Ezek 15

15:1–24:14 This section contains a series of eight metaphors, each reiterating from a different angle the certainty of Jerusalem’s forthcoming judgment. The images are of a worthless vine (ch 15); a faithless wife (ch 16); a vine and two eagles (ch 17); sour grapes (ch 18); a lion and her cubs (ch 19); a sword (ch 21); two degenerate sisters (ch 23); and a cooking pot (ch 24).15:1-5 The wood of a tree can be used to make all kinds of useful objects, pegs being the simplest and most basic. A vine’s wood, however, has no strength, size, or beauty, so it is useless for pegs and it is not even good as fuel because it burns too quickly. It is completely useless.

15:6 The people of Jerusalem are like grapevines: Cp. Ps 80:8-9; Isa 5:1-7; Jer 2:21; John 15:1-6. • If grapevines grow among the trees of the forest, they do not bear fruit because they lack sufficient sunlight.

15:7 Anyone who escaped from one fire of God’s judgment (probably a reference to the defeat of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar in 597 BC; 2 Kgs 21:1-4) would simply fall into another (the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC).

15:8 unfaithful: See 6:9; 16:17; Hos 2. Jerusalem had gone after idols instead of faithfully serving the true God. Such behavior broke the covenant between the Lord and his people, with the inevitable result that the land would become desolate.