Ezekiel 15

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

Then the word of Yahweh 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, how is a vine better than any tree with branches that is among the trees in a forest?

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.

Do people take wood from a vine to make anything? Or do they make a peg from it to hang anything on 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?

See! If it is thrown into a fire as fuel, and if the fire has burned both of its ends and also the middle, is it good for anything?

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.

See! When it was complete, it could not make anything; surely then, when the fire has burned, then it still will not make anything 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 the Lord Yahweh says this: Unlike the trees in the forests, I have given the vine as fuel for fires; I will act in the same way toward 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].

For I will set my face against them. Though they come out from the fire, yet the fire will consume them; so you will know that I am Yahweh, when I 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.”

Then I will make the land into an abandoned wasteland because they have committed sin—this is the Lord Yahweh's declaration.”