Ezekiel's Lament for Two Lions and a Vine

The Lord commanded Ezekiel to take up a lamentation for the princes of Israel. It was not a song of praise but a funeral dirge for rulers who had failed. The prophet was told to speak of a lioness, a vine, and the ruin that came upon them.

What was the mother of these princes? A lioness, the Lord said. She crouched among lions, nursing her cubs in the midst of the young lions. One of her whelps grew into a young lion. He learned to catch prey, and he devoured men. The nations heard of him, and they trapped him in a pit. They brought him with hooks to the land of Egypt.

The lioness waited, and her hope was lost. So she took another of her whelps and made him a young lion. He went up and down among the lions, learned to catch prey, and devoured men. He knew their palaces and laid waste their cities. The land and everything in it became desolate because of the noise of his roaring.

The nations set against him from every side. They spread their net over him, and he was taken in their pit. They put him in a cage with hooks and brought him to the king of Babylon. They brought him into strongholds so that his voice would no longer be heard on the mountains of Israel.

The lament then shifted from the lioness to a vine. The mother was like a vine planted by the waters, fruitful and full of branches because of the abundance of water. It had strong rods for the scepters of those who ruled. Their stature was exalted among the thick boughs, and they were seen in their height with the multitude of their branches.

But the vine was plucked up in fury and cast down to the ground. The east wind dried up its fruit. Its strong rods were broken off and withered, and fire consumed them. Now it is planted in the wilderness, in a dry and thirsty land.

Fire went out from the rods of its branches. It devoured its fruit so that there is no strong rod left to be a scepter to rule. This is a lamentation, the Lord said, and it shall be for a lamentation.

The chapter never names the princes. It does not explain which king was the first lion or which was the second. It does not say whether the vine is the royal house of Judah or something else. The lament stands as a stark picture of rulers who devoured their own people, who were caught by foreign kings, and whose lineage was reduced to nothing.

The lions were strong, but their strength turned toward destruction. The vine was fruitful, but its own branches produced the fire that consumed it. The lamentation ends without comfort, without a promise of restoration. It is a funeral song that remains a funeral song.