Ezekiel 15

And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, what will become of the wood of the vine, out of all the woods of the groves that are among the trees of the forests? Is wood taken from it to make a work, or will a peg be fashioned from it, so that any vessel may hang from it? Behold, it has been given to the fire for food; the fire has consumed both its parts, and its middle has been reduced to ashes; will it be useful for a work? Even when it was whole it was not fit for a work; how much more, when the fire has devoured it and burnt it up, will no work be made of it! Therefore thus says the Lord God: As the wood of the vine among the trees of the forests, which I have given to the fire to devour, so will I give up the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and I will set my face against them: they will go out from the fire, and the fire will consume them, and you will know that I am the Lord, when I have set my face against them and have made the land pathless and desolate, because they have proved transgressors, says the Lord God. (Where we translated: The fire has consumed both its parts, and its middle has been reduced to ashes, the Seventy translated: The fire consumes its yearly cleansing, and lets it go to the end. Again, where we said: When I have set my face against them, they rendered: When I have set firm. 'Transgression', too, they translated as 'offense'.) By various similitudes, then, which the Greeks call parables, the overthrow of the city of Jerusalem is foretold; and just as above, in the frying pan in which the flesh of the people was fried, and in the brick on which the siegeworks and mounds and the engines of rams and of mantlets were drawn, the siege and famine of that same city were described, and as we shall read later in this same prophet — in Jeremiah too it is written that the 'pot' which is kindled from the face of the north signifies the city of Jerusalem; and the forest of Nageb and Theman and Darom [three Hebrew words for the south], cut down, foretells this very thing —, so in the present passage the same Jerusalem is compared to a vineyard and a fruitful vine — of which it is written in another place: I planted you a fruitful vine, wholly true; how have you been turned into bitterness, O alien vine?, and in Isaiah: I planted, he says, a vine 'sorec', which means 'chosen' and 'beautiful'; and in the Psalms we read: You brought a vine out of Egypt, you cast out the nations and planted it; you were the guide of its way before it; and we learn it more plainly when Scripture says: But the vineyard of the Lord Sabaoth is the house of Israel —. As long as this vine bears fruit, among all the trees of the woodlands nothing is more precious than it; but if it ceases to have grapes, it is useful for nothing except to be given to the fire with its root and its layered shoots. The other trees of the forests — to say nothing of the fruit-bearing trees, of which Scripture here makes no mention —, though they have no fruit, once cut down provide a great deal of usefulness and serve both all of agriculture and the making of arms, while they are thinned into shields and shaved into spear-shafts; they close doorways, they hold things as cupboards, as chests and coffers, and they furnish all the equipment of a house. But the vine, once it has ceased to bear grapes, is so useless that not even a peg can be made from it on which something might hang; and when you have cut off its shoots, the fire first seizes both their parts, then the flame consumes them; and it is of no use whatever once it has been reduced to ashes, seeing that even when it is whole it offers no usefulness without its fruit.

According to the spiritual understanding, we can understand the vineyard and Jerusalem as the multitude of believers, which, if it has been negligent and has lost the cultivation of its former religion, and has not borne the fruits of the virtues nor made wine that gladdens the heart of man, will be given up to everlasting flames and reckoned as nothing: for the servant who knows the will of his master, and does not do it, will be beaten with many blows. The Lord too says something of the kind in the Gospel according to John: I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch that abides in me and does not bear fruit, the Father will take it away; and every one that bears fruit he will cleanse, that it may bear more fruit; but if the Savior is the vine and we the branches and God the Father the husbandman, as long as we keep God's commandments we are continually cultivated, and our cultivation is a cleansing: for it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy; and if, bearing fruit, we are cleansed by the Father so that we may bear more abundant fruit, it is shown that all our effort, by God's help, reaches its end and yields the fruit of fullness; but the branch that has not borne fruit will be taken away by the Father, and once it has been taken away, what the Father does with it Scripture does not say, unless perhaps separation from the body of Christ is everlasting punishment and destruction. What we have understood of the vineyard and the vine, the Savior teaches under another figure in the Gospel: Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its savor, it is useful for nothing except to be thrown out and trodden underfoot by men; and the eye, which gives light to the whole body, if it has been blinded, hears from the Lord: If the light that is in you is darkness, how great will the darkness itself be? For in comparison with the transgressor, and with him who has denied the God he first confessed, lighter is the punishment of those who never had knowledge of God. The trees of the woodlands or forests, however, according to the variety of believers, have some usefulness in a great house, in which there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and earthenware, some for honor, and some for dishonor.

Now the ambiguity of the Hebrew word 'sene', which is written with three letters, 'sin' and 'nun' and 'iod', is this: if it is read 'sene' it means 'two', if 'sane', 'years'; hence it came about that for its two extremities, which we translated 'both its parts', the Seventy translated 'its yearly cleansing', whereas Aquila said 'its two last parts', Symmachus and Theodotion 'its two extremities'; and the sequence is this: 'As a fruitless vine is given to the fire to no use, so Jerusalem too, or rather its inhabitants, will be given up to the flames, so that they go out from the fire and the fire consumes them, that is: even if they escape from the city, outside they will be consumed by the enemy's sword, and those who remain, crushed by the very weight of their miseries, will recognize that I am the Lord, when I have set, or set firm, my face against them and have given them up to everlasting desolation: for they proved not sinners like the other nations, but transgressors' — for it is one thing to neglect what you do not know, and another to despise what you have worshiped —.