Ezekiel 19

What a lioness was your mother

among lions!

She lay down among young lions,

rearing her cubs.

³She raised up one of her cubs;

he became a young lion,

and he learned to catch prey;

he devoured humans.

⁴The nations sounded an alarm against him;

he was caught in their pit;

and they brought him with hooks

to the land of Egypt.

⁵When she saw that she was thwarted,

that her hope was lost,

she took another of her cubs

and made him a young lion.

⁶He prowled among the lions;

he became a young lion,

and he learned to catch prey;

he devoured people.

⁷And he ravaged their strongholds,

and laid waste their towns;

the land was appalled, and all in it,

at the sound of his roaring.

⁸The nations set upon him

from the provinces all around;

they spread their net over him;

he was caught in their pit.

⁹With hooks they put him in a cage,

and brought him to the king of Babylon;

they brought him into custody,

so that his voice should be heard no more

on the mountains of Israel.

¹⁰Your mother was like a vine in a vineyard

transplanted by the water,

fruitful and full of branches

from abundant water.

¹¹Its strongest stem became

a ruler’s scepter;

it towered aloft

among the thick boughs;

it stood out in its height

with its mass of branches.

¹²But it was plucked up in fury,

cast down to the ground;

the east wind dried it up;

its fruit was stripped off,

its strong stem was withered;

the fire consumed it.

¹³Now it is transplanted into the wilderness,

into a dry and thirsty land.

¹⁴And fire has gone out from its stem,

has consumed its branches and fruit,

so that there remains in it no strong stem,

no scepter for ruling.