Identifying the “great eagle” that came to “Lebanon,” Ezekiel 17:12 says: “The king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and proceeded to take its king and its princes and bring them to himself at Babylon.”

The “king of Babylon,” Nebuchadnezzar, was like a “great eagle” under whose large wings came many subject peoples.

Zedekiah was not satisfied with this position. He began looking to another “great eagle” to help him to break free from the Babylonian yoke. Who was this “great eagle”? We are told: “He [Zedekiah] finally rebelled against him [Nebuchadnezzar] in sending his messengers to Egypt, for it to give him horses and a multitudinous people.”​—Ezek. 17:15.

As long as Zedekiah remained submissive to Nebuchadnezzar, his kingship was secure. His position was like that of a low-growing luxuriant vine, abundantly supplied with water. But the situation was to change. In turning to another “great eagle,” Egyptian Pharaoh Hophra, Zedekiah was courting disaster. He would incur the rage of the more powerful eagle, King Nebuchadnezzar. Like a searing east wind, the Babylonian forces would come against him, and he would dry up as a vine under the intense heat.