Catholic Commentary
Oracle Against the Enemy Nations Who Despoiled Israel's Land
1You, son of man, prophesy to the mountains of Israel, and say, “You mountains of Israel, hear Yahweh’s word.2The Lord Yahweh says: ‘Because the enemy has said against you, “Aha!” and, “The ancient high places are ours in possession!”’3therefore prophesy, and say, ‘The Lord Yahweh says: “Because, even because they have made you desolate, and swallowed you up on every side, that you might be a possession to the residue of the nations, and you are taken up in the lips of talkers, and the evil report of the people;”4therefore, you mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord Yahweh: The Lord Yahweh says to the mountains and to the hills, to the watercourses and to the valleys, to the desolate wastes and to the cities that are forsaken, which have become a prey and derision to the residue of the nations that are all around;5therefore the Lord Yahweh says: “Surely in the fire of my jealousy I have spoken against the residue of the nations, and against all Edom, that have appointed my land to themselves for a possession with the joy of all their heart, with despite of soul, to cast it out for a prey.”’6Therefore prophesy concerning the land of Israel, and tell the mountains, the hills, the watercourses and the valleys, ‘The Lord Yahweh says: “Behold, I have spoken in my jealousy and in my wrath, because you have borne the shame of the nations.”
Ezekiel 36:1–7 records God's command to the prophet to deliver consolation to the mountains of Israel, which have been desecrated and claimed by surrounding nations who gloat over their conquest. God declares that He will vindicate His land through divine oath, ensuring that the nations bearing responsibility for Israel's shame will themselves bear shame in return.
God's jealousy for his land is not petty anger but the fierce, irrevocable passion of a spouse reclaiming what has been desecrated—and he has sworn that those who gloated over Israel's ruin will bear that shame themselves.
Commentary
Ezekiel 36:1 — "Prophesy to the mountains of Israel" This direct address to the mountains forms a deliberate literary counterpoint to Ezekiel 6, where the prophet had been commanded to prophesy against the mountains of Israel on account of the idolatry practiced on their high places. Now the direction has reversed: Ezekiel prophesies to the mountains, not in condemnation but in consolation. The mountains function as both a geographical and theological symbol — they are the physical backbone of the covenant land given to the patriarchs, and their desolation mirrors the desolation of Israel's covenantal relationship with Yahweh. The command to "hear Yahweh's word" addressed to inanimate terrain recalls the cosmic lawsuit form (rîb) of the prophets, where creation itself is summoned as both witness and recipient.
Ezekiel 36:2 — "Aha! The ancient high places are ours in possession!" The enemy's taunt — the Hebrew he'āḥ ("Aha!") — is a cry of gloating schadenfreude, appearing also in Ps 35:21 and Ezek 25:3 in similarly contemptuous contexts. Crucially, the enemies covet not merely real estate but "the ancient high places" (bāmôt ʿôlām), places of ancestral memory, worship, and covenant identity. This detail is theologically pointed: the nations are not merely seizing territory; they are claiming the sacred patrimony of Yahweh's dealings with Israel. Edom is particularly singled out in v. 5, reflecting the bitter memory of Edom's opportunistic participation in Jerusalem's fall (cf. Obad 1:10–14; Ps 137:7). The "residue of the nations" (šeʾērît haggôyîm) is a recurring phrase in these chapters denoting the coalition of surrounding peoples who took advantage of Babylon's devastation.
Verses 3–4 — The Litany of Desolation The threefold "therefore" (lāḵēn) structure across vv. 3–7 builds like a prosecutorial brief. In vv. 3–4, God recites the full indictment: the land has been made desolate, "swallowed up" (a verb of violent consumption, šāʾap), turned into a "possession" (môrāšâ) of foreigners, and — strikingly — made the subject of malicious gossip: "taken up in the lips of talkers, and the evil report of the people." This phrase captures something acutely shameful in the ancient Near Eastern honor-shame culture: Israel's ruin has become common slander, a byword among nations. The geography of address in v. 4 is deliberately exhaustive — mountains, hills, watercourses, valleys, wastes, forsaken cities — suggesting that the totality of the land, every feature of the landscape, participates in the shame and is therefore addressed in the coming vindication. This encyclopedic listing is not rhetorical padding; it signals that Yahweh's restoration will be equally total.
