Ezekiel 19: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

God tells Ezekiel to sing a funeral song for the leaders of Israel. The song uses two pictures. In the first, a lioness raises two cubs; each grows into a man-eating lion, and each is trapped by the nations and carried off, one to Egypt and one to Babylon. In the second, a vine that grew strong beside plenty of water is torn up, dried by the east wind, and replanted in dry ground, with no strong branch left to serve as a ruler's staff.

Claim by Claim

1. 19:1
   • A command is given to the addressee to take up a lament.
   • The lament is for the princes of Israel.
2. 19:2
   • A command is given to speak the following words.
   • The question is asked: what was your mother?
   • The answer is that she was a lioness.
   • She lay down among lions.
   • She reared her cubs among young lions.
3. 19:3
   • She brought up one of her cubs.
   • That cub became a young lion.
   • It learned to tear prey.
   • It devoured men.
4. 19:4
   • The nations heard of him.
   • He was caught in their pit.
   • They brought him with hooks to the land of Egypt.
5. 19:5
   • She saw that she had waited.
   • She saw that her hope was lost.
   • She took another of her cubs.
   • She made him a young lion.
6. 19:6
   • He went about among the lions.
   • He became a young lion.
   • He learned to tear prey.
   • He devoured men.
7. 19:7
   • He knew his widows, or he broke down their strongholds; the text is ambiguous, and the King James reads it as his knowing their desolate palaces.
   • He laid waste their cities.
   • The land and everything in it was made desolate.
   • The desolation came from the sound of his roaring.
8. 19:8
   • The nations set themselves against him from the surrounding provinces.
   • They spread their net over him.
   • He was caught in their pit.
9. 19:9
   • They put him in a cage with hooks.
   • They brought him to the king of Babylon.
   • They brought him into strongholds.
   • The purpose was that his voice should no longer be heard on the mountains of Israel.
10. 19:10
    • Your mother was like a vine.
    • The vine was in your blood, or in your vineyard; the text is ambiguous, and the King James reads it as blood.
    • The vine was planted by the waters.
    • The vine was fruitful.
    • The vine was full of branches.
    • Its fruitfulness came from the abundance of waters.
11. 19:11
    • The vine had strong rods.
    • The strong rods were fit to be scepters of rulers.
    • Its stature was raised high among the thick branches.
    • It was conspicuous in its height.
    • It was conspicuous by the multitude of its branches.
12. 19:12
    • The vine was plucked up in fury.
    • The vine was cast down to the ground.
    • The east wind dried up its fruit.
    • Its strong rods were broken off.
    • Its strong rods withered.
    • Fire consumed them.
13. 19:13
    • The vine is now planted in the wilderness.
    • The vine is planted in a dry and thirsty land.
14. 19:14
    • Fire has gone out from a rod of its branches.
    • The fire devoured its fruit.
    • No strong rod remains in it to be a scepter for ruling.
    • This is a lament.
    • It shall be used as a lament.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

19:1

A "lamentation" (Hebrew *qinah*) was a formal funeral song, chanted over the dead with a distinctive limping rhythm, a long line answered by a short one. Ezekiel is told to sing one over rulers who are not yet dead. "Princes" renders a word Ezekiel uses throughout his book for the rulers of Judah in place of "king."

19:2

The whole chapter is a riddle-picture, and it never says who the mother is: she may stand for the royal family descended from David, or for the nation of Judah, or for Jerusalem itself. The lion was a standard emblem of royalty across the ancient Near East, and Judah in particular is called a lion's cub in Jacob's blessing (Genesis 49:9). The cubs are successive kings.

19:3

A lion "learning to catch the prey" and "devouring men" is ordinary ancient language for a king who makes war and rules by force; it is not a comment on his diet.

19:4

Assyrian and Babylonian carvings show prisoners led away by a ring or hook driven through the nose or lip; that is the practice behind KJV's "chains." The king taken to Egypt is not named here. Readers would likely have thought of Jehoahaz, who reigned three months in 609 BC before Pharaoh Neco deposed him and carried him to Egypt.

19:5

Waiting "in vain" means the dynasty had hoped the deported king would come back. The second cub is usually identified as Jehoiachin, who reigned three months in 597 BC before Babylon carried him off, though some readers take it as Zedekiah, Judah's final king.

19:7

The Hebrew of this line is uncertain. One letter's difference separates "he knew their widows" (which KJV read as "he knew their desolate palaces") from "he broke down their strongholds," the reading most modern versions follow. "The fulness thereof" means everything the land contained.

19:8

"Provinces" are the administrative districts an empire was divided into; the picture is of troops levied from every corner of a great kingdom and converging on one animal.

19:9

KJV's "ward" means custody, and "holds" means a fortress or prison. As in verse 4, the "chains" are hooks. This second king is also unnamed: he may be Jehoiachin, deported to Babylon in 597 BC, or Zedekiah, taken in 587 BC after Jerusalem fell.

19:10

The Hebrew here is disputed. The text as written says "in your blood," which is what KJV prints; many read it as a nearly identical word meaning "in your vineyard," and others as "in your likeness." The rendering picks one option, but the original is genuinely unclear.

19:11

A scepter was the decorated staff a ruler held as the visible sign of his authority. The same Hebrew word covers both a branch or rod and a ruler's staff, so the vine's strong shoots and the kings themselves are a single image rather than a comparison.

19:12

The east wind is the sirocco off the desert, searing, dry, and capable of shrivelling vegetation in a single day. In the prophets it also regularly carries the sense of an invading army coming from the east.

19:13

Replanting a vine in desert ground is the picture used for deportation: the nation moved out of its watered land and into Babylon.

19:14

Fire breaking out of one of the plant's own branches and burning up the plant means ruin coming from inside the royal family rather than from a foreign army. A similar image is used in Jotham's fable about the trees choosing a king (Judges 9:15, 20). The closing line means the poem is not merely called a lament but is meant to be sung as one.