1And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 2“Man, what will come of the vine stock, the vine branch, of all the trees of the forest? 3Will wood be taken from it to use for any task? Will a peg be taken from it to hang upon it any vessel? 4Look, it is given to the fire to be consumed, its two ends the fire consumes and its inside is reduced to ash. Can it serve for any task? 5Look, when it was whole, it could be used for no task. How much more so when fire consumes it and it is reduced to ash. Could it still be used for any task? 6Therefore, thus said the Master, the LORD: Like the vine stock among the trees of the forest that I give to the fire to consume, so have I given the dwellers of Jerusalem. 7And I will set My face against them. From the fire they shall come out, but the fire shall consume them. And you shall know that I am the LORD when I set My face against them. 8And I will make the land a desolation inasmuch as they have betrayed,” said the Master, the LORD.
CHAPTER 15 NOTES
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1. And the word of the LORD came to me. In this instance, the formula introduces a parable instead of the usual message of castigation. Because the borders of the parable are quite distinct, the chapter concludes with the end of the parable, not attaching to it any other kind of prophecy. This makes the present chapter the shortest in the book.
2. the vine stock. The Hebrew ʿets-hagefen could mean either “wood of the vine,” as some versions represent it, or “tree of the vine.” The grapevine, of course, is not exactly a tree, though its branches are made of woodlike material. The point of the parable is that, unlike the wood of real trees, the branches of the vine cannot be made into anything. This translation adopts from Greenberg “vine stock” as a solution.
4. it is given to the fire to be consumed. You can’t make anything out of vine branches, but you can feed a fire with them if they are sufficiently dry.
5. How much more so. The logic of the a fortiori statement is evident: if the branches were useless for anything when they were whole, once they are burned there is nothing left of them except ashes.
6. Like the vine stock . . . so have I given the dwellers of Jerusalem. Given the aggressively didactic purpose of this parable, its meaning is now clearly spelled out. Comparisons of Israel to a vineyard or a vine were traditional (see the Parable of the Vineyard in Isaiah 5), but here the comparison is tilted hard against Israel. Just as the vine is useless in comparison to the wood of real trees, the people of Israel has demonstrated its own worthlessness by its treacherous behavior, and hence all that it is good for is to be consumed by fire. The fire is quite literal because conquered cities were put to the torch.
7. From the fire they shall come out. The critical consensus is that the first fire is the partial destruction of Jerusalem when Jehoiachin was exiled in 597 B.C.E. A greater destruction is to come.