19 And you, take up a lamentation for the princes of Israel, 2 and say:
What was your mother? A lioness!
Among lions she crouched;
in the midst of young lions
she reared her cubs.
3 And she brought up one of her cubs;
he became a young lion,
and he learned to catch prey;
he devoured men.
4 The nations heard about him;
he was caught in their pit,
and they brought him with hooks
to the land of Egypt.
5 When she saw that she waited in vain,
that her hope was lost,
she took another of her cubs
and made him a young lion.
6 He prowled among the lions;
he became a young lion,
and he learned to catch prey;
he devoured men,
7 and seized their widows.
He laid waste their cities,
and the land was appalled and all who were in it
at the sound of his roaring.
8 Then the nations set against him
from provinces on every side;
they spread their net over him;
he was taken in their pit.
9 With hooks they put him in a cage
and brought him to the king of Babylon;
they brought him into custody,
that his voice should no more be heard
on the mountains of Israel.
10 Your mother was like a vine in a vineyard
planted by the water,
fruitful and full of branches
by reason of abundant water.
11 Its strong stems became
rulers' sceptres;
it towered aloft
among the thick boughs;
it was seen in its height
with the mass of its branches.
12 But the vine was plucked up in fury,
cast down to the ground;
the east wind dried up its fruit;
they were stripped off and withered.
As for its strong stem,
fire consumed it.
13 Now it is planted in the wilderness,
in a dry and thirsty land.
14 And fire has gone out from the stem of its shoots,
has consumed its fruit,
so that there remains in it no strong stem,
no sceptre for ruling.
This is a lamentation and has become a lamentation.
This chapter is a lament for the overthrow of Israel, couched in the form of a poem (as RSV indicates) or, more accurately, a lament over the fall of the royal family. It falls naturally into three parts, 1-4, 5-9, and 10-14, each part referring to a different king. The prophet depicts a particular part of the nation's history, using the allegory of a lion and her whelps. This allegorical poem is really very plain in its reference. The 'lioness' mother is not so much the mother of any of the kings, as Israel herself, the nation that mothered all of them. The first whelp, which became a young lion (3), and learned to catch its prey, can only refer to Jehoahaz, the son of good king Josiah. We see, from 2 Kings 23:31, the history of this king and his eventual fate at the hands of the king of Egypt. Clearly, this is the reference that Ezekiel is making. The next section (5-9) refers not to the king who immediately succeeded Jehoahaz, but to the next one. Reading again in 2 Kings 23:24ff, we see that Jehoahaz was succeeded by Eliakim, another of Josiah's sons, and the brother of Jehoahaz. Pharaoh changed Eliakim's name to Jehoiakim. It is not Jehoiakim of whom Ezekiel speaks here in 5-9, but his son and successor, Jehoiachin. It was he who was brought into captivity in Babylon (see 2 Kings 24:8-15).