Ezekiel 15King James Version

God presents a brief parable: the wood of a vine is worthless even before it is burned, since you cannot make anything useful from it. How much less can it be used after fire has charred it? Jerusalem is that vine wood. She was already useless to God's purposes, and now, having passed through partial fire, she will go into the furnace entirely.

A vine's only value is its fruit: the wood itself is worthless. Jerusalem was called to bear fruit and did not, and now even the wood will be consumed.

6: "Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; As the vine tree among the trees of the forest, which I have given to the fire for fuel, so will I give the inhabitants of Jerusalem." The city is not condemned as wicked iron that could be smelted to good use, but as vine wood that was never structurally useful.

A brief chapter sandwiched between the long allegories of 14 and 16, around 592 BC. It is the most economical of Ezekiel's indictments: five verses of parable, three of application.

The LORD who speaks the parable; the vine tree as Jerusalem's image; the inhabitants of Jerusalem as the fuel of the fire.

This is the bleakest of Ezekiel's short parables. The vine was a traditional symbol of Israel (see Psalm 80, Isaiah 5), but Ezekiel reverses the usual trajectory: instead of a vine that failed to bear fruit, he focuses on the wood itself, which has no purpose even as timber. John 15's use of vine imagery reads against this backdrop.

For when something that was supposed to be productive has only left damage behind. The parable is harsh but also clarifying: you cannot make a building from grape vine. The question it raises is whether you were ever trying to bear the right kind of fruit.