Tafsiran yang Mengutip untuk Yehezkiel 15:4

According to the midrashic approach, one can say that this is the attribute of the Holy One, blessed be He: In times when creatures are evil and sinful, the Holy One, blessed be He, stretches forth His hand to both extremes — to the good and to the evil — so that all those in the middle will learn a moral lesson through a fortiori reasoning [kal vachomer]. For if He were to affect only the lowly ones, then the righteous among them would attribute it to their good deeds, saying, “Evil will not approach us because we are not sinners like them.” Therefore, He affects even the most perfect among them, and then those of lesser stature will draw a fortiori reasoning, saying, “If fire has seized the moist [wood], what will happen to the dry thorns?” And if He were to affect only the righteous among them, the lesser ones would say, “Of course these deserve to be punished since they are close to God, and around Him it is exceedingly turbulent (Psalms 50:3), for whoever is closer to God must be more meticulous in his actions, since one who rebels against the king within his palace is not comparable to one who rebels outside his palace.” Therefore, the Holy One, blessed be He, grasps both extremes, thus nullifying all these arguments, and everyone between the extremes will fear God and not return to folly.
This matter is explained by Ezekiel (15:2-4): Son of man, what will become of the wood of the vine… both its ends were consumed by fire and its middle is charred; can it still be useful for any work? For he compared Israel to a vine whose fire consumes its two ends while its middle is charred and shaken. So the Holy One, blessed be He, grasps the asafsuf, the chiefs and the outcasts, so that those in the midst will be shaken and afraid. And when they all turned away from the path, then the fire consumed them all, both the asafsuf and those in the midst, which is its interior.
Perhaps the “chiefs” are not the righteous but rather the hypocrites who present themselves as virtuous so that they might be appointed as leaders and chiefs, while inwardly they set their ambush. The Holy One, blessed be He, exposed these hypocrites and caused them to bring their wickedness out into the open, for he who covers hatred deceitfully, his wickedness will be revealed in the assembly (Proverbs 26:26).

dried out Heb. חרה, an expression of a thing that is burned and dried through the heat of the fire, like (Jer. 6:29), “The bellows is heated (נחר)”; (Ezek. 15:4), “and the middle of it is burned (נחר).”