THE WORD OF THE LORD came to me: 2“Son of man, how is the wood of a vine better than that of a branch on any of the trees in the forest? 3Is wood ever taken from it to make anything useful? Do they make pegs from it to hang things on? 4And after it is thrown on the fire as fuel and the fire burns both ends and chars the middle, is it then useful for anything? 5If it was not useful for anything when it was whole, how much less can it be made into something useful when the fire has burned it and it is charred?
6“Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: As I have given the wood of the vine among the trees of the forest as fuel for the fire, so will I treat the people living in Jerusalem. 7I will set my face against them. Although they have come out of the fire, the fire will yet consume them. And when I set my face against them, you will know that I am the LORD. 8I will make the land desolate because they have been unfaithful, declares the Sovereign LORD.”
Original Meaning
IN THE EARLIER CHAPTERS, we saw how Ezekiel was called to use a variety of sign-acts to illustrate and drive home to the people’s hearts the great danger facing Jerusalem. The vision of the abandonment of the temple (chs. 8–11) formed essentially the same message in another format. Chapters 15–19 comprises a series of extended metaphorical units, demonstrating Ezekiel’s versatility in pounding home the message with which he has been commissioned.1
Ezekiel 15 is a brief parable, a pictorial story with a sting in the tail; the interpretation of the parable that the prophet adds develops the message of chapter 14 concerning the inevitability of Jerusalem’s destruction. The link with the preceding section is apparent in the concluding verse (15:8), which picks up the idea of a land acting unfaithfully (māʿal maʿal; 14:13), that is, breaching the covenant relationship, and consequently becoming desolate (šemāmâ; 14:16).2 This acts as a kind of inclusio, rounding off this section (14:12–15:8) with its focus on Jerusalem’s forthcoming annihilation.3
Yet the message of chapter 15 only becomes plain when the interpretation is added to the parable. Like many parables, the meaning is at first concealed in a homely illustration, so obviously true to life that no one can disagree. Once the audience has accepted the self-evident surface message of the parable, then its less palatable deeper significance can be revealed. In a similarly roundabout way, the prophet Nathan confronts King David with his adultery (2 Sam. 12:1–10). First, he tells a story of a rich man who steals his poor neighbor’s single lamb rather than kill one of his own. Only after David has recognized the self-evident truth that such behavior is reprehensible (“The man who did this deserves to die”) does Nathan reveal its true application: “You are the man!” David is condemned out of his own lips. Similarly in Isaiah’s “Song of the Vineyard,” the prophet lays out the deplorable state of the Lord’s vineyard in metaphorical form before stating explicitly that the vineyard in question is the Lord’s vineyard, the house of Israel and the men of Judah (Isa. 5:1–7).
Thus, Ezekiel starts out with a familiar agricultural picture. The prunings cut from the vine were familiar objects, and it is immediately apparent to all that they serve no useful purpose. They cannot be manufactured into anything of value, not even a peg to hang something on—the most basic of all uses. They have neither strength nor beauty to commend them. The only thing therefore to do with these agricultural by-products is to burn them. Now frequently among the ashes of the fire, half-burnt pieces of vine would be found, the ends burned away and the middle charred. Were such pieces thereby made more useful? The conclusion of Ezek. 15:5 is inescapable: “If it was not useful for anything when it was whole, how much less can it be made into something useful when the fire has burned it and it is charred?” No one can disagree with Ezekiel’s presentation thus far.
He then proceeds to apply the metaphor, to press home a less acceptable proposition: Jerusalem is like that vine wood, and its fate is therefore (inevitably) going to be that of half-burnt vine branches, fit for nothing but to be thrown back onto the fire and consumed completely. Just as the Lord has “given” vine wood to be burnt because of its uselessness, so also the inhabitants of Jerusalem have been “given” by the Lord (15:6). This implies not only a comparable divinely determined fate (burning) but a comparable divinely determined assessment of value (useless).
But even this first “burning,” the initial defeat of Judah in 597 B.C. and the first exile, has not achieved a redemptive purpose: The people have not been made any more fit for God’s purposes, but on the contrary even more useless than before. Again, the conclusion is inescapable: “Although they have come out of the fire, the fire will yet consume them” (15:7). Back into the fire they will go, for they are fit for nothing else, and this time the destruction will be complete. As in 14:12–23, the unfaithfulness of the land to its covenant overlord in pursuing idols will result in its being made desolate.
Bridging Contexts
BECAUSE WE ARE not familiar with vines and vine branches in our everyday experience, the temptation for us is to connect this parable too quickly to the usage of that imagery in the rest of Scripture. The Bible is the only place where we are accustomed to encounter vines and branches. Yet in so doing we may miss the point of the parable, which moves from obvious everyday experience to establish unpalatable spiritual truth. Ezekiel’s hearers would not immediately have recognized the vine branch as a picture of Israel, and it is important for the effectiveness of the parable that they should not do so until after they have accepted the surface meaning as inescapably true. Like David, they must not recognize their reflection in the mirror until they have pronounced sentence on themselves. Parables characteristically pull the rug out from underneath us, sweeping away our comfortable certainties and showing us an unexpectedly unfamiliar landscape where a moment earlier we thought we found ourselves at home.4
Having said that, once the application has been made, the parable invites comparison with other traditional uses of similar imagery, notably the vineyard image and that of fire. The vine is a traditional symbol for Israel, expressing God’s loving care for that nation as a vinedresser takes care of what he has planted (Ps. 80:8–9; Isa. 5:1–7). The image also expresses God’s expectation of return from his people: The vinedresser looks for fruit in return for his labors, an expectation in which he has often been disappointed (Isa. 5:2; Jer. 2:21).
