Ezekiel 15

1 Yahweh gave me another message. [He said],

And the word of the Lord came to me, saying:

2 “You human, the wood of a grapevine is certainly not [RHQ] more useful that the branches of the trees in a forest.

“Son of man, what can be made from the stalk of a vine, compared to all the plants of the woods that are among the trees of the forests?

3 No one [RHQ] ever takes a branch of a grapevine and makes anything [useful] from it. No one [RHQ] even makes pegs from them to hang things on.

Can any wood be taken from it, so that it may be made into a work, or formed into a peg so as to hang some kind of vessel upon it?

4 And after a branch of a grapevine is thrown into a fire, and the fire burns both ends and chars/scorches the branch in the middle, will it then be useful for anything?

Behold, it is used in the fire as fuel. The fire consumes both its ends; and its middle is reduced to ashes. So how can it be useful for any work?

5 No; if it was not useful for anything before it was burned, it certainly cannot [made into something] useful after the fire has burned and charred it.

Even when it was whole, it was unsuitable for a work. How much more so, when fire has devoured it and burned it up, will nothing of it be useful?

6 Therefore, this is what [I], Yahweh the Lord, say: The wood of grapevines is useful only for fuel in a fire. Similarly, the people who live in [are useless].

Therefore, thus says the Lord God: Like the stalk of the vine among the trees of the forests, which I have given to be devoured by fire, so will I deliver the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

7 I will reject [IDM] them. [It will be as though] they have escaped from a fire, but there will still be a fire that will burn them up. And when I punish [EUP] them, you [people who remain alive] will know that I, Yahweh, [have done it].

And I will set my face against them. They will go away from fire, and yet fire will consume them. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I will have set my face against them,

8 I will cause your country to become a wasteland because your people have not been loyal [to me. That is what I], Yahweh, the Lord, say.”

and when I will have made their land impassable and desolate. For they have stood forth as transgressors, says the Lord God.”