1And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 2“Man, pose a riddle and frame a parable for the house of Israel. 3And you shall say to them, Thus said the Master, the LORD: The great eagle, great-winged, broad of pinion, full-plumaged, richly colored, came to Lebanon and took the crown of the cedar. 4Its topmost tendril he plucked and brought it to the land of Canaan, set it down in the city of traders. 5And he took from the seed of the land and put it in a seed-field, a slip by many waters, he set it down as a willow. 6And it flourished and became a vine, spreading in low stature, its branches turned toward him and its roots to be beneath him. And it became a vine, and it produced branches and sent forth boughs. 7And there was another great eagle, great-winged, abundant in plumage, and, look, this vine wrapped its roots around him and sent its boughs out to him to be watered in the bed where it was planted. 8In the goodly field, by many waters it was planted, to put forth branches to bear fruit, to become a majestic vine. 9Say, Thus said the Master, the LORD: Will it thrive? Will he not break off its roots and rot out its fruit that it wither, and all the leaves it sprouted will wither? And not with great power nor with many troops will it be pulled up by its roots. 10And, look, it is planted—will it thrive? Will it not surely wither when the east wind touches it? On the bed where it grew, it will wither.”
11And the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 12“Pray, say to the house of rebellion: Do you know what these are? Say! Look, the king of Babylonia has come to Jerusalem and taken her king and her nobles and brought them to him in Babylonia. 13And he has taken one of the royal seed and sealed with him a pact and made him swear an oath, and he has taken away the leaders of the land, 14to make it a lowly kingdom, that it not be raised up, to keep his pact that it might endure. 15But he rebelled against him, sending his messengers to Egypt to give him horses and many troops. Will he thrive? Will he who does these things escape? Will he break the pact and escape? 16By My life, said the Master, the LORD, in the place of the king who made him king, whose oath he spurned and whose pact with him he broke, within Babylonia he shall surely die. 17And not with a great force nor with a large assembly shall Pharaoh deal with him in battle, piling up ramps and building siege-works to cut off many lives. 18But he has spurned the oath and broken the pact, and look, he gave his hand to it, but all these things he did. He shall not escape. 19Therefore, thus said the Master, the LORD: By My life, My oath that he has spurned and My pact that he has broken, I will put on his own head. 20And I will spread My net over him, and he shall be caught in My toils. And I will bring him to Babylonia and will come to judgment with him there for his betrayal of Me. 21And all his fugitives in all his battalions shall fall by the sword, and those left shall be scattered to every wind.”
22Thus said the Master, the LORD: “I Myself will take from the lofty crown of the cedar, from its topmost branches, a tender one I will pluck, and I Myself will plant it on a high and steep hill. 23On the mount of the height of Israel I will plant it, and it shall bear branches and put forth fruit and become a majestic cedar, and every winged bird shall dwell beneath it, in the shade of its boughs they shall dwell. 24And all the trees of the field shall know that I, the LORD, have brought low the high tree, have raised high the lowly tree, have made the moist tree wither and made the withered tree bloom. I, the LORD, have spoken and have done it.”
CHAPTER 17 NOTES
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2. pose a riddle and frame a parable. There is a semantic overlap between the two nouns here, ḥidah and mashal, and the bracketing of them at the beginning of the Book of Proverbs suggests that sometimes they were nearly synonymous. Ḥidah, as in the Samson story, does point to an enigmatic saying that requires deciphering. Mashal has a wider range of meanings, from allegorical “parable,” as here, to “proverb” and to “poetic burden,” as in Balaam’s oracles. Some scholars view the text that follows as formal verse, but it doesn’t scan very well, though it does employ a good many loosely parallel sentence structures. The poetic function, as is often the case in Ezekiel, would appear to be manifested not prosodically but chiefly in the use of allegorical imagery, the vehicle of the mashal.
3. The great eagle . . . came to Lebanon. The eagle is Nebuchadnezzar. Lebanon with its lofty cedars is, perhaps somewhat confusingly, Zion.
richly colored. The Hebrew uses the term that usually means “embroidered cloth.”
4. Its topmost tendril he plucked. This is the Judahite king Jehoiachin, taken captive and exiled by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylonia in 597 B.C.E.
brought it to the land of Canaan. Like “Lebanon,” this is a confusing reference because “Canaan” in the historical allegory has to mean Babylonia. Ezekiel is probably punning on the secondary meaning of “Canaanite” as “merchant,” making this phrase semantically parallel with “the city of traders.”
5. the seed of the land. The phrase indicates the royal seed, and the reference is to Zedekiah, whom Nebuchadnezzar installs as a vassal king.
a slip. The noun qaḥ occurs only here, but it is attested in three Semitic languages as a tree growing alongside streams, perhaps a variety of willow.
6. its branches turned toward him and its roots to be beneath him. Both these details are tokens of Zedekiah’s vassal status.
7. another great eagle. “Another,” aḥer, is the plausible reading of the Septuagint instead of the Masoretic eḥad, “one.” The second eagle is the Egyptian Pharaoh. The vine wrapping its roots around him indicates Zedekiah’s seeking an alliance with Egypt.
8. In the goodly field, by many waters it was planted. Nebuchadnezzar had seen to it that his vassal would enjoy comfortable circumstances and the majesty of kingship.
9. Will he not break off its roots. The “he” is Nebuchadnezzar, and we may assume that this prophecy antedates the actual destruction of Judah in 586 B.C.E.
not with great power. Ezekiel assumes that the Babylonians will not require a massive force to overwhelm Jerusalem.
10. the east wind. In biblical literature, the east wind, blowing from the desert, brings trouble. Nebuchadnezzar comes from the east.
12. Do you know what these are? Now the meaning of the parable, the nimshal of the mashal, is spelled out.
the king of Babylonia has come to Jerusalem. These are the events of 597 B.C.E., so now it is clear that “Lebanon” is Zion.
13. And he has taken one of the royal seed. This is Zedekiah.
made him swear an oath. The particular category of oath, ʾalah, is one in which a curse is pronounced on the party of the oath should he violate it.
14. that it might endure. There is an ambiguity as to whether “it” refers to the pact or the kingdom.
16. within Babylonia he shall surely die. This will prove to be the fate of Zedekiah, first blinded by Nebuchadnezzar and then brought captive to Babylonia. This is a reasonable prediction in light of Ezekiel’s understanding that it is folly to rebel, so one need not construe this as an ex eventu prophecy.
17. And not with a great force nor with a large assembly shall Pharaoh deal with him in battle. The ostensible historical reference is puzzling, and many critics assume that “Pharaoh” is a mistaken addition, the original reference being to Nebuchadnezzar, as in the parallel statement in verse 9.
19. My pact that he has broken. The Hebrew brit can mean either “pact,” which seems the appropriate sense for the political context of the verses above, or the more theological “covenant.” To preserve the parallelism of this passage with the preceding one, “pact” is again used here in the translation. However, the clear implication is that just as Zedekiah has broken his pact with Nebuchadnezzar, he has violated his covenant with God, and hence the punishment inflicted on him by Babylonia is also God’s punishment.
22. I Myself will take from the lofty crown of the cedar . . . and I Myself will plant it on a high and steep hill. God performs the same figurative action as the conquering Nebuchadnezzar, but now it is an act of restoring the kingdom of Judah.
23. put forth fruit. The cedar does not bear fruit, so this is a miraculous fulfillment.