Thus says the Lord GOD: Because they say to you, ‘You devour people, and you bereave your nation of children,’
God once sent me to prophesy against these mountains, calling down judgment; now He turns and commands me to speak comfort to them instead. The land itself becomes His audience because the people are scattered, yet He speaks to it, showing He has not cast off the place forever, for He would never call upon it to hear His Word if He meant to abandon it.
AI summary
Commenting on Ezekiel 36:1-15
Thus saith the Lord God, because they say unto you,.... The Heathens that dwelt round about the land of Judea said to the mountains, or to the whole land, thou land devourest up men; eats up the inhabitants of it; which is part of the ill report the spies, in the times of Moses, brought on it, Num 13:32, to which the allusion is here...
Thou land devourest up men--alluding to the words of the spies (Num 13:32). The land personified is represented as doing that which was done in it. Like an unnatural mother it devoured, that is, it was the grave of its people; of the Canaanites, its former possessors, through mutual wars, and finally by the sword of Israel; and now, of the Jews, through internal and...