Ezekiel 36:3

3 Therefore, prophesy and say, The LORD God proclaims: When the surviving nations pressed in and ravaged you from all around to lay claim to you, you became an object of the people's slander and derision.

Ezekiel 36:3 Meaning and Commentary

Ezekiel 36:3

Therefore prophesy and say, thus saith the Lord God
Who heard all the enemy said, and knew all their designs and purposes, their schemes and devices: because they have made you desolate;
ravaged their country, destroyed their cities, burnt their temple, and carried them captive, and left the land without men or cattle: and swallowed you up on every side;
all their neighbours, being their enemies, were like ravenous beasts of prey, gaping upon them with their mouths; and, observing the low condition into which they were brought by the king of Babylon, helped forward the destruction; and everyone shared in the spoil and plunder nearest to them they could conveniently come at: that ye might be a possession to the residue of the Heathen;
either to those that were left in the land by the king of Babylon, or to the rest of the Heathen nations round about them: ye are taken up in the lips of talkers,
and are an infamy of the people; reproached, defamed, and made a proverb and byword, by every foul mouthed prating fellow.

Ezekiel 36:3 In-Context

1 You, human one, prophesy to Israel's mountains and say, Hear the LORD's word, mountains of Israel!

2 The LORD God proclaims: The enemy mocked you and said, "The ancient heights belong to us."

3 Therefore, prophesy and say, The LORD God proclaims: When the surviving nations pressed in and ravaged you from all around to lay claim to you, you became an object of the people's slander and derision.

4 Hear the LORD God's word, mountains of Israel! The LORD God proclaims to the mountains and the hills, the watercourses and the valleys, the desolate ruins and the abandoned cities that were contemptuously looted by the surviving nations all around you.

5 So now, says the LORD God, I will speak in my fiery passion against the surviving nations and against Edom, all those who gleefully and spitefully took my land for themselves as a possession only for plunder.