Commentary on Ezekiel 35.5–36.37

“And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, set your face against Mount Seir, and prophesy against it, and say to it: Thus says Adonai the Lord: Behold, I am against you, Mount Seir, and I will stretch out my hand against you, and I will make you desert, and you shall be made desolate. And in your cities I will make desolation, and you will be a desert, and you will know that I am the Lord.” Seir is a mountain of Idumea, as we have already said. The Idumeans, tracing their descent from Esau, were very hostile and ill-disposed towards the Jews, and for this reason they also rejoiced at the calamities brought upon them; on them the God of the universe threatens utter desolation. “I will stretch out my hand against you” he has put by a metaphor taken from those who strike with their hands, showing the vehemence of his anger. Yet we … know that the divine nature is impassible, and that such words are measured to the capacity of the hearers. Having thus threatened the punishment, he adds the cause too: “Because there was in you an everlasting enmity, … by the hand of enemies, with the sword, in the time of their affliction, and in the time of injustice at the end.” He charges the Idumeans with bearing grudges, and with plots laid secretly against Israel. For this is what he indicated by saying: “You lay in ambush for the house of Israel with deceit, by the hand of enemies, with the sword, in the time of their affliction”; that is, you walled them in for the enemies, not even allowing them to flee. For so the other interpreters too rendered it: “And you shut in the sons of Israel to the hand of the sword, in the time of their affliction, in the time of lawlessness before me.” For while paying the penalty, he says, for the lawlessness (or, according to the Seventy, the injustice) committed against me, those of the house of Israel had their calamities increased by your deceits and your plots with the enemies. The prophetic word teaches us, then, not to trample on those who are being punished for their sins, but to weep with those who weep, according to the apostolic admonition. “Therefore, as I live, says Adonai the Lord, truly you have sinned unto blood, and blood will pursue you; for you hated your own blood, and your blood will pursue you.” Here by blood he means not war but kinship. For since, he says, you have made war on your own kin, you will fittingly have war made on you by it, and I will raise up against you as enemies the kinsmen you hated. And the Jews are kinsmen of the Idumeans; for they trace their descent from two brothers, the one from Edom, also called Esau, the other from Jacob, also called Israel.

“And I will make Mount Seir a desert, and desolate.” Then he tells the manner of the desolation: “And I will destroy from it man and cattle, and the one who passes through and the one who returns.” This shows an extreme of desolation: that he will strip it not only of inhabitants but also of travellers passing by. And he foretells in what way he will consume its inhabitants: “And I will fill your hills with your slain, and your ravines and all your plains; for those wounded by the sword will fall in you. And I will make you an everlasting desert, and your cities will no longer be inhabited, and you will know that I am the Lord.” Again he has put “everlasting desert” and “will no longer be inhabited” according to the idiom of Scripture; so we shall understand these words too from what we have already interpreted about the desolation of Tyre. Having thus threatened the punishment, he again lays bare their wickedness: “Because you said: The two nations and the two lands will be mine, and I will inherit them, and the Lord is there.” Or, according to the other interpreters, “and yet the Lord was there.” This not only exposes their insatiability and greed but also shows the extreme of their impiety, and resembles the boastful words of Sennacherib; for he said: “The Lord will not deliver Jerusalem out of my hand.” And the Idumeans likewise said boldly: “Even if the Lord is in Jerusalem, we will hold the two lands.” And yet the God of the universe, when he brought Israel out of Egypt, did not allow him to make war on the Idumeans: “For you shall not make war on them,” he said to them, “for they are your brothers.” Therefore, prevented from passing through, they went round the mountain and the desert, as they had been commanded; and concerning all that land God said to Israel: “I will not give it to you; for I have given it to the sons of Esau as an inheritance.” Yet the Idumeans, not content with the good things God had given them, hoped to inherit the land of the Jews as well; hence the God of the universe fittingly both threatens the punishments and confirms the sentence with an oath.

