Ezekiel 17
Summary for Ezek 17:1-24: 17:1-24 a This chapter uses a riddle, a form of metaphorical speech that both conceals and reveals. It is also a fable, a story that communicates a moral message about humans by transposing it into the world of plants and animals. The imaginative context creates a distance between the story and the reality and thus disarms the hearer’s defenses against an unpalatable message.Summary for Ezek 17:3-6: 17:3-6 b Babylon was the city filled with merchants (see 16:29 c).
Summary for Ezek 17:7-9: 17:7-9 d There was a second great eagle like the first, although not quite so glorious.
• The fate of the vine was predictable. In seeking to gain more, it would lose what it already had. The second eagle would not do anything for it, and the anger of the first eagle would be justly aroused.
17:10 e In Judah, the east wind blows from the desert and is therefore hot and dry.
Summary for Ezek 17:11-18: 17:11-18 f The first eagle was Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. The cedar sprig was Jehoiachin, who was carried off to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. The replacement that grew into a low vine was Zedekiah, and the second eagle was Egypt, from whom Zedekiah was seeking help in his bid to break free of the Babylonians. The hot east wind of judgment blew from Babylon, uprooting and withering Jerusalem.
• The image of the eagle that spared no effort in providing for the vine seems to describe God’s care for Israel more than Nebuchadnezzar’s concern for Zedekiah. These connections point us to a fundamental analogy between Zedekiah’s rebellion against his overlord, Nebuchadnezzar, and Israel’s rebellion against the Lord. Zedekiah’s rebellion against the might of the Babylonians was foolish to the point of being suicidal. Even more foolish was Israel’s rebellion against the Lord, the God of heaven and earth.
Summary for Ezek 17:19-21: 17:19-21 g God would punish Israel’s king for breaking his covenant with treason against the Lord who had planted him in the land of promise.
• I will bring him to Babylon and put him on trial: See 2 Kgs 25:5-7 h.
Summary for Ezek 17:22-24: 17:22-24 i The last part of the chapter turns the fable around. Now the Lord would take a branch from the ... cedar tree and plant it on ... Israel’s highest mountain. As elsewhere in the Old Testament, tree imagery stands for the royal line, with a new shoot representing a fresh start (cp. Isa 11:1 j). The judgment upon the vine would not end the monarchy after all. God would plant a fresh branch that would grow into a more majestic cedar than the first cedar had ever been. Although the present dynasty of kings had reached a dead end in Zedekiah, a new beginning was not only possible but inevitable in God’s time (see Hag 2:21-23 k; Matt 1:11-16 l; 2:1-11 m).
• God cuts the tall tree down, makes the short tree grow tall, and gives the dead tree new life, enabling birds of every sort (representing the nations) to find shelter and shade under its branches. God’s promise of an eternal throne for David would not ultimately be thwarted by the failures of David’s descendants, the kings of Judah. One day, the dynasty of David—in the person of Jesus—would once again be raised up as the source of blessing for all nations.
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