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Ezekiel, Chapter 19

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1 Moreover, take yourself up a lamentation for the princes of Israel,
2 and say, What was your mother? A lioness: she couched among lions, in the midst of the young lions she nourished her whelps.
3 And she brought up one of her whelps: he became a young lion, and he learned to catch the prey; he devoured man.
4 The nations also heard of him; he was taken in their pit; and they brought him with hooks to the land of Egypt.
5 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.
6 And he went up and down among the lions; he became a young lion, and he learned to catch the prey; he devoured man.
7 And he cast down his widows, and laid waste their cities; and the land was desolate, and the fullness of it, because of the noise of his roaring.
8 Then the nations set against him on every side from the provinces; and they spread their net over him; he was taken in their pit.
9 And they put him in a cage with hooks, and brought him to the king of Babylon; they brought him into fortresses, that his voice should no more be heard on the mountains of Israel.
10 Your mother was like a vine, in your blood, planted by the waters: it was fruitful and full of branches by reason of many waters.
11 And it had strong rods for the scepters of those who bore rule, and their stature was exalted among the thick boughs, and they were seen in their height with the multitude of their branches.
12 But it was plucked up in fury, it was cast down to the ground, and the east wind dried up its fruit: its strong rods were broken off and withered; the fire consumed them.
13 And now it is planted in the wilderness, in a dry and thirsty land.
14 And fire has gone out of the rods of its branches, it has devoured its fruit, so that there is in it no strong rod to be a scepter to rule. This is a lamentation, and will be for a lamentation.

Commentary (on verse 1)

Adam Clarke
Introduction This chapter contains two beautiful examples of the parabolic kind of writing; the one lamenting the sad catastrophe of Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim, Eze 19:1-9, and the other describing the desolation and captivity of the whole people, Eze 19:10-14. In the first parable, the lioness is Jerusalem. The first of the young lions is Jehoahaz, deposed by the king of Egypt; and the second lion is Jehoiakim, whose rebellion drew on himself the vengeance of the king of Babylon. In the second parable the vine is the Jewish nation, which long prospered, its land being fertile, its princes powerful, and its people flourishing; but the judgments of God, in consequence of their guilt, had now destroyed a great part of the people, and doomed the rest to captivity. Verse 1 Moreover take thou up a lamentation - Declare what is the great subject of sorrow in Israel. Compose a funeral dirge. Show Be melancholy fate of the kings who proceeded from Josiah. The prophet deplores the misfortune of Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim, under the figure of two lion whelps, which were taken by hunters, and confined in cages. Next he shows the desolation of Jerusalem under Zedekiah, which he compares to a beautiful vine pulled up by the roots, withered, and at last burned. Calmet justly observes, that the style of this song is beautiful, and the allegory well supported throughout.
John Wesley
The morning - The fatal morning, the day of destruction. Sounding - Not a mere echo, not a fancy, but a real thing.
Pulpit Commentary
Eze 19:1

The two sections of this chapter—Eze 19:1-9, Eze 19:10-14 -are respectively two parables of the same type as that of Eze 2:10. The former telling nearly the same story under a different imagery, the latter a reproduction of the same imagery, with a slightly different application. Lamentation. The same word as that used in Eze 2:10. The whole chapter finds a parallel in Jeremiah’s review of Josiah’s successors (Jer 22:10-30). It is noticeable that the princes are described as being of Israel. The LXX. gives the singular, "the prince," and Hitzig and Ewald adopt this reading, applying it to Zedekiah.

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