“Therefore,” he says, “as I live, says Adonai the Lord, I will deal with you according to your enmity and according to your jealousy, which you showed out of your hatred for them.” You will suffer, he says, what your envy and hostility deserve. “And I will make myself known to you when I judge you. And you will know that I am the Lord.” By bringing the punishments upon you, he says, I will make myself manifest to you, so that you may not think the painful things befell you from some other quarter, but may learn my lordship and gain benefit from the knowledge. “I have heard the sound of all your blasphemies, which you spoke about the mountains, saying: The mountains of Israel, the high, the everlasting, are desolate; they have been given to us as a possession. And you spoke boastfully against me with your mouth, and multiplied your words against me, which I heard.” He does not even bear to repeat the blasphemous words, teaching us not to utter with our tongue the blasphemies of others even in the course of a narrative, but to remember the prophetic voice that says: “That my mouth may not speak the works of men.” By all this he showed not only their hostility and their grudge-bearing but also their arrogance and their raging madness against God. And very usefully he added, “You multiplied your words against me, which I heard,” teaching us that nothing we say or do can escape his power of seeing or hearing.

“Thus says Adonai the Lord: In the gladness of all the earth I will make you an everlasting desert. As you rejoiced over the inheritance of the house of Israel because it was made desolate, so I will do to you: you shall be a desert, Mount Seir, and all Idumea will be utterly consumed; and they will know that I am the Lord their God.” He threatened them with a punishment without consolation. For while all are at peace, he says, … so that you may not have consolation even from sharing in evils; for the … had this comfort, … but also Tyrians and Sidonians and Palestinians and Egyptians. Yet besides this he promises benefit through the punishment: “For they will know,” he says, “that I am the Lord their God.” Discipline, then, is profitable, “opening our ears,” according to the prophet Isaiah, and preparing us to recognise our own Master, who both strikes and heals.

“And you, son of man, prophesy to the mountains of Israel …: Hear the word of the Lord. Thus says Adonai the Lord: Because the enemy said against you, ‘Aha! The everlasting deserts have become our possession’, therefore prophesy and say: Thus says Adonai the Lord: Because you were made a vanishing to all the nations, and were dishonoured by all who are round about you, so that you became a possession … and became a talk of the tongue upon the lips and a reproach to the nations.” Having foretold gloomy and dismal things for the Idumeans, he turns his discourse to the mountains of Israel, offers them a promise of good things, and bids them take heart, since the words spoken by their enemies are false and vain. For the desolation, he says, will not remain very long; but I will refute the reproaches of the nations that neighbour you and quench their boldness against you, and they will no longer recount your calamities, prattling of your evils. To these he adds: “… of the Lord: Thus says Adonai the Lord to the mountains and the hills and the torrents and the ravines and the glens, and to the places made desolate and vanished, and to the cities …, and for trampling to the remaining nations round about them.” It would have been easy and very simple to promise the good things briefly to the whole land of Israel; but he mentions them kind by kind, mountains and ravines and hills and cities and all the rest, [to console] those [made despondent] by the desolation … “Therefore thus says Adonai the Lord: Truly in the fire of my jealousy I have spoken against the rest of the nations and against all Idumea, because they gave my possession to themselves as an inheritance with gladness, dishonouring souls with all their heart, so as to destroy it in plunder.” The boldness of Idumea and of the other nations, he says, which they used against my land, greatly provoked me; for they rejoiced at its desolation and expected to take hold of it, and … for this reason I issued the sentences against them. “Prophesy, then,” O prophet, “again concerning the land of Israel, and say to the mountains and to the hills and to the glens and to the ravines: Thus says Adonai the Lord: Behold, I have spoken in my jealousy and in my wrath, because you bore the reproaches of the nations. Therefore thus says Adonai the Lord: Behold, I lift up my hand against the nations that are round about you; these will bear their own dishonour.” The reproach brought upon you, he says, has prepared the sentence against those who reproached you; and they [will pay the penalty] for their impiety against me and for their grudge and boldness against you …

