Ezekiel 35

The LORD's message came to me again. He said:

1Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,

NoteIn the King James Version, "LORD" printed in capitals stands for the personal name of Israel's God, four Hebrew letters usually written YHWH, which Jewish readers did not pronounce aloud. "Lord GOD" in verse 3 and elsewhere renders a double phrase, Adonai YHWH, roughly "my Master, YHWH".

2"Son of man, turn and face Mount Seir, and speak against it as my messenger.

2Son of man, set thy face against mount Seir, and prophesy against it,

Note"Son of man" translates a Hebrew phrase meaning simply "human being" or "mortal". It is how God addresses Ezekiel throughout the book, over ninety times, and marks him out as a man being spoken to rather than as a title of rank. "Set thy face against" describes a physical action: the prophet turns his body to face a place and delivers his message towards it. It was a recognized sign-gesture signaling hostile intent, and Ezekiel is told to do it several times in the book. Mount Seir is the range of red sandstone highlands running south-east of the Dead Sea, in what is now southern Jordan. It was the homeland of Edom, and the two names are used for the same nation. Edom's people were traced back to Esau, the twin brother of Jacob (Israel), which makes Israel and Edom brother nations in the older narratives.

3Say to it: This is what the Lord GOD says. Look, Mount Seir, I am against you. I will stretch out my hand against you and turn you into an empty ruin.

3And say unto it, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O mount Seir, I am against thee, and I will stretch out mine hand against thee, and I will make thee most desolate.

Note"Stretch out mine hand against" is a standard Hebrew idiom for taking direct hostile action against someone; it does not mean a gesture or a reaching towards. Where the King James has "most desolate", the Hebrew pairs two similar-sounding words for waste and ruin, a doubling used for emphasis rather than a comparison with anything else.

4I will leave your cities in rubble, and you yourself will be deserted. Then you will know that I am the LORD.

4I will lay thy cities waste, and thou shalt be desolate, and thou shalt know that I am the LORD.

Note"You will know that I am the LORD" is a set formula that recurs about seventy times in Ezekiel, closing off announcements of what God will do. In Hebrew it states the intended result of the action just described.

5This is because you held on to a hatred that never let go. You handed the people of Israel over to be killed by the sword when disaster struck them, at the time when their punishment had reached its final stage.

5Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and hast shed the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end:

Note"A perpetual hatred" translates a phrase meaning a hostility of long standing, reaching far back; the enmity between Edom and Israel is presented in the Hebrew Bible as running back generations. "In the time that their iniquity had an end" is obscure in the King James. The Hebrew means something like "at the time of the punishment of the end", that is, the final stage of the disaster that fell on Judah. The event in view is the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 587 BC, when Edom is elsewhere accused of helping the attackers or of picking off survivors.

6So, as surely as I live, says the Lord GOD, I will hand you over to bloodshed, and bloodshed will chase after you. Since you did not hate bloodshed, bloodshed will chase you.

6Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will prepare thee unto blood, and blood shall pursue thee: sith thou hast not hated blood, even blood shall pursue thee.

NoteThere is a wordplay in the Hebrew that English cannot carry: the words for Edom, for red, and for blood (dam) all sound alike, so the sentence about blood pursuing Edom repeatedly echoes the nation's own name. "Sith" in the King James is simply an old spelling of "since".

7I will make Mount Seir an empty ruin, and I will cut off from it everyone who goes out and everyone who comes back.

7Thus will I make mount Seir most desolate, and cut off from it him that passeth out and him that returneth.

Note"Him that passeth out and him that returneth" is an idiom for all coming and going, that is, every traveler and all traffic. Edom controlled trade routes, so cutting off movement means emptying the country of anyone using it.

8I will fill its mountains with people who have been killed. Those cut down by the sword will fall on your hills, in your valleys, and in all your ravines.

8And I will fill his mountains with his slain men: in thy hills, and in thy valleys, and in all thy rivers, shall they fall that are slain with the sword.

NoteWhere the King James says "rivers", the Hebrew word means watercourses or ravines cut by seasonal streams. In this dry country they hold water only after rain and are dry channels most of the year.

9I will leave you a ruin that lasts, and your cities will not be lived in again. Then you will know that I am the LORD.

9I will make thee perpetual desolations, and thy cities shall not return: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.

10You said, "These two nations and these two lands will be mine, and we will take them over", even though the LORD was there.

10Because thou hast said, These two nations and these two countries shall be mine, and we will possess it; whereas the LORD was there:

Note"These two nations and these two countries" means Israel and Judah, the northern and southern kingdoms into which the land had divided after Solomon. By Ezekiel's time both had fallen, the north to Assyria and the south to Babylon, so Edom is pictured claiming the vacated territory of both. "Whereas the LORD was there" is compressed in the Hebrew and can be read either as a statement that the land belonged to the LORD, or that the LORD was present in it; either way it marks the claim as an intrusion. The wording anticipates the last line of the book of Ezekiel, where the restored city is named "the LORD is there".

11So, as surely as I live, says the Lord GOD, I will deal with you to match the anger and the jealousy you showed out of your hatred for them. And I will make myself known among them when I judge you.

11Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will even do according to thine anger, and according to thine envy which thou hast used out of thy hatred against them; and I will make myself known among them, when I have judged thee.

Note"Envy" in 1611 English covered jealousy and hostile rivalry generally. The Hebrew word here, qin'ah, is the heat of jealous passion, and is used both of human resentment and of God's own zeal.

12Then you will know that I am the LORD, and that I heard every insulting word you spoke against the mountains of Israel. You said, "They are laid waste; they are handed over to us to swallow up."

12And thou shalt know that I am the LORD, and that I have heard all thy blasphemies which thou hast spoken against the mountains of Israel, saying, They are laid desolate, they are given us to consume.

Note"Blasphemies" in the King James is broader than the modern religious sense of the word. The Hebrew means contemptuous or abusive speech, the sort of jeering aimed here at the land of Israel rather than at God by name. "The mountains of Israel" is Ezekiel's regular way of naming the hill country that formed the heartland of the Israelite territory, and by extension the land itself. "To consume" here has the older sense of to eat up or devour, the image being of Edom swallowing the land as food.

13With your own mouth you bragged against me and piled up words against me. I heard them myself.

13Thus with your mouth ye have boasted against me, and have multiplied your words against me: I have heard them.

14This is what the Lord GOD says: While the whole earth is glad, I will make you a deserted ruin.

14Thus saith the Lord GOD; When the whole earth rejoiceth, I will make thee desolate.

NoteThe Hebrew of this verse is disputed. "When the whole earth rejoiceth" may mean that Edom's ruin will come at a time of general rejoicing elsewhere, or that the earth rejoices at the fall of Edom itself; some ancient versions read the line differently again. The English preserves the ambiguity rather than settling it.

15You were glad when the land given to the people of Israel was left in ruins. So I will do the same to you. You will be deserted, Mount Seir, and so will all of Edom, every bit of it. Then they will know that I am the LORD.

15As thou didst rejoice at the inheritance of the house of Israel, because it was desolate, so will I do unto thee: thou shalt be desolate, O mount Seir, and all Idumea, even all of it: and they shall know that I am the LORD.

Note"Inheritance" translates a Hebrew term for the land allotted to the tribes and families of Israel as a permanent holding, passed down within a family and not meant to be sold off for good. Calling the land Israel's inheritance frames Edom's claim on it as seizing what belonged to another household. "Idumea" is the Greek form of the name Edom, which the King James translators took over from the Greek and Latin Bibles; it refers to the same territory as Mount Seir earlier in the chapter.