king, or to the people of Israel. In any case, from the language of v 20, we can judge that God wanted the message to be heard widely. And the message was clear (Jer 4:31).⚜
24 📚“As I live, says the LORD, though Coniah the son of Jehoiakim king of Judah were the signet ring on my right hand, yet I would uproot you from there. 25 📚And I will give you into the hands of those who seek your life, and into the hands of those whose face you fear, into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and into the hands of the Chaldeans. 26 📚And I will throw you out, and your mother who gave you birth, into another country, where you were not born; and there you will die. 27 📚And they will not return to the land to which they will desire to return.
28 📚“Is this man Coniah like a
despised broken idol?
Is he an unwanted vessel?
Why are they thrown out,
he and his offspring, thrown into a land
which they do not know?
29 📚O earth, earth, earth, hear the word
of the LORD!
22:1-2 Jer 13:18; 34:2; Matt 10:18. This king was probably Zedekiah (Jer 21:1). But this is not certain because the chapters of Jeremiah are not always arranged in chronological order.⚜
22:29 How strongly God emphasizes the obedient hearing of His Word! – Deut 11:27-28; 13:4; 27:26; Matt 7:24-27; Heb 12:25.⚜
30 📚Thus says the LORD: Write you
this man childless, a man who
will not prosper in his days;
for none of his offspring will prosper,
sitting on the throne of David,
and ruling any more in Judah.
22:24-30 Now God speaks to another king of Judah, the next to the last one before the final destruction of Jerusalem by the armies of Babylon. His full name was Jehoiachin but he was also called Jeconiah or simply Coniah (as it is here). See Jer 24:1; and 29:1-2 for the fulfillment of these verses. It seems from v 28 he had children (see also 1 Chron 3:17-19), but God treated him as if he had none. No descendants of Jehoiachin ever became king over Judah. His grandson Zerubbabel later on was governor, not king.⚜