Is wood taken from it to make anything?: This is a rhetorical question, expecting the answer “No.” Vine prunings are wood like any of the trees in the bush, but vine wood is not useful. This question may be rendered as a statement by saying “No one uses vine wood to make something.” Contemporary English Version has “the wood of a grapevine can’t be used to make anything.”

Do men take a peg from it to hang any vessel on?: This is also a rhetorical question that may be rendered as a statement, for example, “No one even uses it as a peg to hang things from.” The small branches of the vine that the gardener cuts off are so thin and weak that they are not even strong enough for someone to hammer a short piece of it into a wall to hang something on (for example, cooking utensils). The wood from most trees is strong enough to be used in this way but not the wood of the grapevine. Parole de Vie renders the Hebrew word for vessel more specifically as “utensil,” but the majority of translations use a very general word here, such as “things” (Good News Translation, Contemporary English Version), “something” (New Century Version) or “anything” (Revised English Bible, New Jerusalem Bible). Either solution is acceptable in this context.

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 .