“But you, mountains of Israel, … and your fruit my people Israel will eat, for they hope to come.” I will confirm, he says, the hope of the people and make firm their good expectation; they will return and enjoy the fruits that grow among you. It is clear that he does not converse with the mountains as with living things, for they are irrational and lifeless; but by speech addressed to lifeless things he consoles their inhabitants, promising them good things. “Behold, I am toward you, and I will look upon you … And I will multiply men upon you, all the house of Israel, to the end; and the cities will be inhabited, and the desolate places will be built. And I will multiply upon you men and cattle; I will settle you as in your beginning, and I will do you good as in your former years; and they will know that I am the Lord.” Not the mountains will know, but those who dwell on the mountains. These things were fulfilled after the return from Babylon, and the facts bear witness. For the cities of Palestine are full of inhabitants; all have been rebuilt and are distinguished for their splendour. That city alone has remained desolate in which the Jews, raging against the Master and Saviour, committed the outrage of the cross, gaining salvation for all men but destruction for themselves. As for the whole of Israel obtaining the return, the Master both promised it and fulfilled his own word; for he prepared Cyrus to permit the return to all. But they, sick with their usual disobedience, [did not obey] what was commanded, and preferred a foreign land to their own. “… said to you: You are a land that devours men, and you were bereaved by your nation; therefore you shall no longer eat men, and you shall no longer bereave your nation, says the Lord. And the dishonour of the nations shall no longer be heard against you, and you shall no longer bear reproaches, and your nation shall no longer be bereaved, says Adonai the Lord.” These things too would have been fulfilled if the Jews had wished; but since, like rabid dogs, they raged against the Master, they themselves made the prophecy unfulfilled; and even so the prediction keeps its truthfulness. For the God of the universe said beforehand through the prophet Jeremiah: “At the last I will speak concerning a nation and a kingdom, to build it and to plant it; and if they do evil before me, so as not to hear my voice, I will repent of the good things that I spoke of doing to them.” The Jews, then, are responsible for not obtaining the good things promised through the prophecy. “And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, the house of Israel dwelt on their land, and they defiled it with their way and with their idols and with their uncleannesses; like the uncleanness of a woman in her separation their way became before me. And I poured out my wrath upon them.” The facts themselves, he says, bear witness to the justice of the punishment. For they not only kept on worshipping idols of every kind but also practised every form of transgression, so as to be filled with all abomination and hatefulness; and since according to the law the woman in her separation, that is, in a flow of blood, was held to be very unclean, he likens their abomination to that discharge of transgression. Then, persisting again in the accusation: “Because they shed blood on the land,” he says, “and defiled it with their idols. And I scattered them among the nations and winnowed them into the countries.” And again he shows the justice of the punishment: “According to their way and according to their practices I judged them.” They reaped, he says, the fruits of what they planted. Here he called blood not only their other murders but also the sacrifices of their children, which they offered to the savage and wicked demons; for they were not content, he says, with their transgressions before the captivity, but even when captured and settled abroad they persisted in the same evils.

“And they entered among the nations into which they entered there, and they profaned my holy name, when it was said of them: These are the people of the Lord, and they have come out of his land.” Living with wickedness, he says, they became the cause of blasphemies against me. For first the nations supposed that it was because of my weakness that they had been defeated and had come under the power of their enemies; then, having learned their wickedness by experience, they stirred up blasphemy against me, as one who delights in such practices, and … those who live so. Yet nevertheless, taking forethought for those very nations:

“And I spared them because of my holy name, which the house of Israel profaned among the nations where they entered.” Wishing, he says, to teach those nations my strength, I will free these from the evils that lie upon them. “Therefore say to the house of Israel: Thus says Adonai the Lord: It is not for your sake that I act, but for my holy name, which you profaned among the nations where you entered. And I will sanctify my great name, which was profaned among the nations, which you profaned in their midst; and the nations will know that I am the Lord, says Adonai the Lord, when I am sanctified in you before their eyes.” It was not fitting for you to obtain care, since you had given occasion for blasphemy against me; but the blasphemy will be undone through your salvation, as my power is shown. For having learned how great my name is, and how sufficient for the help of those who belong to me, they will glorify my lordship and … “And the nations will know that I am the Lord God, when I am sanctified in you before their eyes. And I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the generations, and bring you into your own land.” This fits all who returned; for those who wished to return obtained the return. But what follows no longer fits all, but only those who [obeyed] the gospel preaching …

