No Fruit, No Presumption

Ezekiel compares Jerusalem to a vine, and then does something the other prophets do not.
Normally a vine image is about fruit. Ezekiel, however, ignores the fruit. He asks instead what the wood is good for - and the answer is nothing. You cannot make so much as a peg from it. Its only use is fuel, and this wood has already been burned once.
The target is presumption. People assumed the stock would shoot again and Israel would flourish, and that naive optimism is what Ezekiel keeps attacking.
Scripture links:
- Ezekiel 15:6 - as the wood of the vine among the trees of the forest, so have I given up the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
This chapter, with chapter 17, is the Old Testament background to the vine and branches in John 15.