Ezekiel 15:5
Behold, when it was whole, it was meet for no work: how much less shall it be meet yet for any work, when the fire hath devoured it, and it is burned? Behold, when it was whole, it was meet for no work: how much less shall it be meet yet for any work, when the fire hath devoured it, and it is burned?
The saying stands within the first twenty chapters of Ezekiel, delivered as God's mouthpiece among the captives in Babylonia by the river Chebar while Jeremiah was prophesying in Jerusalem. The wood of the grape-vine when whole is fit for no work, not even for a pin on which to hang a vessel, but only to be cast into the fire for fuel. Much less is it fit for any work after the fire has devoured both its ends and burned its middle.
It pictures the vine in its leafless winter condition, when of all fruit trees it looks most unpromising, with slender, gaunt, dry-looking stem and rugged bark. It teaches the worthlessness of the vine apart from fruit. Its lesson will be repeated in the end-time harvest.