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A Lament for the Princes of Israel
19 And you, take up a lamentation for the princes of Israel, and say:
What was your mother? A lioness!
Among lions she crouched;
in the midst of young lions
she reared her cubs.
And she brought up one of her cubs;
he became a young lion,
and he learned to catch prey;
he devoured men.
The nations heard about him;
he was caught in their pit,
and they brought him with hooks
to the land of Egypt.
When she saw that she waited in vain,
that her hope was lost,
she took another of her cubs
and made him a young lion.
He prowled among the lions;
he became a young lion,
and he learned to catch prey;
he devoured men,
and seized their widows.
He laid waste their cities,
and the land was appalled and all who were in it
at the sound of his roaring.
Then the nations set against him
from provinces on every side;
they spread their net over him;
he was taken in their pit.
With hooks they put him in a cage
and brought him to the king of Babylon;
they brought him into custody,
that his voice should no more be heard
on the mountains of Israel.
Your mother was like a vine in a vineyard
planted by the water,
fruitful and full of branches
by reason of abundant water.
Its strong stems became
rulers’ scepters;
it towered aloft
among the thick boughs;
it was seen in its height
with the mass of its branches.
But the vine was plucked up in fury,
cast down to the ground;
the east wind dried up its fruit;
they were stripped off and withered.
As for its strong stem,
fire consumed it.
Now it is planted in the wilderness,
in a dry and thirsty land.
And fire has gone out from the stem of its shoots,
has consumed its fruit,
so that there remains in it no strong stem,
no scepter for ruling.
This is a lamentation and has become a lamentation.
(ESV)
Ezekiel 19 Commentary
by Brad Boyles
In this elegy, Ezekiel mourns the lion cubs (kings of Judah) who were brought up by the lioness (nation of Judah). An elegy is a poem of serious reflection that is typically a lament for the dead. Specifically, this elegy was referring to the captivity of Jehoahaz (609 BC), Jehoiachin (597 BC), and the destruction of the Davidic dynasty with Zedekiah (586 BC).
Again using the metaphor of a vine, Ezekiel mourns for Judah which was plucked by God and planted in the wilderness of a dry and thirsty land. It was a shameful ending for the house of David. Though there would no longer be a king, the lineage of Christ continued in exile until the Messiah was born to the virgin Mary.
It is interesting to trace the roots of both Mary (Luke 3) and Joseph (Matthew 1) in order to find that both families go all the way back to the sons of David (Solomon and Nathan). In this way, God kept His promise of bringing a Savior through the line of David even though the nation itself suffered in exile.
In fact, the exile itself blinded the nation’s eyes to God’s Son in the flesh. For years, the Jews anticipated a return to the Davidic dynasty. It would never come. Just like the people of Ezekiel’s time preferred to align themselves with Egypt in hopes of deliverance, the people of Jesus’ time preferred Caesar and the Romans to God’s Son. And yet, in due time, they would rebel against the Roman authorities and experience the turmoil of their decisions as Jesus’ own words against the temple and Jerusalem would come true.
And while some were talking about the temple, that it was adorned with beautiful stones and votive gifts, He said, 6 “As for these things which you are looking at, the days will come in which there will not be left one stone upon another which will not be torn down.”
Luke 21:5-6 NASB
And this is where I want to land with some interesting thoughts…
Where have we become fixated on our plans for our lives? Where have we taken the promises of God and stretched them to fit our perception and circumstances? We are not much different from the people of Judah. They irrationally believed that their plans would be blessed when their actions did not line up with God’s desires. They were living in rebellion and twisting truth to satisfy their own dreams. The most shocking part of this story is that even though God knew their hearts, He still followed through with His part of the plan by sending Jesus to conquer sin and death for stubborn people like us. It’s incomprehensible.