Attributed commentary excerpt
Keil & Delitzsch on Ezekiel 19:1
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Commentary on the Old Testament
C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
Capture and Exile of the Princes Eze 19:1. And do thou raise a lamentation for the princes of Israel, Eze 19:2. And say, Why did thy mother, a lioness, lie down among lionesses; bring up her whelps among young lions? Eze 19:3. And she brought up one of her whelps: it became a young lion, and he learned to take prey; he devoured man. Eze 19:4. And nations heard of him; he was caught in their pit, and they brought him with nose-rings into the land of Egypt. Eze 19:5. And when she saw that her hope was exhausted, overthrown, she took one of her whelps, made it a young lion. Eze 19:6. And he walked among lionesses, he became a young lion, and learned to take prey. He devoured man. Eze 19:7. He knew its widows, and laid waste their cities; and the land and its fulness became waste, at the voice of his roaring. Eze 19:8. Then nations round about from the provinces set up against him, and spread over him their net: he was caught in their pit. Eze 19:9. And they put him in the cage with nose-rings, and brought him to the king of Babylon: brought him into a fortress, that his voice might not be heard any more on the mountains of Israel. The princes of Israel, to whom the lamentation applies, are the king (נשׂיא, as in Eze 12:10), two of whom are so clearly pointed out in Eze 19:4 and Eze 19:9, that there is no mistaking Jehoahaz and Jehoiachin. This fact alone is sufficient to protect the plural נשׂיאי against the arbitrary alteration into the singular נשׂיא, proposed by Houbigant and Hitzig, after the reading of the lxx. The lamentation is not addressed to one particular prince, either Zedekiah (Hitzig) or Jehoiachin (Ros., Maurer), but to Israel as a nation; and the mother ( Eze 19:2) is the national community, the theocracy, out of which the kings were born, as is indisputably evident from Eze 19:10. The words from מה to רבצה form one sentence. It yields no good sense to separate מה אמּך from רבצה, whether we adopt the rendering, "what is thy mother?" or take מה with לביּא and render it, "how is thy mother a lioness?" unless, indeed, we supply the arbitrary clause "now, in comparison with what she was before," or change the interrogative into a preterite: "how has thy mother become a lioness?" The lionesses, among which Israel lay down, are the other kingdoms, the Gentile nations. The words have no connection with Gen 49:9, where Judah is depicted as a warlike lion. The figure is a different one here. It is not so much the strength and courage of the lion as its wildness and ferocity that are the points of resemblance in the passage before us. The mother brings up her young ones among young lions, so that they learn to take prey and devour men. גּוּר is the lion's whelp, catulus; כּפיר, the young lion, which is old enough to go out in search of prey. ותּעל is a Hiphil, in the tropical sense, to cause to spring up, or grow up, i.e., to bring up. The thought is the following: Why has Israel entered into fellowship with the heathen nations? Why, then, has it put itself upon a level with the heathen nations, and adopted the rapacious and tyrannical nature of the powers of the world? The question "why then?" when taken with what follows, involves the reproof that Israel has struck out a course opposed to its divine calling, and will now have to taste the bitter fruits of this assumption of heathen ways. The heathen nations have taken captive its king, and led him away into heathen lands. ישׁמעוּ אליו, they heard of him (אליו for עליו). The fate…
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