Your mother was like a vine in a vineyard, transplanted by water …: In verses 10-14 the parable changes. The theme is the same, but the picture is different. The story is still about a mother and her sons who became kings, but now the mother is described as being like a vine, and her sons are branches of the vine. The pronoun Your is singular as in verse 2 (see the comments there). The vine here is a “grapevine” (Good News Translation; see the comments on 15.2). The grapevine was transplanted by the water, that is, “planted near a stream” (Good News Translation). The Hebrew verb for transplanted is better rendered “planted” here (see the comments on 17.8).
Most translations obscure a difficulty in the first line of this verse. In a footnote Good News Translation indicates that it has left out a word the meaning of which is unclear (so also Contemporary English Version, New Living Translation, Revised English Bible, Jerusalem Bible/New Jerusalem Bible, New American Bible, Bible en français courant, Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch). In its footnote Revised Standard Version notes that this Hebrew word is literally “in your blood” (New Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh; similarly King James Version / New King James Version). It is almost impossible to make any sense out of this expression here, so many translations omit it. Other suggestions have been made for this word. Instead of “in your blood,” it may mean “in your likeness” (Hebrew Old Testament Text Project), but this does not make much sense either. Some translations change the Hebrew word to read “in a vineyard” (Revised Standard Version/New Revised Standard Version, New English Bible, Moffatt) or “in your vineyard” (New International Version, New Century Version, New American Standard Bible). The changes to the word are only minor (based on confusion between the Hebrew letters “b” (בּ) / “k” (כ) and “d” (ד) / “r” (ר)), and the new word is actually found in a couple of Hebrew manuscripts. The best suggestion requires no change to the Hebrew letters and only involves dividing them differently in different words. This produces the meaning that the mother was like a vine “full of shoots, because” it was planted beside a stream. This meaning fits the context very well, but in view of the difficulty of the passage, translators may follow whichever of the following models of the first two lines they choose:
(1) “Your mother was like a grapevine planted near a stream” (Good News Translation).
(2) “Your mother was like a grapevine in a vineyard planted beside a stream” (similarly Moffatt).
(3) “Your mother was like a grapevine, full of shoots, because it was planted beside a stream.”
A vineyard is a farm or garden where the grapevines grow. In areas where this kind of farming is not known, translators who follow the second interpretation may say “Your mother was like a grapevine in a vine garden that was planted [or, that someone planted] in a field next to water.” Another model for the third interpretation is “Your mother was like a grapevine full of new [or, green] shoots because it was planted [or, the farmer planted it] next to water.”
Fruitful and full of branches by reason of abundant water: These two lines are parallel to the first two. The vine had a lot of fruit and many branches because it had plenty of water by the stream. New Century Version renders these two lines well, saying “The vine had many branches and gave much fruit because there was plenty of water.” Another possible model is “It [or, The vine] had many branches and produced much fruit because it had plenty of water.”
Quoted with permission from Gross, Carl & Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on Ezekiel. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .