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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Ezekiel 36:1 - 36:1
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The Restoration and Blessing of Israel
Eze 36:1. And thou, son of man, prophesy to the mountains of Israel, and say, Mountains of Israel, hear the word of Jehovah: Eze 36:2. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Because the enemy saith concerning you, Aha! the everlasting heights have become ours for a possession: Eze 36:3. Therefore prophesy, and say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Because, even because they lay you waste, and pant for you round about, so that ye have become a possession to the remnant of the nations, and have come to the talk of the tongue and gossip of the people: Eze 36:4. Therefore, ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord Jehovah: Thus saith the Lord Jehovah to the mountains and hills, to the low places and valleys, and to the waste ruins and the forsaken cities, which have become a prey and derision to the remnant of the nations round about; Eze 36:5. Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Truly in the fire of my jealousy I have spoken against the remnant of the nations, and against Edom altogether, which have made my land a possession for themselves in all joy of heart, in contempt of soul, to empty it out for booty. Eze 36:6. Therefore prophesy concerning the land of Israel, and say to the mountains and hills, to the low places and valleys, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, in my jealousy and fury have I spoken, because ye have borne the disgrace of the nations. Eze 36:7. Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, I, I have lifted up my hand; truly the nations round about you, they shall bear their disgrace. Eze 36:8. But ye, ye mountains of Israel, shall put forth your branches, and bear your fruit to my people Israel; for they will soon come. Eze 36:9. For, behold, I will deal with you, and turn toward you, and ye shall be tilled and sown. Eze 36:10. I will multiply men upon you, all the house of Israel at once; and the cities shall be inhabited, and the ruins built. Eze 36:11. And I will multiply upon you man and beast; they shall multiply and be fruitful: and I will make you inhabited as in your former time, and do more good to you than in your earlier days; and ye shall know that I am Jehovah. Eze 36:12. I will cause men, my people Israel, to walk upon you; and they shall possess thee, and thou shalt be an inheritance to them, and make them childless no more. Eze 36:13. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Because they say to you, “Thou art a devourer of men, and hast made thy people childless;” Eze 36:14. Therefore thou shalt no more devour men, and no more cause thy people to stumble, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. Eze 36:15. And I will no more cause thee to hear the scoffing of the nations, and the disgrace of the nations thou shalt bear no more, and shalt no more cause thy people to stumble, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah.
This prophecy is uttered concerning the land of Israel, as is plainly declared in Eze 36:6; whereas in Eze 36:1 and Eze 36:4 the mountains of Israel are mentioned instead of the land, in antithesis to the mountains of Seir (Eze 35:1-15; see the comm. on Eze 35:12). The promise takes throughout the form of antithesis to the threat against Edom in Eze 35:1-15. Because Edom rejoices that the Holy Land, which has been laid waste, has fallen to it for a possession, therefore shall the devastated land be cultivated and sown again, and be inhabited by Israel as in the former time. The heathen nations round about shall, on the other hand, bear their disgrace; Edom, as we have already observed, being expanded, so far as the idea is concerned, into all the heathen nations surrounding Israel (Eze 36:3-7). In Eze 36:2, הָאֹויֵב, the enemy, is mentioned in quite a general manner; and what has already been stated concerning Edom in Eze 35:5 and Eze 35:10, is her predicted of the enemy. In Eze 36:3 and Eze 36:4 this enemy is designated as a remnant of the heathen nations; and it is not till Eze 36:5 that it is more precisely defined by the clause, “and all Edom altogether.” The גֹּויִם round about (אֲשֶׁר, Eze 36:4, compared with Eze 36:3) are the heathen nations which are threatened with destruction in Ezekiel 25 and 26, on account of their malicious rejoicing at the devastation of Jerusalem and Judah. This serves to explain the fact that these nations are designated as שְׁאֵרִית הַגֹּויִם, the rest, or remnant of the heathen nations, which presupposes that the judgment has fallen upon them, and that only a remnant of them is left, which