God’s rhetorical question emphasizes Israel’s futility without faithfulness and fruitfulness, highlighting their spiritual barrenness. It challenges Israel to recognize their useless state apart from God’s blessing, fitting the narrative of judgment and call to repentance (Ezekiel 15:1-8).

No direct verbal response from Israel is recorded. God, speaking through Ezekiel, answers that vine wood is of no use for making anything except burning (Ezekiel 15:4). It has value only in bearing fruit; without fruit, it is worthless, symbolizing unfaithful Jerusalem’s uselessness.

God’s question exploits the peculiar uselessness of vine wood to make its point irrefutable. Among the trees of the forest, vine wood is the outlier: too soft for construction, too pliable for tools, too irregular for pegs. The Hebrew יִקַּח (yiqqach, will anyone take?) expects a negative answer at every turn, no, it cannot be made into anything; even the peg cut from forest timber outperforms it. The only thing vine wood does well is burn, and this is the conclusion God draws in verse 6: as the vine branch that falls into fire, so will the inhabitants of Jerusalem be consumed. What makes this metaphor particularly cutting is that Israel understood herself as God’s vineyard (Isaiah 5:7, Psalm 80:8), chosen, cultivated, positioned for fruitfulness. The question exposes the gap between calling and performance: to be the vine is to have one function, and Israel has not fulfilled it. Jesus inherits this imagery directly when He declares ‘I am the true vine’ (John 15:1), claiming to be what Israel was appointed to be but never became.