so I will soon bring disaster to your family. I will kill all the men in your family, both slaves and free men. I will destroy your family as completely as fire burns up manure.
Jehoiakim was twenty-five years old when he became king, and he was king in Jerusalem for eleven years. His mother’s name was Zebidah daughter of Pedaiah, who was from Rumah.
A man might have a hundred children and live a long time, but what good is it if he can’t enjoy the good God gives him or have a proper burial? I say a baby born dead is better off than he is.
“I will send four kinds of destroyers against them,” says the Lord. “I will send war to kill, dogs to drag the bodies away, and the birds of the air and wild animals to eat and destroy the bodies.
So this is what the Lord says about Jehoiakim king of Judah: Jehoiakim’s descendants will not sit on David’s throne. When Jehoiakim dies, his body will be thrown out on the ground. It will be left out in the heat of the day and in the cold frost of the night.
So I want you to go to the Temple of the Lord on a day when the people are fasting. Read from the scroll to all the people of Judah who come into Jerusalem from their towns. Read the messages from the Lord, which are the words you wrote on the scroll as I spoke them to you.
The bones will be spread on the ground under the sun, moon, and stars that the people loved and served and went after and searched for and worshiped. No one will gather up the bones and bury them. So they will be like dung thrown on the ground.