Bible Strands
Ezekiel 19:10
Your mother was like a vine in your vineyard, planted by the water; it was fruitful and full of branches because of the abundant waters.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Ezekiel addresses the house of Israel, concluding a lament over Judah’s royal line. He speaks this oracle immediately after describing how Babylon caged the former ruler and carried him into captivity.
The words — The Hebrew כַּגֶּפֶן (ka-gfen) means "like a vine," and שְׁתוּלָה (shtulah) translates to "planted." These terms establish the agricultural metaphor that frames the verse’s description of growth.
The thread — The vine motif appears in Psalms 80:8 as a plant uprooted from Egypt and transplanted, and in Deuteronomy 8:7 and Numbers 24:6 as a land watered by streams and springs. Ezekiel adapts this established imagery to trace Judah’s royal lineage from prosperity to exile.
Why it lands — The text states that fruitfulness and branching result from abundant waters, not internal strength. It requires the reader to recognize that political and national stability depends on external conditions that can be removed.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Thy mother is like a vine in thy blood, planted by the waters: she was fruitful and full of branches by reason of many waters.
Cross-references
- Psalms 80:8 You uprooted a vine from Egypt; You drove out the nations and transplanted it.
- Deuteronomy 8:7 For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks and fountains and springs that flow through the valleys and hills;
- Numbers 24:6 They spread out like palm groves, like gardens beside a stream, like aloes the LORD has planted, like cedars beside the waters.
- Matthew 21:33 Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a tower. Then he rented it out to some tenants and went away on a journey.
- Deuteronomy 8:9 a land where you will eat food without scarcity, where you will lack nothing; a land whose rocks are iron and whose hills are ready to be mined for copper.
- Psalms 89:25 I will set his hand over the sea, and his right hand upon the rivers.
- Isaiah 5:1 I will sing for my beloved a song of his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.
- Ezekiel 15:2 “Son of man, how does the wood of the vine surpass any other branch among the trees in the forest?
- Ezekiel 17:6 It sprouted and became a spreading vine, low in height, with branches turned toward him; yet its roots remained where it stood. So it became a vine and yielded branches and sent out shoots.
- Ezekiel 19:2 and say: ‘What was your mother? A lioness among the lions! She lay down among the young lions; she reared her cubs.