Chapter 15

1 By the unfitness of the vine branch for any work 6 is shewed the rejection of Jerusalem.

1. The word of the Lord. Chapter 15 is a short poem that may be entitled “The Allegory of the Vine.”

2. What is the vine tree? In ch. 14 the prophet has declared that God will not spare Jerusalem for the sake of the few righteous therein. Now he sweeps away another refuge in which the people apparently trusted. His parable teaches that Israel has no native superiority over other nations. The people are not to rest their confidence in the fact that they have been especially elected by God, for they are no longer a true vine, but mere wood, the most useless of all wood, fit only for fuel. The Scriptures frequently compare Israel to a vine or to a vineyard (see Ps. 80:8–16; Isa. 5:1–7; Jer. 2:21; Hosea 10:1; Matt. 21:33–41; etc.). Some commentators think a wild vine is here represented.

4. Is it meet? For timber the vine is confessedly worthless. If in its perfect state it could not be put to any useful purpose, how much less when it is partially scorched and consumed?

6. So will I give. Representing the present condition of Judea. Its extremities were consumed by the ravages of a foreign enemy, and the midst of it, where the capital city stood, was ready to be destroyed. The Jews, having utterly failed to answer the divine purpose in their selection as witnesses for Jehovah, were to be completely broken as a nation.

7. From one fire. The sentence reads literally, “They shall go from the fire and the fire shall devour them.” This effectively describes the condition of Israel. The nation had already been consumed at both ends, the middle had been scorched, and was soon to be given up to the fire.