Ezekiel takes this metaphor one stage further by comparing the inhabitants of Jerusalem not to the vine itself, from which fruit was to be expected, but to the prunings from the vine, which were inherently useless and fit only for the fire. This fits with Ezekiel’s radical emphasis on the congenital nature of Israel’s sin, which comes to expression in the following chapter.5 There never was a golden age of obedience in the past from which Israel has now declined but only one long history of unfaithfulness, and thus judgment is inevitable.
Yet does Ezekiel’s message not also invite the hearer to ask the question: “If those remaining in the land are the prunings, is there still a true vine, a real Israel, somewhere else—perhaps even among the exiles?” This fits with Ezekiel’s insistence in Ezekiel 11 that God’s presence is no longer in Jerusalem but among the exiles. In contrast to the insistence of those left in the land that they were the choice portion, chosen to inherit the land (11:3, 15), they are actually the part destined for burning, while the remnant exists among those in exile (11:7–12, 15–16).
The imagery of fire has a twofold history in the Old Testament, as a purifying force and as a destroying force. The idea of a refiner’s fire cleansing the people from their impurities is found in 1 Kings 8:51; Isaiah 1:25; 48:10; and several times in postexilic literature (e.g., Mal. 3:2–3). Yet the fire is also an image of the power of the Lord to destroy the worthless (e.g., Ex. 15:7; Isa. 5:24). It is only natural for the imagery of fire to be applied to the trials of 586 B.C. But the real question was whether that fire had a refining goal, producing a purified people, or a destroying goal, wiping out an impure people. Ezekiel’s contention, which runs contrary to the hopes of many of his fellow exiles, was that as far as Jerusalem was concerned, the fire was that of God’s judgment, and its goal was not the redemption of his city (as in Isa. 1:25–26) but its total destruction.
Contemporary Significance
WHY DO BAD THINGS happen to people in this life? The destruction coming on Jerusalem is one specific example of a more general problem: If all things in this world come from the hand of the sovereign Lord, why does he send pains and sorrows into the lives of all people, and some more than others? What purpose do these things serve in the world? The answer to that question is that, like fire, they serve a twofold purpose: to purify and to destroy.
There are two mistakes people commonly make in this regard. The first is to assume that all “bad things” have a destructive, punitive purpose. Why did I lose my job? Why did my spouse die? Why did God allow my ex-husband to sexually abuse my child? If we see all of these evils as only the result of God’s punitive purpose, then we develop a tragically distorted view of God. God is then seen as a kind of divine policeman, eternally hiding at the roadside to catch us exceeding the speed limit of life.
True, all the evils in this world are the result of sin—for without the Fall there would have been no death or sickness, no cause for tears or mourning. But not all the evils in my life are the direct result of my sin. To take a trivial example, God did not cause it to rain on my picnic because I missed my quiet time yesterday. Jesus addressed this view when his disciples posed the question to him concerning a man blind from birth, as to who sinned: the man himself or his parents. The Lord’s response is illuminating: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned . . . but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life” (John 9:3). Jesus’ point is not that the man and his parents were sinless; rather, their personal sins were not the determining factor, but God’s good purpose.
That purpose may be expressed through profound, life-changing incidents, as in the healing of this man, a sign demonstrating Jesus’ power. Pain may indeed be the megaphone through which God speaks in order to get our attention. Or it may be expressed in the apparently trivial disappointments we experience, which cumulatively encourage us to turn our eyes from seeking satisfaction in this fallen world onward to seek our true satisfaction in God’s new creation. Without God’s redemptive application of the rod of suffering to our lives, we would have no cause to desire something better than this world and thus to turn to God.
Yet not all suffering is inherently redemptive. That was the mistake the exiles had been deceived into making by their eager desire for a better future for their homeland. So also people may imagine that because a person has suffered a great deal, he or she has automatically been made a better person by it. Some suffering may not only result from my sin, it can also confirm me in my sin. Suffering can harden a heart, preparing the person for final destruction, as well as soften it, preparing him or her for final redemption.
What is it, then, that makes suffering fruitful in the life of one person, while in another it is merely a foreshadowing of the wrath to come? This is the question Jesus addresses in his image of the vine and the branches (John 15). Picking up on the Old Testament imagery of Israel as a vine, he declares that he himself is the true vine whom God tends; in other words, he himself is the true Israel (John 15:1). To be “in [him],” that is, to be a member of his body, a living part of the church, is to be part of the true, fruit-bearing Israel (John 15:4), while to be apart from him is to be worthless, fit only to be burned in the fire (15:5–6). There is no place in God’s kingdom for the “go it alone” mentality that is so popular in our culture.
Freedom from suffering is precisely not the result to be expected from remaining on the vine: on the contrary, fruitful branches are “pruned” just as fruitless ones are cast off (John 15:2, 6). Suffering is a part of every life, but for the Christian it is a “fruitful” part of life, bearing a harvest of righteousness (cf. Heb. 12:11). As we suffer, we are further conformed to the likeness of Christ, the Suffering Servant. As we suffer, we are detached from our passionate absorption with ourselves and this present world and taught to refocus our attention on the glories that await us in the place where suffering will be no more. Suffering teaches us that God’s grace is sufficient for easily broken earthen vessels like us (2 Cor. 4:7–10). For the non-Christian, however, suffering ultimately bears no fruit; it brings about no change in one’s course of life. Outside the vine, the outlook is as bleak as that which Ezekiel prophesies for Jerusalem: Unbelievers are headed on a course toward certain destruction.