remnant desires to take possession of the devastated land of Israel. The epithet applied to this land, בָּמֹות, everlasting, i.e., primeval heights, points back to the גִּבְעֹות עֹולָם of Gen 49:26 and Deu 33:15, and is chosen for the purpose of representing the land as a possession secured to the people of Israel by primeval promises, in consequence of which the attempt of the enemy to seize upon this land has become a sin against the Lord God. The indignation at such a sin is expressed in the emotional character of the address. As Ewald has aptly observed, “Ezekiel is seized with unusual fire, so that after the brief statement in Eze 36:2 'therefore' is repeated five times, the charges brought against these foes forcing themselves in again and again, before the prophecy settles calmly upon the mountains of Israel, to which it was really intended to apply.” For יַעַן בְּיַעַן, see the comm. on Eze 13:10. שַׁמֹּות is an infinitive Kal, formed after the analogy of the verbs ה'ל (cf. Ewald, §238e), from שָׁמֵם, to be waste, to devastate, as in Dan 8:13; Dan 9:27; Dan 12:11, and is not to be taken in the sense of נָשַׁם, after Isa 42:14, as Hitzig supposes. שָׁאַף, to pant for a thing; here it is equivalent to snapping at anything. This is required by a comparison with Eze 36:4, where הָיָה לְבַז corresponds to שַׁמֹּות וְשָׁאֹף, and לְלַעַג to 'תֵּעָלוּ עַל שְׂפַת וגו. In the connection שְׂפַת לָשֹׁון, שָׂפָה signifies the lip as an organ of speech, or, more precisely, the words spoken; and לָשֹׁון, the tongue, is personified, and stands for אִישׁ לָשֹׁון (Psa 140:12), a tongue-man, i.e., a talker.
In Eze 36:4 the idea expressed in “the mountains of Israel” is expanded into mountains, hills, lowlands, and valleys (cf. Eze 31:12; Eze 32:5-6); and this periphrastic description of the land is more minutely defined by the additional clause, “waste ruins and forsaken cities.” אִם לֹא in Eze 36:5 is the particle used in oaths (cf. Eze 5:11, etc.); and the perfect דִּבַּרְתִּי is not merely prophetic, but also a preterite. God has already uttered a threatening word concerning the nations round about in Ezekiel 25, 26, and Eze 35:1-15; and here He once more declares that they shall bear their disgrace. אֵשׁ קִנְאָח is the fiery jealousy of wrath. כֻּלָּא is an Aramean form for כֻּלָּהּ (Eze 35:15). For בִשְׁאָט נֶפֶשׁ, see Eze 25:6. In the expression לְמַעַן מִגְרָשָׁהּ לְבַז noisserp, which has been rendered in various ways, we agree with Gesenius and others in regarding מִגְרָשׁ as an Aramean form of the infinitive of גָּרַשׁ, with the meaning to empty out, which is confirmed by the Syriac; for מִגְרָשׁ cannot be a substantive, on account of the לְמַעַן; and Hitzig's conjecture, that לבז should be pointed לָבֹז, and the clause rendered “to plunder its produce,” is precluded by the fact that the separation of the preposition לְמַעַן לְ, by the insertion of a word between, is unexampled, to say nothing of the fact that מִגְרָשׁ does not mean produce at all. The thought expressed in Eze 36:6 and Eze 36:7 is the following: because Israel has hitherto borne the contempt of the heathen, the heathen shall now bear their own contempt. The lifting of the hand is a gesture employed in taking an oath, as in Eze 20:6, etc. But the land of Israel is to receive a blessing. This blessing is described in Eze 36:8 in general terms, as the bearing of fruit by the mountains, i.e., by the land of Israel; and its speedy commencement is predicted. It is then depicted in detail in Eze 36:9. In the clause כִּי קֵרְבוּ לָבֹוא, the Israelites are not to be regarded as the subject, as Kliefoth supposes, in which case their speedy return from exile would be announced. The כִּי shows that this cannot be the meaning; for it is immediately preceded by 'לְעַמִּי ישׁ' yb , which precludes the supposition that, when speaking of the mountains, Ezekiel had the inhabitants in his mind. The promised blessings are the subject, or the branches and fruits, which the mountains are to bear. Nearly all the commentators have agreed in adopting this explanation of the words, after the analogy of Isa 56:1. With the כִּי in Eze 36:9 the carrying out of the blessing promised is appended in the form of a reason assigned for the general promise. The mountains shall be cultivated, the men upon them, viz., all Israel, multiplied, the desolated cities rebuilt, so that Israel shall dwell in the land as in the former time, and be fruitful and blessed. This promise was no doubt fulfilled in certain weak beginnings after the return of a portion of the people under Zerubbabel and Ezra; but the multiplying and blessing, experienced by those who returned from Babylon, did not take place till long after the salvation promised here, and more especially in Eze 36:12-15.
