Biblion Bible Commentary
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A Lament for the Princes of Israel
Ezekiel 19:1-14
1 “Moreover, take up a lamentation for the princes of Israel, · WEB
The dynasty is mourned in a funeral song sung before it is dead, and both cubs end the same way — caged and carried off.
The form is announced in the first line. This is a lamentation, the measured song sung over a body, and it is being sung over a royal house that still has a king on the throne. Ezekiel is told to hold a funeral in advance.
The mother is a lioness who couched among lions and raised her cubs there. She brings up the first, he learns to catch prey and devours men, and the nations take him in a pit and bring him with hooks to Egypt. That is Jehoahaz, deposed after three months and carried to Egypt, where he died 2 Kings 23:34. Then she waits, and her hope was lost, and she takes another. The second learns the same trade, lays waste cities, and is taken in the same way — net, pit, cage, hooks — and brought to the king of Babylon.
The repetition is the argument. Two cubs, two identical careers, two identical endings, and a mother who tried again after the first was lost. Nothing was learned between the two attempts, and the second is described in exactly the words used of the first. What the song mourns is not bad luck but a pattern that reproduced itself with a different man inside it.
The imagery then changes from a lioness to a vine, and the vine is the older picture of the nation. It is fruitful and full of branches by many waters, and its strong rods become scepters for those who rule. Then it is plucked up in fury, cast down, dried by the east wind, and planted in a wilderness where the ground is thirsty. Fire goes out from a branch and consumes the fruit, and the closing line states what is left: there is in it no strong branch to be a scepter to rule. The last sentence of the chapter says that this is a lamentation and shall be for a lamentation — a song written to be sung again.
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