Ezekiel 36:5 — Divine Jealousy and the Fire of Wrath The Hebrew qinʾâ ("jealousy/zeal") describes not petty envy but the passionate, exclusive covenant love of a spouse or suzerain for what is uniquely his own. It is the same word used of Yahweh's jealousy in Ex 20:5 and Num 25:11. The land is explicitly "my land" (ʾarṣî) — it belongs to Yahweh in a way it belongs to no human claimant. The nations' sin is defined with psychological precision: they acted "with the joy of all their heart, with despite of soul" — their motives were not merely political but involved a deep contemptuous pleasure (šimḥat kol-lēbāb) in Israel's humiliation. Edom is named separately from "the residue of the nations," emphasizing the special treachery of the brotherly nation (descended from Esau, Jacob's twin) that turned predator.
Verses 6–7 — The Divine Oath The climax of the unit arrives in the form of a solemn divine oath. In biblical idiom, when God "swears" (v. 7, nāśāʾtî yādî — "I have lifted my hand"), the covenant formula is invoked at its most binding level (cf. Gen 22:16; Heb 6:13–17). The talion principle — lex talionis applied eschatologically — is announced: "the nations that are around you will bear their shame." The same shame that Israel bore through dispossession and mockery will rebound upon its perpetrators. This is not merely retributive; it is restorative of the cosmic moral order Yahweh guarantees.
Typological and Spiritual Senses The Church Fathers read the "mountains of Israel" as a figure of the apostles and bishops who bear and transmit the covenant faith — the high places from which the word of God goes forth (cf. Is 2:2–3). Origen (Homilies on Ezekiel) interpreted the desolation of the land as the spiritual desolation of the soul that has been "swallowed up" by sin and the demonic powers, and God's jealous restoration as the action of grace reclaiming what belongs to him by creation and redemption. The divine qinʾâ points typologically to Christ's cleansing of the Temple (Jn 2:17, citing Ps 69:9), where zeal for the Father's house consumes him — a zeal that is ultimately the zeal of the Cross, the definitive act by which God reclaims his despoiled inheritance.
Catholic Commentary
Catholic tradition illuminates this passage at several levels of depth.
The Land as Sacramental Sign. The Catechism teaches that the promised land is a type of the Kingdom of Heaven (CCC 1222) — a sign pointing beyond itself to the eschatological inheritance of God's people. Ezekiel's insistence that this is "my land" (v. 5) resonates with the Catholic understanding that creation belongs first to God and is entrusted to human stewardship. The enemy's seizure of the land with contempt (despite of soul) prefigures every human attempt to displace God from what is rightly his — from creation, from the soul, from the Church.
Divine Jealousy as Covenant Love. St. Jerome, commenting on related Ezekiel passages, drew a direct line between Yahweh's qinʾâ and the jealous love of a bridegroom. This finds its fullest expression in the Catholic theology of marriage and the Church as Bride of Christ (Eph 5:25–32; Rev 21:2). The Second Vatican Council (Lumen Gentium 6) explicitly invokes the spousal imagery of the prophets for the Church's relationship to Christ, the one who burns with jealousy for her holiness.
The Reversal of Shame. The Catechism's teaching on divine justice (CCC 1040–1041) echoes vv. 6–7: the final judgment involves a definitive disclosure in which all hidden shame and hidden glory are made manifest. The nations who bore false witness against Israel through mockery will themselves "bear their shame" — an eschatological reversal anticipated in the Beatitudes (Mt 5:3–12) and consummated in the Last Judgment.
Edom as a Type of Spiritual Adversaries. St. Gregory the Great (Moralia in Job) treated Edom typologically as a figure of the flesh and worldly pride that gloats over spiritual desolation. In this reading, the oracle against Edom is simultaneously an oracle of hope to any soul that has been laid waste by sin and mocked by concupiscence.
For Today
For a contemporary Catholic, these verses speak with unexpected directness to the experience of living in a secular culture that often treats the Church with the same triumphalist contempt Edom showed to fallen Jerusalem — "Aha! The ancient high places are ours." When parishes close, when Catholic institutions are pressured to abandon their identity, when the faith becomes a subject of cultural mockery, it can feel as though enemies have "swallowed up" the inheritance.
Ezekiel's oracle confronts the temptation to despair by anchoring hope not in the Church's sociological strength but in God's qinʾâ — his fierce, spousal, irrevocable jealousy for what is his. This is not a call to belligerence toward critics, but to a deep theological confidence: the Lord has sworn. The shame borne by those who love God will not be the final word.
Practically, Catholics might sit with the phrase "taken up in the lips of talkers, and the evil report of the people" as an invitation to examine whether their own response to the Church's public humiliations has been to join the gossip or to intercede. The oracle models prophetic intercession — standing before God on behalf of the despoiled land, trusting that divine jealousy is already at work.
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