“And I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and … and from all your idols I will cleanse you.” He named the water of regeneration clean water, the water in which we were baptized and received the forgiveness of sins. And what follows confirms what has been said: “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will give you.” By these words he signified the change of mind; for your heart, he says, will incline to the better, no longer having, as by its former habit, the inclination to the worse. And “I will give” in no way harms free will. For using words and deeds and countless miracles, he persuaded not only them but also all the nations to come to piety; he did not compel them. Yet although he did not compel but persuaded, he says that he himself gave the souls their inclination to the better, since he became the cause of it through what he said and did. “And I will take away the heart of stone from your flesh, and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you.” Nor did these things happen before the coming of the Master Christ. For after the return they had only three prophets, at about the same time, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, and immediately after them they were stripped of the prophetic grace; but after the incarnation of our God and Saviour and his ascension into heaven, the Holy Spirit came upon the holy apostles, and through them the grace was supplied not to the Jews only but to all from the nations who came to the faith. He calls the heart of stone the one that is resistant and disobedient, and the heart of flesh the one that is compliant and obedient and able to receive the imprints of the divine letters. “And I will cause you to walk in my ordinances, and keep my judgments, and do them.” This is proper to the grace of the Spirit; for working together with our free will, it brings about the accomplishment of what has been said. “And you will dwell on the land which I gave to your fathers.” Again he brings the discourse back to the common sense, and passes from the spiritual to the bodily. “And you will be my people, and I will be your God. And I will cleanse you from all your sins, and I will call for the grain and multiply it, and I will not lay famine upon you. And I will multiply the fruit of the tree and the produce of the field, so that you may no longer bear the reproach of famine among the nations.” I know that each of these can also be taken spiritually; yet I think that the prophetic word here promises the Jews bodily things. For since great desolation then held the land, he promises them an abundance of fruits of every kind, and foretells the benefit that will come from it.

“And you will remember,” he says, “your evil ways and your practices that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves before them for your lawless deeds and your abominations.” Enjoying these good things, he says, and learning what fruits righteousness bears, you will remember your former wickedness and the punishment brought upon you because of it, and you will utterly hate your former … Of this kind is what David said about the transgressor: “He stood in every way that is not good, and wickedness he did not loathe”; that is, he did not abhor wickedness. Having thus promised them the good things, he again humbles their pride, saying:

“Not for your sake do I act, house of Israel, says Adonai the Lord; let it be known to you, house of Israel.” You are not worthy, he says, of the good things promised, but I do what befits my nature. Then: “… and be ashamed of your ways, house of Israel.” Do not bear your punishments of every kind, he says, without pain or feeling; but now at last, coming to perceive the wickedness of your practices, blush for what you have dared.

“Thus says Adonai the Lord: On the day that I cleanse you from all your lawless deeds, I will also settle the cities, and the desert places will be built. And the land that was made desolate will be tilled, instead of its having been made desolate before the eyes of everyone who passes by.” When, he says, I grant you forgiveness of sins and declare you clean by pardon, then I will provide the cities with buildings and the land with plantings, and instead of the former desolation, which all who passed by saw, it will be inhabited …

“And they will say: That land which was made desolate has become like a paradise of delight, and the cities that were deserted and made desolate and razed sit fortified with walls.” For just as all, he says, formerly carried your desolation about in their mouths, so now you will be much talked of and will be a marvel to all, as your deserted land is likened to the paradise of delight and your uninhabited … “And the nations, as many as are left round about you, will know that I the Lord … the places made desolate; I the Lord have spoken, and I will do it.” The neighbouring nations will learn that it is I who brought the gloomy things before and now bring the pleasing ones; and they will learn the certainty of what is said from the trustworthiness of the speaker: “I the Lord have spoken, and I will do it.” For being Master and able to do it, I will bring what I have said to fulfilment.

“Thus says Adonai the Lord: Yet for this I will be sought by the house of Israel, to do it for them.” For “I will be sought” Symmachus rendered “I will be found”. In addition to my former benefits, he says, … and I will deem them worthy. “And I will multiply them like holy sheep.” For since I set them apart under my care like sheep, I will show them a shepherd's … “Like the sheep of Jerusalem at its feasts, so the deserted cities will be full …, that I am the Lord.” For just as, he says, before the … Jerusalem at their greatest festivals, so I will fill all their cities with men and sheep and other good things; and through the facts themselves they will learn that I am Lord and God, who kills and makes alive, who strikes and heals. Knowing, then, both the goodness and the power of our Master, let us love him because of the one and fear him because of the other, so that, loving and fearing, we may become keepers of his commandments and obtain the promised good things, in Christ Jesus our Lord, with whom to the Father be glory, with the Holy Spirit, to the ages of ages. Amen.