According to Eze 36:12, the land is to become the inheritance of the people Israel, and will no more make the Israelites childless, or (according to Eze 36:14) cause them to stumble; and the people are no more to bear the contempt of the heathen. But that portion of the nation which returned from exile not only continued under the rule of the heathen, but had also in various ways to bear the contempt of the heathen still; and eventually, because Israel not only stumbled, but fell very low through the rejection of its Saviour, it was scattered again out of the land among the heathen, and the land was utterly wasted...until this day. In Eze 36:12 the masculine suffix attached to וִירֵשׁוּךָ refers to the land regarded as הָר, which is also the subject to הָיִיתָ and תֹּוסִף. It is not till Eze 36:13, Eze 36:14, where the idea of the land becomes so prominent, that the feminine is used. שַׁכְּלָם, to make them (the Israelites) childless, or bereaved, is explained in Eze 36:13, Eze 36:14 by אֹכֶלֶת, devouring men. That the land devours its inhabitants, is what the spies say of the land of Canaan in Num 13:32; and in 2Ki 2:19 is it affirmed of the district of Jericho that it causes מְשַׁכֶּלֶת, i.e., miscarriages, on account of its bad water. The latter passage does not come into consideration; but the former (Num 13:32) probably does, and Ezekiel evidently refers to this. For there is no doubt whatever that he explains or expands שַׁכְּלָם by אֹכֶלֶת אָדָם yb. Although, for example, the charge that the land devours men is brought against it by the enemies or adversaries of Israel (אֹמְרִים לָּכֶם, they say to you), the truth of the charge is admitted, since it is said that the land shall henceforth no more devour men, though without a repetition of the שִׁכֵּל. But the sense in which Ezekiel affirms of the land that it had been אֹכֶלֶת אָדָם, and was henceforth to be so no more, is determined by וְגֹויֵךְ לֹא תַכְשִׁלִי אֹוד, thou wilt no more cause thy people to stumble, which is added in Eze 36:14 in the place of מְשַׁכֶּלֶת גֹּויֵךְ הָיִית in Eze 36:14. Hence the land became a devourer of men by the fact that it caused its people to stumble, i.e., entangled them in sins (the Keri תְּשַׁכְּלִי for תַכְשִׁלִי is a bad conjecture, the incorrectness of which is placed beyond all doubt by the לֹא־תַכְשִׁלִי עֹוד of Eze 36:15). Consequently we cannot understand the “devouring of men,” after Num 13:32, as signifying that, on account of its situation and fruitfulness, the land is an apple of discord, for the possession of which the nations strive with one another, so that the inhabitants are destroyed, or at all events we must not restrict the meaning to this; and still less can we agree with Ewald and Hitzig in thinking of the restless hurrying and driving by which individual men were of necessity rapidly swept away. If the sweeping away of the population so connected with the stumbling, the people are devoured by the consequences of their sins, i.e., by the penal judgment, unfruitfulness, pestilence, and war, with which God threatened Israel for its apostasy from Him. These judgments had depopulated the land; and this fact was attributed by the heathen in their own way to the land, and thrown in the teeth of the Israelites as a disgrace. The Lord will henceforth remove this charge, and take away from the heathen all occasion to despise His people, namely, by bestowing upon His land and people the blessing which He promised in the law to those who kept His commandments. But this can only be done by His removing the occasion to stumble or sin, i.e., according to Eze 36:25. (compared with Eze 11:18.), by His cleansing His people from all uncleanness and idols, and giving them a new heart and a new spirit. The Keri גֹּויַיִךְ in Eze 36:13, Eze 36:14, and Eze 36:15 is a needless alteration of the Chetib גֹּויֵךְ. - In Eze 36:15 this promise is rounded off and concluded by another summing up of the principal thoughts.