Ezekiel 19 KJV
A Lament for Israel's Princes
Ezekiel Chapter 19: A Lament for Israel's Princes
The lioness represents the Davidic royal house whose two captured cubs allude specifically to Jehoahaz's deportation to Egypt by Necho II and Jehoiachin's exile to Babylon, framing successive foreign captivities as the inevitable outcome of misused royal power granted by God.
1oreover take thou up a lamentation for the princes of Israel,
2 And say, What is thy mother? A lioness: she lay down among lions, she nourished her whelps among young lions.
3 And she brought up one of her whelps: it became a young lion, and it learned to catch the prey; it devoured men.
4 The nations also heard of him; he was taken in their pit, and they brought him with chains unto the land of Egypt.
5 Now when she saw that she had waited, and her hope was lost, then she took another of her whelps, and made him a young lion.
6 And he went up and down among the lions, he became a young lion, and learned to catch the prey, and devoured men.
7 And he knew their desolate palaces, and he laid waste their cities; and the land was desolate, and the fulness thereof, by the noise of his roaring.
8 Then the nations set against him on every side from the provinces, and spread their net over him: he was taken in their pit.
9 And they put him in ward in chains, and brought him to the king of Babylon: they brought him into holds, that his voice should no more be heard upon the mountains of Israel.
10 Thy mother is like a vine in thy blood, planted by the waters: she was fruitful and full of branches by reason of many waters.
11 And she had strong rods for the sceptres of them that bare rule, and her stature was exalted among the thick branches, and she appeared in her height with the multitude of her branches.
12 But she was plucked up in fury, she was cast down to the ground, and the east wind dried up her fruit: her strong rods were broken and withered; the fire consumed them.
13 And now she is planted in the wilderness, in a dry and thirsty ground.
14 And fire is gone out of a rod of her branches, which hath devoured her fruit, so that she hath no strong rod to be a sceptre to rule. This is a lamentation, and shall be for a lamentation.
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Did You Know?
The lioness represents the Davidic royal house whose two captured cubs allude specifically to Jehoahaz's deportation to Egypt by Necho II and Jehoiachin's exile to Babylon, framing successive foreign captivities as the inevitable outcome of misused royal power granted by God.
Ezekiel casts the lament in the qinah dirge rhythm normally reserved for the dead, applying it to still-living princes to enact a prophetic funeral that declares the monarchy already spiritually extinct before its political end.
The vine section deliberately inverts the fruitful vine of Psalm 80 and Isaiah 5 by showing royal branches torn off and burned, thereby linking the failure of Judah's kings to the same covenantal judgment pronounced on the nation as a whole.
The phrase 'thy mother' identifies the lioness with the collective people of Israel rather than an individual queen mother, shifting blame from isolated rulers to the entire covenant community that nurtured corrupt leadership.
The closing image of the vine 'planted in the wilderness' reverses the Exodus motif of deliverance from Egypt into a new wilderness existence, signaling the temporary suspension of the Davidic throne until a future restoration beyond the current judgment.
Commentary & Study Notes Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (1871) ยท Public Domain princes of Israel โ that is, Judah, whose "princes" alone were recognized by prophecy; those of the ten tribes were, in respect to the theocracy, usurpers.
Classic verse-by-verse commentary on Ezekiel 19 from Jamieson, Fausset & Brown (1871). Covers: Elegy over the fall of David's house.
- 1
- princes of Israel โ that is, Judah, whose "princes" alone were recognized by prophecy; those of the ten tribes were, in respect to the theocracy, usurpers.
- 2
- thy mother โ the mother of Jehoiachin, the representative of David's line in exile with Ezekiel. The "mother" is Judea: "a lioness," as being fierce in catching prey (Eze 19:3), referring to her heathenish practices. Jerusalem was called Ariel (the lion of God) in a good sense (Isa 29:1); and Judah "a lion's whelp... a lion... an old lion" (Ge 49:9), to which, as also to Nu 23:24; 24:9, this passage alludes. nourished... among young lions โ She herself had "lain" among lions, that is, had intercourse with the corruptions of the surrounding heathen and had brought up the royal young ones similarly: utterly degenerate from the stock of Abraham. Lay down โ or "couched," is appropriate to the lion, the Arab name of which means "the coucher."
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