Ezekiel 36:2

36:1-15 Those who put contempt and reproach on God's people, will have them turned on themselves. God promises favour to his Israel. We have no reason to complain, if the more unkind men are, the more kind God is. They shall come again to their own border. It was a type of the heavenly Canaan, of which all God's children are heirs, and into which they all shall be brought together. And when God returns in mercy to a people who return to him in duty, all their grievances will be set right. The full completion of this prophecy must be in some future event.

Ezekiel 36:2-7 . Because the enemy hath said, &c. — This prophecy appears to be a continuation of the preceding. “The Idumeans have made their boasts (see Ezekiel 36:5 , and Ezekiel 35:10 ) that they should become masters of the mountainous parts of Judea, where the ancient fortresses were placed which commanded all the rest of the country.” — Lowth. And ye are taken up in the lips of talkers, &c. — Your calamities have made you become a proverb, a by-word, and a reproach among the heathen round about you, according to the threatenings of the prophets denounced against you: see the margin. Thus saith the Lord to the mountains, &c., which became a prey to the residue of the heathen — To those heathen that were left after the general desolations threatened to the neighbouring countries, Moab, Edom, Ammon, &c. Surely in the fire of my jealousy — In that fervent zeal and concern that I have for my own honour, which is blasphemed among the heathen; have I spoken against the residue of the heathen — Against all the nations that are and have been enemies to Israel; against all Idumea, which have appointed my land into their possession — Who have fully expected to get the dominion of my land, and be the sole possessors of it. Because ye have borne the shame of the heathen — Because the heathen nations have made a scoff of you; therefore I have lifted up my hand — I have sworn, or absolutely determined: see Genesis 14:22 .

(2) The ancient high places.— This is very nearly the same expression as in Genesis 49:26 ; Deuteronomy 33:15 , where it is translated “everlasting (or lasting) hills,” and is probably an allusion to those passages. “The enemy” is a general term, which may refer to Edom; but from the following verses it is more likely that it is used for the heathen at large. When Israel’s land had been left desolate, the surrounding nations claimed that God’s promise to His people had failed, and that they themselves might now enter upon its secure possession.

Verse 2. - Because the enemy hath said against you . The ground of Jehovah's purposed proceeding against Edom and the surrounding heathen peoples (vers. 3, 5) is expressly declared to be the jubilation over the downfall of Israel, and the eagerness with which they sought to appropriate to themselves her forsaken land. Aha ! Exulting over Israel's misfortune (comp. Ezekiel 25:3 ; Psalm 40:16 ). The ancient high places , which Israel's enemies fancied had become theirs in possession, were probably "the everlasting hills" of Genesis 49:26 and Deuteronomy 33:15 , the principal mountains of Palestine, which, as Havernick finely observes, were "the honorable witnesses and indestructible monuments of that ancient blessing spoken by Israel's ancestor, and still resting on the people;" and to assail which was, in consequence, not only to sin against Jehovah, but to attempt an enterprise foredoomed to failure and shame.

At the same time, Plumptre's suggestion ('Ezekiel: an Ideal Biography,' Expositor , vol. 8:284; and Unpublished Notes) is not without plausibility, that, considering the special significance of the term bamoth in Ezekiel, the phrase should be held as referring to the sanctuaries which stood upon those heights - including, of course, the chief sanctuary, or temple (Schroder); in support of which the dean cites the frequency with which the enemies of Israel, as, for instance, the Assyrians and the Moabites, in their inscriptions, boasted that they had captured these sanctuaries (see 'Records of the Past,' 2nd series, tel. 1. p. 107; 2:203). Ezekiel 36:2

2 . Cf. Ezekiel 25:3 , Ezekiel 26:2 . ancient high places ] “High places” is not used here in the usual religious sense of rural sanctuaries, but said of the mountain—land of Israel, cf. Deuteronomy 32:13 ; Micah 3:12 . On ancient or “eternal” as an epithet of mountains cf. Genesis 49:26 ; Deuteronomy 33:15 ; Psalm 24:7 . For “high places” LXX. reads “wastes,” cf. perpetual desolations, Ezekiel 35:9 .

Many were the enemies of God’s people, but they so conspired in one design, with one consent, and were so one in their humours, and enmity, and carriage, that the prophet speaks of them as one, and particularly of Edom. Aha; rejoicingly and with insulting pride, as Ammon did, Ezekiel 25:3 , and Tyre did, Ezekiel 26:2 , which see. The ancient high places; the everlasting hills; but this is common with other hills, whose foundations, as these of Israel, are from the beginning, and shall be to the end. What they aim at is a deriding of Israel, who by promise from God claimed these mountains as a perpetual inheritance, but were now cast out of it, and they hereby tax the God of Israel as not keeping his promise. So they blaspheme God and insult over his people. Ours; our right, as of the elder house, now conquerors and feudatories to him that hath subdued them; thus they pretend right to justify their injustice. In possession; we are now where we should have been these one thousand one hundred and sixty years or more, where we thought we would be one time or other, in spite of them and all their boasts of their God; we are where we will keep, and none shall put us out. Such impious brags were their ruin, and are implied in the words.

CHAPTER 36 Eze 36:1-38. Israel Avenged of Her Foes, and Restored, First to Inward Holiness, Then to Outward Prosperity. The distinction between Israel and the heathen (as Edom) is: Israel has a covenant relation to God ensuring restoration after chastisement, so that the heathen's hope of getting possession of the elect people's inheritance must fail, and they themselves be made desolate (Eze 36:1-15). The reason for the chastisement of Israel was Israel's sin and profanation of God's name (Eze 36:16-21). God has good in store for Israel, for His own name's sake, to revive His people; first, by a spiritual renewal of their hearts, and, next, by an external restoration to prosperity (Eze 36:22-33). The result is that the heathen shall be impressed with the power and goodness of God manifested so palpably towards the restored people (Eze 36:34-38). 1, 2. mountains of Israel—in contrast to "Mount Seir" of the previous prophecy. They are here personified; Israel's elevation is moral, not merely physical, as Edom's.

Her hills are "the everlasting hills" of Jacob's prophecy (Ge 49:26). "The enemy" (Edom, the singled-out representative of all God's foes), with a shout of exultation, "Aha!" had claimed, as the nearest kinsman of Israel (the brother of their father Esau), his vacated inheritance; as much as to say, the so-called "everlasting" inheritance of Israel and of the "hills," which typified the unmoved perpetuity of it (Ps 125:1, 2), has come to an end, in spite of the promise of God, and has become "ours" (compare De 32:13; 33:15).