22:1–3 These verses are a chain of several commands. First, Yahweh directs the prophet to descend from the temple, where he has apparently been based as a priest (cf. 19:14), to the royal palace built by David (22:1). The Temple Mount in the “City of David” was at a slightly higher elevation than the royal palace. Second, Jeremiah is to summon the Davidic king to hear Yahweh’s word (v. 2). The particular king of Judah is not mentioned, but it is notable that the command to “hear the word of the Lord” is grammatically singular in Hebrew and addresses the king directly in the presence of his nobles.

Third, and most important for this passage, Jeremiah puts the king(s) on notice regarding Yahweh’s covenantal stipulations concerning justice, which they have repeatedly violated (v. 3). With only a few exceptions (Josiah most prominently among them), kings in Judah failed to defend the cause of the vulnerable, those who should have been protected under the Deuteronomic Torah: the resident alien, orphan, and widow (Deut. 10:18–19; 24:17–22; 26:12–13). Judgment by Yahweh is now a foregone conclusion, as the rest of the passage makes clear. The conclusion “Thus says the Lord” (Jer. 22:3) is a perfective verb (“Thus had said the Lord”) indicating that the time for Judah’s kings to repent of their injustices is past.

22:4–7 The requirements of two important OT covenants are rehearsed (vv. 4–5) in order to show that Yahweh is righteous for condemning Judah to judgment. The if-then structure of blessings for obedience, on the one hand, and curses for disobedience, on the other, mirrors Yahweh’s pronouncement of the Israelite covenant at Mount Sinai: “If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples” (Ex. 19:5). At the same time, the conduct of the people in the Israelite covenant is closely tied to the fate of kings in the Davidic covenant (2 Samuel 7). The obedience of the people should have led to the Davidic kings’ continued rule on the throne of Israel (Jer. 22:4), while disobedience results in the destruction of both the Davidic dynasty as well as the palace where the kings reside (v. 5). Here the phrase “this house” is ambiguous and can refer to both David’s family as well as his palace.

By this late juncture in Judah’s history, however, it is the road of disobedience that Judah (and Israel before it) has repeatedly taken. Therefore Yahweh declares that the Davidic dynasty/palace (both likely in view as the “house of the king of Judah”; cf. v. 1) will surely be destroyed. Although the “house” was as beautiful as fertile Gilead or Lebanon’s majestic heights, it will be emptied out of his inhabitants (v. 6) by coming invaders (v. 7). The reference to foreigners who “cut down your choicest cedars and cast them into the fire” (v. 7) tilts the imagery toward the palace of David rather than his dynasty, as will also become explicit later in the chapter, as Judah’s kings come under criticism for the unjust means of building their luxurious “house” (i.e., palace; vv. 13–15).

22:8–9 The scope of Jerusalem’s destruction will be horrifying to other nations as well. In this grotesque inversion of Zion’s missional attraction to the nations (cf. Psalms 47–48), passersby will gawk at a ransacked Jerusalem because of its former status as a blessed city. In response to the question “Why has the Lord dealt thus with this great city?” (Jer. 22:8) will come the answer, “Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord their God and worshiped other gods and served them” (v. 9; cf. Deut. 29:24–25).

This will not be the only time in the book of Jeremiah that a non-Israelite is said to internalize the stipulations of the Israelite covenant. In chapter 40, after Jerusalem has fallen, Nebuzaradan the Babylonian captain muses, “The Lord your God pronounced this disaster against this place. The Lord has brought it about, and has done as he said. Because you sinned against the Lord and did not obey his voice, this thing has come upon you” (40:2–3). Jeremiah’s mission as a “prophet to the nations” (1:5) is an ironic success, for the fulfillment of his message of judgment has led a pagan invader to know Yahweh’s ways better than his own people do.

22:10–17 A call to corporate mourning issues forth (v. 10) in response to the news of the sacking of Jerusalem and the fall of the Davidic monarchy (cf. vv. 1–9). What follows, provocatively enough, is not a eulogy for the dead king, as one might expect (cf. 2 Sam. 1:17–27). Instead, Yahweh issues condemnations for three kings still living in Judah.77 Each one of them is apparently alive at the moment their respective oracle is given (cf. Overview of Jeremiah 21–24 on the topical instead of sequential arrangement of this chapter), but they might as well be dead because of the egregiousness of their sins.

Epitaphs for the living are announced against Shallum (22:11–17), Jehoiakim (vv. 18–19), and Coniah (vv. 24–30) for their sins of injustice. Shallum was the first of several sons of Josiah to reign in Jerusalem, with Jehoiakim and Zedekiah being the others (cf. 2 Kings 23–25). During a brief but wicked three-month reign (2 Kings 23:31–33), he committed enough sins to warrant being exiled from the land (Jer. 22:11–12) to Egypt by the hand of Pharaoh Neco (2 Kings 23:34).

