He Defended the Cause of the Poor and Needed

While reading in Jeremiah 22 yesterday I encountered these words:

"Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness,

his upper rooms by injustice,

making his people work for nothing, 

not paying them for their labor.

He says, 'I will build myself a great palace

with spacious upper rooms.'

So he makes large windows in it,

panels it with cedar

and decorates it in red.

"Does it make you a king 

to have more and more cedar?

Did not your father have food and drink?

He did what was right and just,

so all went well with him.

He defended the cause of the poor and needy,

and so all went well.

Is that not what it means to know me?"

declares the LORD.

These do not strike me as the words of a God who does not care whether we pursue justice and economic equality or not. What do you think?