The One I Loved Is Gone Series

Ezekiel 19: 1 – 14

The one I loved is gone

1 “Moreover take up a lamentation for the princes of Israel, 2 and say: ‘ What is your mother? A lioness: She lay down among the lions; among the young lions she nourished her cubs. 3 She brought up one of her cubs, and he became a young lion; He learned to catch prey, and he devoured men. 4 The nations also heard of him; He was trapped in their pit, and they brought him with chains to the land of Egypt. 5 ‘ When she saw that she waited, that her hope was lost, She took another of her cubs and made him a young lion. 6 He roved among the lions, and became a young lion; He learned to catch prey; He devoured men. 7 He knew their desolate places, and laid waste their cities; The land with its fullness was desolated By the noise of his roaring. 8 Then the nations set against him from the provinces on every side, and spread their net over him; He was trapped in their pit. 9 They put him in a cage with chains, and brought him to the king of Babylon; they brought him in nets, That his voice should no longer be heard on the mountains of Israel. 10 ‘ Your mother was like a vine in your bloodline, planted by the waters, Fruitful and full of branches Because of many waters. 11 She had strong branches for scepters of rulers. She towered in stature above the thick branches, and was seen in her height amid the dense foliage. 12 But she was plucked up in fury, She was cast down to the ground, And the east wind dried her fruit. Her strong branches were broken and withered; the fire consumed them. 13 And now she is planted in the wilderness, In a dry and thirsty land. 14 Fire has come out from a rod of her branches And devoured her fruit, So that she has no strong branch— a scepter for ruling.’” This is a lamentation, and has become a lamentation.

Our God is Amazing and Awesome. We have studied over the last eighteen chapters how the people of Israel had become so morally corrupt that the Lord had no other choice but to remove them from the land. The Canaanites were removed from the land because of their evil and now sadly God’s elect had become like the former inhabitants. Thus, it was justified that they also had to be dealt with.

Our Holy Creator and Ruler had used every means possible to break through their hearts and minds. He sent famines, pestilences, wars, and prophets to get the people’s attention to seek out God for His help. Nothing worked. The people had become so hardened that the only action now to be taken was for God to cast the people out of His land.

You have to take some time going through these chapters to feel the hurt of God’s Heart. Over and over you feel moved by the pain of a rejected lover. In dealing with divorce situation you carry the burden of a dead marriage. Here also we read and understand the sorrow of a dead marriage between our Holy Lord and His people the Jews. Our Lord’s heart is heavy and as we witness friends sharing their feelings of loss at a funeral, here in chapter 19 we hear from our God lamenting over his lost love.

In the preceding chapter we read how our Supreme Judge ruled on His basis of decisions. He would judge each person individually not corporately. He now focuses on the individuals who had a responsibility as His co-leaders to watch over His flock. These two princes of Israel were Jehoahaz and Jehoiachin.

Israel will be portrayed by God as a lioness, which produced cubs. Our Lord will lament over their fate and the resulting destruction of His choice nation through a poem of the withering vine that would end in the cessation of Jewish kingship.

1 “Moreover take up a lamentation for the princes of Israel, 2 and say: ‘ What is your mother? A lioness: She lay down among the lions; among the young lions she nourished her cubs. 3 She brought up one of her cubs, and he became a young lion; He learned to catch prey, and he devoured men. 4

Our Lord loved king David. He made a promise to him that his sons would rule as kings over The Holy Lord’s people. The moral and spiritual decay had gotten so bad that we see our Lord not even refer to the two leaders as kings but only gives them credit for their heritage as ‘princes’.

Our Precious Lord in His overwhelming Grace bestows on His selected tribe Judah as the leadership tribe and gives these people the image of a lion, which is strong and powerful. Even today Israel is a strong army. In fact probably Israel is one of the most successful warlike group of people on the planet. I have dabbled in the martial arts and I can tell you that the Israeli self-defense is one of the finest in the world.