Shall wood be taken thereof to do any work? or will men take a pin of it to hang any vessel thereon?
The question stands in the first twenty chapters of Ezekiel, given through Ezekiel as God's mouthpiece to the captives in Babylonia by the river Chebar while Jeremiah was prophesying in Jerusalem. It asks whether any wood can be taken from the vine to do any work, or whether men will take even a pin from it on which to hang a vessel.
The answer declares the wood of the vine useless as timber, fit for no work at all, not even to fashion so small a thing as a peg for hanging a vessel. The picture is the grapevine in winter, when stripped of leaves it is the most unpromising of all fruit trees, with slender, gaunt, dry-looking stem and rugged bark. Such useless wood is fit only to be cast into the fire for fuel, with both ends devoured and the middle burned.
The vine is valuable only for bearing fruit, which requires much pruning. That fruit comes only by abiding in Christ as the true vine under the Father as husbandman, producing love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance. Its lesson of uselessness ending in burning will be repeated in the harvest judgment described in Revelation 14:18-19.
The question stands in the first twenty chapters of Ezekiel, given through Ezekiel as God's mouthpiece to the captives in Babylonia by the river Chebar while Jeremiah was prophesying in Jerusalem. It asks whether any wood can be taken from the vine to do any work, or whether men will take even a pin from it on which to hang a vessel.
The answer declares the wood of the vine useless as timber, fit for no work at all, not even to fashion so small a thing as a peg for hanging a vessel. The picture is the grapevine in winter, when stripped of leaves it is the most unpromising of all fruit trees, with slender, gaunt, dry-looking stem and rugged bark. Such useless wood is fit only to be cast into the fire for fuel, with both ends devoured and the middle burned.
The vine is valuable only for bearing fruit, which requires much pruning. That fruit comes only by abiding in Christ as the true vine under the Father as husbandman, producing love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance. Its lesson of uselessness ending in burning will be repeated in the harvest judgment described in Revelation 14:18-19.