Common English Bible

Ezekiel 36:5-20 Common English Bible (CEB)

5. So now, says the Lord God, I will speak in my fiery passion against the surviving nations and against Edom, all those who gleefully and spitefully took my land for themselves as a possession only for plunder.

6. Prophesy concerning Israel’s fertile land, and say to the mountains and to the hills, to the ravines and to the valleys, The Lord God proclaims: Because you endured the ridicule of the nations, my passion and fury lead me to speak.

7. So now the Lord God proclaims: I myself swear that the nations round about you will themselves suffer ridicule.

8. But you, mountains of Israel, will extend your branches and bear your fruit for my people Israel, because they will come home very soon.

9. Look, I’m here for you, and I will turn toward you, and you will be farmed and sown.

10. I will populate you with human beings, the whole house of Israel, all of them. The cities will be inhabited, the ruins rebuilt.

11. When I make people and animals increase on you, they will multiply and be fruitful. I will cause you to be inhabited as you were before. I will do more good for you than in the beginning, and you will know that I am the Lord.

12. I will let people walk through you, my people Israel! They will lay claim to you, you will be their inheritance, and you will no longer deprive them of anything.

13. The Lord God proclaims: Because people say, "You are a devourer of human beings" and "You are depriving your nation,"

14. therefore, you will no longer devour human beings or deprive your nation of anything. This is what the Lord God says.

15. You won’t have to listen anymore to the taunts of the nations or endure the scorn of the peoples. And you will no longer deprive your nation of anything. This is what the Lord God says.

16. The Lord’s word came to me:

17. Human one, when the house of Israel lived on their fertile land, they polluted it with their ways and deeds. Their ways before me were polluted like the blood of menstruation,

18. and so I poured out my fury on them for all the blood they had poured out on the land and for all the defilement of their idols.

19. When I scattered them to the nations and dispersed them into other lands, I judged them according to their ways and deeds.

20. But then when they entered the other nations, they degraded my holy name because it was said of them, "These are the Lord’s people, yet they had to leave his land."