Read Ezekiel 19:5 in the King James Bible (opens in a new tab)
Ezekiel 19 is a lamentation over the downfall of Judah’s rulers and the collapse of the royal house. Through the imagery of a lioness and her young lions, God portrays leaders who became powerful but were eventually captured and removed because of violence and rebellion. The second picture presents Israel as a fruitful vine that once possessed strong branches fit for rulers, but was uprooted, cast down, and left in a dry wilderness. The chapter shows that political strength and royal privilege cannot preserve a people who persist in disobedience to God. Its mournful conclusion emphasizes the tragic consequences of judgment and the loss that follows when God’s authority is rejected.
Ezekiel 19:5 - 19:14
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.