Ezekiel 19

‘What was your mother [Jerusalem and Judah]?
A lioness among lions!
She lay down among young lions,
She reared her cubs.
³ 
‘When she [the royal mother-city] brought up [Jehoahaz] one of her cubs,
He became a [young] lion,
And he learned to catch and tear the prey;
He devoured men.
⁴ 
‘The nations heard about him;
He was captured in their pit,
And they brought him with hooks
To the land of Egypt.
⁵ 
‘When she saw, as she waited,
That her hope was lost,
She took ^[a]another of her cubs
And made him a young lion.
⁶ 
‘And he moved among the lions;
He became a young lion,
He learned to tear the prey;
He devoured men.
⁷ 
‘He destroyed their palaces
And he flattened their cities;
And the land and all who were in it were appalled
By the sound of his roaring.
⁸ 
‘Then the nations set against him (the king)
On every side from the provinces,
And they spread their net over him;
He was captured in their pit.
⁹ 
‘They put him in a cage with hooks and chains
And brought him to the king of Babylon;
They brought him in hunting nets
So that his voice would be heard no more
On the mountains of Israel.
¹⁰ 
‘Your mother [Jerusalem] was like a vine in your ^[b]vineyard,
Planted by the waters;
It was fruitful and full of branches
Because of abundant water.
¹¹ 
‘And it had strong branches for the scepters of rulers,
And its height was raised above the thick branches and into the clouds
So that it was seen [easily] in its height with the mass of its branches.
¹² 
‘But the vine was uprooted in [godly] wrath [by His representative]
And it was thrown down to the ground;
The east wind dried up its fruit.
Its strong branch was broken off
So that it withered;
The fire [of God’s judgment] consumed it.
¹³ 
‘And now it is transplanted in the wilderness,
In a dry and thirsty land [of Babylon].
¹⁴ 
‘And the fire [of Zedekiah’s rebellion] has gone out from its branch;
It has consumed the vine’s shoots and fruit,
So that it has in it no [longer a] strong branch
As a scepter to rule.’”