Ezekiel 36:3

3 Therefore prophesy, and you must say, 'Thus says the Lord Yahweh: "{Because indeed} {when you were desolate}, then they crushed you from all around, so that you became a possession to the remainder of the nations, and you became {a byword and object of slander for the people}."

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 "And you, son of man, prophesy to the mountains of Israel; and [so] you must say, 'Mountains of Israel, hear the word of Yahweh;

2 thus says the Lord Yahweh: "Because the enemy said concerning you, 'Ah, and [the] ancient high places will be to us as a possession!'" '

3 Therefore prophesy, and you must say, 'Thus says the Lord Yahweh: "{Because indeed} {when you were desolate}, then they crushed you from all around, so that you became a possession to the remainder of the nations, and you became {a byword and object of slander for the people}."

4 Therefore, mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord Yahweh; thus says the Lord Yahweh to the mountains and to the hills, to the river channels and to the valleys and to the ruins that [are] desolate and to the cities that [are] abandoned [and] that have become as plunder and as scorn for the remainder of the nations that [are] from all around.

5 Therefore thus says the Lord Yahweh: "{Certainly} in the fire of my passion I spoke against the rest of the nations and against all Edom, who made my land as [a] possession, because of its pastureland for plunder, for themselves in all of [the] joy of their whole heart [and] in [their] inner disdain."

Footnotes

• [a] Literally "with because"
• [b] Literally "[you] being desolate"
• [c] Or "the rest of"
• [d] Literally "on lips of [the] tongue and slander of [the] people"