Ezekiel 15 - Introduction

The vine tree among the other trees of the forest

The chapter pursues the same general line of thought as ch. Ezekiel 14:12-23, and ch. 16. In ch. Ezekiel 14:12-23 the prophet had replied to a feeling that might arise in men's minds that Jehovah would spare the sinners of the people for the sake of the righteous. Here he replies to another thought were these predictions of wholesale destruction upon Israel, the people of the Lord, and Jerusalem where he had placed his name, probable? Other nations might perish, but Israel was the Lord's heritage, the vine of his planting. The prophet accepts the idea of the vine and replies to it.

Like Isaiah's song of the vineyard (Isaiah 5) the passage has two parts, first, the similitude of the vine, Ezekiel 15:1; and secondly, the application to Israel, Ezekiel 15:6.

Founding on old similitudes the prophet assumes that Israel is the vine, and compares it as a tree or as wood with the other trees of the forest. It is as wood that it is put in comparison with the trees. He is studiously silent in regard to the fruit of the vine. This, which gave the vine its preeminence (Judges 9:13), cannot be touched upon, for it does not exist. It is the wood of the vine only that can be compared with the other trees of the forest, the feeble, creeping plant with the lofty trees around it. Judah never had any pretensions to be a powerful state, or to enter into competition in wealth or military resources with the kingdoms round about. As a tree among the trees, a state among the states, what was it good for? And especially now what is it good for, when it has already been in the fire, its ends consumed and its heart charred? What is it fit for, or need it expect, but to be flung again into the fire and wholly consumed?