LION’S WHELPS

Ezekiel chapter 19 takes the form of a ‘lamentation’ over the demise of the royal house of Israel, vv. 1, 14. Following the tragic death of godly Josiah at Megiddo, there were only four kings of Judah. These were Jehoahaz, Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin and Zedekiah respectively. It is said of all four that they ‘did evil in the sight of the Lord’.

The ‘lioness’ of our section represents the kingdom of Judah and the two young lions represent two of these last kings of Judah. The first young lion corresponds to Jehoahaz, who was regarded as a political and military threat by the neighbouring nations, and who, after a reign of only three months, was ‘put in bands’ by Pharaoh Neco II and carried away to Egypt, vv. 3, 4; 2 Kgs. 23. 33; 2 Chron. 36. 4. Although many in Judah initially cherished the ‘hope’ that Jehoahaz would return and be rein­stated, this never happened, v. 4.

In all probability, the second young lion pictures Jehoiachin, who also reigned for only three months and who, following Nebuchadnezzar’s siege of Jerusalem, surrendered and was taken into captivity in Babylon, v. 9; 2 Kgs. 24. 8-12. Ezekiel bypassed Jehoiakim because he was not taken into exile; he died at Jerusalem and ‘slept with his fathers’. Ezekiel himself was among those deported to Babylon with Jehoiachin.

The latter section of the chapter tells much the same story under different imagery. The representation of the nation changes from that of a lioness to that of a vine, transplanted from its pleasant and fertile situation, the Promised Land, to a hostile environment, the lands of Israel’s exile.

Although the vine had once produced ‘strong rods for the sceptres for them that bear rule’, the time would come when ‘she hath no strong rod to be a sceptre to rule’, vv. 11, 14. That is, following the reign of Zedekiah there would be no Davidic king to occupy the throne of Israel. The ‘lioness’ would produce no further natural-born whelps. But, thankfully, one day God Him­self intervened to raise up, not ‘a lion of the tribe of Judah, but ‘the Lion of the tribe of Judah’, and from Him the sceptre shall never depart, Gen. 49. 9, 10.