Ezekiel 35

Today’s Passage: Ezekiel 35

Before the LORD lifts His people’s eyes to the mountains of Israel restored, He turns for a moment to a single mountain across the border and settles an old account. Mount Seir is Edom, the nation descended from Esau, the brother of Jacob, and Edom had a long and bitter history with Israel. When Jerusalem fell and God’s people were dragged into exile, Edom did not weep for a brother in his calamity; it gloated over his downfall, cheered his ruin, and reached out its hand to seize the empty land for itself. This whole chapter is God’s verdict on that ancient enmity and that gloating greed, and it is set here on purpose, as the dark backdrop against which the bright promise of chapter 36, the blessing of the mountains of Israel, will shine all the brighter.

As you read, hold this: The grudge you nurse and the ruin you gloat over are both seen and judged by God.

Ezekiel 35:1–4 (BSB)

¹ Moreover, the word of the LORD came to me, saying, ² “Son of man, set your face against Mount Seir and prophesy against it, ³ and declare that this is what the Lord GOD says: Behold, I am against you, O Mount Seir. I will stretch out My hand against you and make you a desolate waste. ⁴ I will turn your cities into ruins, and you will become a desolation. Then you will know that I am the LORD.

The word comes again, and the prophet is told to set his face against Mount Seir, that fixed and deliberate stance the LORD uses when a matter has come to judgment. And notice the first thing God says, for it is the heaviest thing in the whole chapter: Behold, I am against you. There is no more sobering sentence a creature can hear from its Maker. Edom had grown comfortable in its highland strongholds, sure that no one could touch it, but the God of heaven now sets Himself against it, and the outcome is never in doubt. Yet even here, in a word of undoing, listen for the refrain that beats through all of Ezekiel like a pulse: then you will know that I am the LORD. Even judgment has a purpose beyond itself. God is making Himself known, teaching a proud people who cheered at a brother’s grave that there is a Judge who sees.

Ezekiel 35:5–9 (BSB)

⁵ Because you harbored an ancient hatred and delivered the Israelites over to the sword in the time of their disaster at the final stage of their punishment, ⁶ therefore as surely as I live, declares the Lord GOD, I will give you over to bloodshed and it will pursue you. Since you did not hate bloodshed, it will pursue you. ⁷ I will make Mount Seir a desolate waste and will cut off from it those who come and go. ⁸ I will fill its mountains with the slain; those killed by the sword will fall on your hills, in your valleys, and in all your ravines. ⁹ I will make you a perpetual desolation, and your cities will not be inhabited. Then you will know that I am the LORD.

Now God names the charge, and it is worth reading slowly, because the sin here is one that can live undetected for a long time. You harbored an ancient hatred (אֵיבָה) eyvah, pronounced ay-VAH. Strong's H342, enmity, hostility, deep-seated hatred. This is not a small word for a passing irritation. It is the enmity that runs bone-deep and lasts, and it is the very word God spoke in the garden long ago, when He said He would put enmity between the serpent and the woman. Here it names the settled hostility Edom carried toward its brother, an enmity so old and so cherished that it had become part of the nation’s very character. That is what makes it so searching for us. God does not only judge the sudden blow struck in anger; He sees the grudge kept alive in the dark, the resentment fed and watered until it hardens into hatred. A cherished enmity is never as hidden as we think. The One who put His finger on Edom’s ancient hatred sees every old wound we refuse to let heal, and He calls us instead to the slow, hard, healing work of forgiving as we have been forgiven. . The word for harbored is the word for keeping something, holding it, storing it up. Edom did not merely feel a flash of anger; it cherished the grudge, tended it, and kept it burning across generations until the day it could finally be acted upon. And when that day came, when Israel was already flat on the ground in her disaster, Edom did not show mercy to a brother but delivered the Israelites over to the sword. God’s verdict answers the crime in its own coin: since you did not hate bloodshed, bloodshed will pursue you. A nation that fed on the violence done to others would find that same violence tracking it down its own hills and valleys. There is a terrible justice in it, the kind that lets sin ripen into its own harvest. The desolation He pronounces over Mount Seir is no passing ruin either: it is a perpetual (עוֹלָם) olam, pronounced oh-LAHM. Strong's H5769, long duration, antiquity, eternity, forever. There is a quiet and fitting irony bound up in this word. In verse five, the hatred Edom cherished is called an ancient hatred, and standing right beside that phrase in the Hebrew is this very word, the word for something that stretches on and on without end. Edom nursed a grudge it meant to keep forever. And now, in verse nine, God takes that same word and turns it back upon them: I will make you a perpetual desolation, a ruin that lasts. What they wished to keep alive forever became instead the shape of their own undoing forever. A grudge held onto without end does not preserve us; it slowly becomes the thing that ends us. How much better, then, to let the old hatreds die, and to reach instead for the one thing God truly offers to make everlasting: His own steadfast love, which endures forever toward all who turn to Him. desolation, one that does not lift with time. And still the chapter will not let go of its purpose, ending again on that steady note: then you will know that I am the LORD.

Ezekiel 35:10–13 (BSB)

¹⁰ Because you have said, ‘These two nations and countries will be ours, and we will possess them,’ even though the LORD was there, ¹¹ therefore as surely as I live, declares the Lord GOD, I will treat you according to the anger and jealousy you showed in your hatred against them, and I will make Myself known among them when I judge you. ¹² Then you will know that I, the LORD, have heard every contemptuous word you uttered against the mountains of Israel when you said, ‘They are desolate; they are given to us to devour!’ ¹³ You boasted against Me with your mouth and multiplied your words against Me. I heard it Myself!

Here the second sin surfaces, and it is the covetous gloating that so often rides along with an old grudge. Edom looked at the emptied land of Judah and Israel and said, in effect, these two nations will be mine now; I will move in and take them for my own. But God adds four small words that change everything: even though the LORD was there. Edom thought the land was simply vacant, ready for the taking, and never reckoned that it belonged to the God who had promised it and still watched over it. That is the blindness of covetousness. It sees a brother’s loss only as its own opportunity and forgets there is a Lord over it all. And then the sharpest turn of all comes in verse thirteen, where God tells Edom exactly what its gloating really was: you boasted against Me with your mouth, and I heard it Myself. Every contemptuous word muttered over a fallen neighbor was, in truth, a word spoken against the God who stood behind him. We rarely think our private gloating is aimed at heaven. God says it is, and He hears every word of it.

Ezekiel 35:14–15 (BSB)

¹⁴ This is what the Lord GOD says: While the whole earth rejoices, I will make you desolate. ¹⁵ As you rejoiced when the inheritance of the house of Israel became desolate, so will I do to you. You will become a desolation, O Mount Seir, and so will all of Edom. Then they will know that I am the LORD.

And now the chapter closes by holding up a mirror. As you rejoiced when Israel’s inheritance was laid waste, God says, so will I do to you. The very thing Edom celebrated in a brother would come home to Edom itself, measure for measure. This is one of the oldest and most solemn patterns in all of Scripture, that the harvest a person reaps answers the seed he sowed. The one who gloated over desolation would himself become a desolation. Yet even here the LORD lifts our eyes past Edom’s ruin to a wider horizon: while the whole earth rejoices. There is a day coming when God will set all things right, when the whole creation will rejoice in a justice at last made perfect, and the settling of every old enmity is a small part of that great restoration. And so the oracle ends, as it began, on the note that is the very heartbeat of this book: then they will know that I am the LORD.