No particular transgressions of Shallum are mentioned in the narrative account from 2 Kings 23. Jeremiah 22, however, singles him out for extravagance in palace building when compared to his father, Josiah. Shallum, or perhaps Jehoiakim (if Jer. 22:13–17 is intended to pair with the mention of Jehoiakim in vv. 18–19), has compelled Judah to build him a palace without paying his workers (v. 13). This royal house contains the most expensive of amenities (v. 14) due to the motivation of Shallum and/or Jehoiakim to stand alongside other ancient Near Eastern kings (v. 15). But the selfish pursuit of luxury stands at odds with Yahweh’s countercultural ideal for Israel and Judah’s kings (cf. Deut. 17:14–20), Josiah being the best of them, to uphold justice for the weak and so demonstrate that they truly know their God (Jer. 22:16–17).

22:18–19 These verses are about Jehoiakim, another son of Josiah, who reigned over Judah (2 Kings 23:35–37) following Pharaoh’s deposing of his brother Shallum. This section may also be a conclusion to the foregoing description of injustice (Jer. 22:11–17), given that the book attributes sins of oppression to Jehoiakim’s reign as well (7:1–9; cf. 26:1–6). In any case, the wickedness of Jehoiakim means that he will not be mourned with honor at the time of his death (22:18; cf. v. 10). Instead his corpse will be cast outside Jerusalem’s city gates and buried with a common beast of burden (v. 19). Jehoiakim of Judah, much like Ahab of the northern kingdom before him (1 Kings 22:37–38), has been an unrighteous king who will suffer an unceremonious death.

22:20–23 An interlude follows that speaks to a grammatically feminine “you.” Who is this intended audience? Three clues are provided in Jeremiah 22:20–22. First, her mourning for shattered “lovers” should impel her to travel up to Lebanon and in Abarim and Bashan (v. 20), the latter two being regions east of the Jordan River in the land of Moab. The mention of “lovers” recalls Judah’s spiritual harlotry mentioned earlier (3:1, 20; 4:30; cf. Hos. 2:5, 13; 8:9), though is it unclear why Judah would need to travel to these places to mourn. Second, the good life has made her rebellious against Yahweh from her “youth” (Jer. 22:21). This description evokes Israel’s complacency since the days of Moses (e.g., Deut. 8:1–20). Third and most cryptically, both her “shepherds” (her leaders?; cf. Jer. 3:15; 23:1–4) and her “lovers” (her false gods, or alliance partners?) will be removed to captivity, while she herself will be “ashamed and confounded because of all [her] evil” (Jer. 22:22). If Judah is the referent of the passage, as the reference to “shepherds” suggests, the reason for deporting her “lovers” as well is somewhat opaque.

Although the balance of evidence in these verses points to Judah, it is surprising that she is finally addressed as “O inhabitant of Lebanon, nested among the cedars,” who will experience overwhelming birth pangs (v. 23). In light of the chapter’s polemic against the kings of Judah for their fascination with the towering cedars of Lebanon (vv. 7, 14, 15), this verse likely personifies Judah/Jerusalem as a girl far from real security in Yahweh’s presence, instead mourning and suffering among the very things she thought would bring security.

22:24–30 Yahweh’s speech moves forward about two decades from the two sons of Josiah just mentioned (cf. vv. 11–23) to address Coniah, son of Jehoiakim and the only one of Josiah’s grandsons to rule as king of Judah. Like Shallum his uncle, Coniah is deposed by a foreign king after a brief but wicked three-month reign (cf. 2 Kings 24:6–12). But, unlike Shallum, Coniah’s personal exile will come at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon rather than those of Neco of Egypt (Jer. 22:25–27; cf. 2 Kings 23:33). This will occur despite Coniah’s being Yahweh’s “signet ring on my right hand” (Jer. 22:24), that is, a prized king of David’s line (cf. Hag. 2:23).

What hope remains for the Davidic monarchy? Yahweh had once sworn to David, “Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever” (2 Sam. 7:16; cf. Pss. 89:3–4; 132:11). Jeremiah 22 concludes with a haunting question on whether Coniah represents the end of the Davidic covenant:

    Is this man Coniah a despised, broken pot,

    a vessel no one cares for?

    Why are he and his children hurled and cast

    into a land that they do not know? (v. 28)

The degradation of Coniah mirrors the discarded pot in Jeremiah’s vision of the potter and his wheel (18:4) while also anticipating the portrayal of Moab as a “vessel for which no one cares” (48:38).

A land bereft of its Davidic kings now hears Yahweh’s vowing that none of Coniah’s sons will sit on the throne of Judah (22:29–30). Nor will the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant come through Zedekiah, another uncle of Coniah and son of Josiah, who reigns over Judah as Nebuchadnezzar’s puppet king before rebelling against him and being deported to Babylon (2 Kings 24:18–25:7; Jer. 52:1–11). Rather, Jeremiah 23 foresees that Yahweh will set a different, faithful shepherd from David’s line over his people (23:1–5). This king will succeed in executing justice and righteousness in the manner that Judah’s kings failed to do (cf. 22:13–17), and intriguingly his very name will be “The Lord is our righteousness” (23:6). This is a veiled critique of the social injustices perpetuated under King Zedekiah (e.g., Jeremiah 34), who failed to live out his name’s meaning of “The Lord is my righteousness.” It remains for Ezekiel, the prophetic contemporary of Jeremiah after the exile to Babylon, to make the more explicit connection that the perfect shepherd from David’s line is ultimately Yahweh himself (Ezek. 34:12–16; 37:24–27).