Ezekiel 19

Israel Degraded

19“Moreover ^atake up a lamentation for the princes of Israel, ²and say:

‘What is your mother? A lioness:

She lay down among the lions;

Among the young lions she nourished her cubs.

³She brought up one of her cubs,

And ^bhe became a young lion;

He learned to catch prey,

And he devoured men.

⁴The nations also heard of him;

He was trapped in their pit,

And they brought him with chains to the land of ^cEgypt.

⁵‘When she saw that she waited, that her hope was lost,

She took ^danother of her cubs and made him a young lion.

^6eHe roved among the lions,

And ^fbecame a young lion;

He learned to catch prey;

He devoured men.

⁷¹He knew their desolate places,

And laid waste their cities;

The land with its fullness was desolated

By the noise of his roaring.

^8gThen the nations set against him from the provinces on every side,

And spread their net over him;

^hHe was trapped in their pit.

⁹ⁱThey put him in a cage with ²chains,

And brought him to the king of Babylon;

They brought him in nets,

That his voice should no longer be heard on ^jthe mountains of Israel.

¹⁰‘Your mother was ^klike a vine in your ³bloodline,

Planted by the waters,

^lFruitful and full of branches

Because of many waters.

¹¹She had strong branches for scepters of rulers.

^mShe towered in stature above the thick branches,

And was seen in her height amid the ⁴dense foliage.

¹²But she was ⁿplucked up in fury,

She was cast down to the ground,

And the ^oeast wind dried her fruit.

Her strong branches were broken and withered;

The fire consumed them.

¹³And now she is planted in the wilderness,

In a dry and thirsty land.

^14pFire has come out from a rod of her branches

And devoured her fruit,

So that she has no strong branch—a scepter for ruling.’ ”

^qThis is a lamentation, and has become a lamentation.