Ezekiel 19:10

The Message

Here’s another way to put it: Your mother was like a vine in a vineyard, transplanted alongside streams of water, Luxurious in branches and grapes because of the ample water. It grew sturdy branches fit to be carved into a royal scepter. It grew high, reaching into the clouds. Its branches filled the horizon, and everyone could see it. Then it was ripped up in a rage and thrown to the ground. The hot east wind shriveled it up and stripped its fruit. The sturdy branches dried out, fit for nothing but kindling. Now it’s a stick stuck out in the desert, a bare stick in a desert of death, Good for nothing but making fires, campfires in the desert. Not a hint now of those sturdy branches fit for use as a royal scepter! (This is a sad song, a text for singing the blues.)

Cross References

Psalm 128:3

Your wife will bear children as a vine bears grapes, your household lush as a vineyard, The children around your table as fresh and promising as young olive shoots. Stand in awe of God’s Yes. Oh, how he blesses the one who fears God!

Hosea 2:2

“Haul your mother into court. Accuse her! She’s no longer my wife. I’m no longer her husband. Tell her to quit dressing like a whore, displaying her breasts for sale. If she refuses, I’ll rip off her clothes and expose her, naked as a newborn. I’ll turn her skin into dried-out leather, her body into a badlands landscape, a rack of bones in the desert. I’ll have nothing to do with her children, born one and all in a whorehouse. Face it: Your mother’s been a whore, bringing bastard children into the world. She said, ‘I’m off to see my lovers! They’ll wine and dine me, Dress and caress me, perfume and adorn me!’ But I’ll fix her: I’ll dump her in a field of thistles, then lose her in a dead-end alley. She’ll go on the hunt for her lovers but not bring down a single one. She’ll look high and low but won’t find a one. Then she’ll say, ‘I’m going back to my husband, the one I started out with. That was a better life by far than this one.’ She didn’t know that it was I all along who wined and dined and adorned her, That I was the one who dressed her up in the big-city fashions and jewelry that she wasted on wild Baal-orgies. I’m about to bring her up short: No more wining and dining! Silk lingerie and gowns are a thing of the past. I’ll expose her genitals to the public. All her fly-by-night lovers will be helpless to help her. Party time is over. I’m calling a halt to the whole business, her wild weekends and unholy holidays. I’ll wreck her sumptuous gardens and ornamental fountains, of which she bragged, ‘Whoring paid for all this!’ They will soon be dumping grounds for garbage, feeding grounds for stray dogs and cats. I’ll make her pay for her indulgence in promiscuous religion— all that sensuous Baal worship And all the promiscuous sex that went with it, stalking her lovers, dressed to kill, And not a thought for me.” God’s Message!

John 15:1

“I am the Real Vine and my Father is the Farmer. He cuts off every branch of me that doesn’t bear grapes. And every branch that is grape-bearing he prunes back so it will bear even more. You are already pruned back by the message I have spoken.