Ezekiel 15

₁The Lord talked to me and He said: ₂‘Son of man, the wood of a vine is no better than any other wood that grows in the forest. ₃No one uses the wood of a vine to make a table or anything. You can not use it to make a peg to hang something from it. ₄If someone throws the wood of a vine into a fire and the fire burns at both ends and starts to burn the middle, then the wood is useless. You can not make anything from it. ₅Even if the wood of a vine is not burnt yet, one can not make anything from it, and if it is burnt, one can not use it at all.’

₆The Lord God says: ‘I have given the vine among all the trees in the forest as wood to burn in a fire. In the same way I will give the people who live in Jerusalem to burn. Yes, I will punish them. ₇I have become their enemy. They will try to flee from the fire but the fire will burn them. And you will know that I am the Lord when I turn_against them and become their enemy. ₈I will destroy the land. No one will be able to live there, because the people who live there are unfaithful.’ This is what the Lord God said.