Ezekiel 19 - A Lamentation for the Princes of Israel
A funeral song for Judah's captured kings, pictured as a lion cub and an uprooted vine.
This short chapter is a funeral dirge for Judah's last kings, first pictured as a lioness whose cubs are trapped and dragged off to Egypt and Babylon, then as a fruitful vine torn up by the roots. Following directly after Ezekiel 18's teaching on personal guilt, it turns that principle into mourning over real rulers who fell by their own violence.
Moreover take thou up a lamentation for the princes of Israel,
And say, What [is] thy mother: A lioness: she lay down among lions, she nourished her whelps among young lions.
And she brought up one of her whelps: it became a young lion, and it learned to catch the prey; it devoured men.
The nations also heard of him; he was taken in their pit, and they brought him with chains to the land of Egypt.
Now when she saw that she had waited, [and] her hope was lost, then she took another of her whelps, [and] made him a young lion.
And he went up and down among the lions, he became a young lion, and learned to catch the prey, [and] devoured men.
And he knew their desolate palaces, and he laid waste their cities; and the land was desolate, and the fullness of it, by the noise of his roaring.
Then the nations set against him on every side from the provinces, and spread their net over him: he was taken in their pit.
And they put him in custody in chains, and brought him to the king of Babylon: they brought him into holds, that his voice should no more be heard upon the mountains of Israel.
Thy mother [is] like a vine in thy blood, planted by the waters: she was fruitful and full of branches by reason of many waters.
And she had strong rods for the scepters of them that bore rule, and her stature was exalted among the thick branches, and she appeared in her hight with the multitude of her branches.
But she was plucked up in fury, she was cast down to the ground, and the east wind dried up her fruit: her strong rods were broken and withered; the fire consumed them.
And now she [is] planted in the wilderness, in a dry and thirsty ground.
And fire hath gone out of a rod of her branches, [which] hath devoured her fruit, so that she hath no strong rod [to be] a scepter to rule. This [is] a lamentation, and shall be for a lamentation.