Study Desk

"It will be very bad for King Jehoiakim. He is doing wrong so that he can build his palace. He is cheating people so that he can build rooms upstairs. He is not paying his own people. He is making them work for nothing.

"Jehoiakim says, ‘I will build myself a great palace, with huge rooms upstairs.' So he built it with large windows. He used cedar wood for paneling, and he painted it red.

"Jehoiakim, having a lot of cedar in your house does not make you a great king. Your father Josiah was satisfied to have food and drink. He did what was right and fair, so everything went well for him.

Josiah helped poor and needy people, so everything went well for him. Jehoiakim, what does it mean "to know God"? It means living right and being fair. That is what it means to know me. This message is from the Lord .

So this is what the Lord says to King Jehoiakim son of Josiah: "The people of Judah will not cry for Jehoiakim. They will not say to each other, ‘Brother, I am so sad! Sister, I am so sad!' They will not cry for Jehoiakim. They will not say about him, ‘Master, I am so sad! King, I am so sad!'

"King, you seem so safe in your palace of cedar. It's as if you live in Lebanon! But when your punishment comes, you will groan. You will be in pain like a woman giving birth!"

"So the time is coming," says the Lord , "when people will not make a promise by saying, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, the one who brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt ….'

The land of Judah is full of people who commit adultery. They are unfaithful in many ways. So God cursed the land, and it became very dry. The plants are dried and dying in the pastures. The fields have become like the desert. The prophets are evil. They use their influence and power in the wrong way.

So this is what the Lord All-Powerful says about those Jerusalem prophets: "I will make them suffer. Their food will be bitter, their water like poison. I will punish them because they started a spiritual sickness that spread through the whole country."

Some of the people hate the real messages from the Lord , so the prophets give them a different message. They say, ‘You will have peace.' Some of the people are very stubborn. They do only what they want to do. So the prophets say, ‘Nothing bad will happen to you!'

This message is from the Lord : "So I am against the false prophets. They keep stealing my words from each other."

But you called my message a heavy load, so I will pick you up like a heavy load and throw you away from me. I gave the city of Jerusalem to your ancestors. But I will throw you and that city away from me,

I will protect them. I will bring them back to the land of Judah. I will not tear them down—I will build them up. I will not pull them up—I will plant them so that they can grow.

So this is what the Lord All-Powerful says, "You have not listened to my messages.

So I took the cup of wine from the Lord 's hand. I went to those nations and I made them drink from the cup.

I poured this wine for the people of Jerusalem and Judah. I made the kings and leaders of Judah drink from the cup. I did this so that they would become an empty desert. I did this so that place would be destroyed so badly that people would whistle and say curses about it. And it happened—Judah is like that now.

Now the rulers of Judah heard about everything that was happening. So they came out of the king's palace. They went up to the Lord 's Temple. They took their places at the entrance of the New Gate. The New Gate is a gate leading to the Lord 's Temple.

"King Hezekiah of Judah and the people of Judah did not kill Micah. You know that Hezekiah respected the Lord and wanted to please him. So the Lord changed his mind and didn't do the bad things to Judah that he said he would do. If we hurt Jeremiah, we will bring many troubles on ourselves. And those troubles will be our own fault."

King Jehoiakim, his army officers, and the leaders of Judah heard Uriah and became angry. King Jehoiakim wanted to kill Uriah, but Uriah heard about it. Uriah was afraid, so he escaped to the land of Egypt.

So don't listen to your prophets. Don't listen to those who use magic to tell what will happen in the future. Don't listen to those who say they can interpret dreams. Don't listen to those who talk to the dead or to people who practice magic. All of them tell you, "You will not be slaves to the king of Babylon."