Ezekiel 19

‘^[a]What was your mother?
A lioness among lions!
She lay down among young lions,
She reared her cubs.
³ ‘When she brought up one of her cubs,
He became a lion,
And he learned to tear his prey;
He devoured men.
⁴ ‘Then 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 ^[b]another of her cubs
And made him a young lion.
⁶ ‘And he walked about among the lions;
He became a young lion,
He learned to tear his prey;
He devoured men.
⁷ ‘He ^[c]destroyed their ^[d]fortified towers
And laid waste their cities;
And the land and its fullness were appalled
Because of the sound of his roaring.
⁸ ‘Then nations set against him
On every side from their provinces,
And they spread their net over him;
He was captured in their pit.
⁹ ‘They put him in a cage with hooks
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 was like a vine in your ^[e]vineyard,
Planted by the waters;
It was fruitful and full of branches
Because of abundant waters.
¹¹ ‘And it had ^[f]strong branches fit for scepters of rulers,
And its height was raised above the clouds
So that it was seen in its height with the mass of its 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 ^[g]strong branch ^[h]was torn off
So that ^[i]it withered;
The fire consumed it.
¹³ ‘And now it is planted in the wilderness,
In a dry and thirsty land.
¹⁴ ‘And fire has gone out from its branch;
It has consumed its shoots and fruit,
So that there is not in it a ^[j]strong branch,
A scepter to rule.’”