Ezekiel 35
Ezekiel 35 sits at a hinge. The chapter before it lifted readers to the promise of one true Shepherd over the flock; the chapter after it will pour out the most tender word of restoration in the book - O ye mountains of Israel… ye shall shoot forth your branches, and yield your fruit. But between the two stands this oracle, and it points the other way. Son of man, set thy face against mount Seir, and prophesy against it (v. 2). Mount Seir is the rugged highland southeast of the Dead Sea, the homeland of Edom - the nation descended from Esau, the twin brother of Jacob. This is not a quarrel between strangers. It is the oldest family feud in Scripture, and the LORD now brings it into His court.3
The charge is stated in a single, weighted phrase: Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred (v. 5). Edom's enmity toward Israel was not a passing reaction to one offense; it was a grudge nursed across generations, reaching all the way back to the womb where Jacob and Esau struggled. And when Judah finally fell, that hatred showed its hand. In the time of their calamity, when Jerusalem was overrun and her people were being dragged into exile, Edom did not stand aside - she shed the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword. She struck a brother who was already down. So the sentence comes back in kind: blood shall pursue thee (v. 6). The land Edom thought to claim will itself become a wasteland.
Underneath the violence is a deeper sin: Edom coveted what was not hers and reckoned the LORD out of the picture. These two nations and these two countries shall be mine, and we will possess it, she said - and Ezekiel adds the five words that overturn the whole scheme: whereas the LORD was there (v. 10). Edom surveyed the emptied land and never counted its God. But the LORD had heard every boast against the mountains of Israel (vv. 12-13), and the desolation Edom gloated over will be turned back upon Seir itself. The chapter ends, as it moves through every sentence, with the refrain that is the whole point of the judgment: they shall know that I am the LORD (v. 15).2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Ezekiel 35:1-9Because Thou Hast Had a Perpetual Hatred
1Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, 2Son of man, set thy face against mount Seir, and prophesy against it, 3And say unto it, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O mount Seir, I am against thee, and I will stretch out mine hand against thee, and I will make thee most desolate. 4I will lay thy cities waste, and thou shalt be desolate, and thou shalt know that I am the LORD. 5Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred, and hast shed the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end: 6Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will prepare thee unto blood, and blood shall pursue thee: sith thou hast not hated blood, even blood shall pursue thee. 7Thus will I make mount Seir most desolate, and cut off from it him that passeth out and him that returneth. 8And I will fill his mountains with his slain men: in thy hills, and in thy valleys, and in all thy rivers, shall they fall that are slain with the sword. 9I will make thee perpetual desolations, and thy cities shall not return: and ye shall know that I am the LORD.
The oracle opens with a familiar and solemn command: Son of man, set thy face against mount Seir, and prophesy against it (v. 2). To set the face against a place is more than to look its way; through the prophets it is the posture of a judge fixing his gaze on the accused, the prelude to a sentence. The target is named without disguise - mount Seir, the rugged red-rock highland reaching south and east of the Dead Sea, the ancestral land of Edom. And Edom is no random nation. From the book of Genesis onward, Edom is Esau: Esau is Edom, Scripture says plainly, the elder twin of Jacob, the brother who sold his birthright and lost his blessing. So when the LORD sets His face against mount Seir, He is reopening the oldest family conflict in the Bible and bringing it, at last, into His own court. The very next words leave no doubt who is acting: Behold, O mount Seir, I am against thee… I will make thee most desolate (v. 3). It is the LORD Himself, not Babylon or any human army, who rises here as the plaintiff and the judge.3
The charge against Edom comes in a single weighted phrase: Because thou hast had a perpetual hatred (v. 5). The word is not anger that flares and cools, nor a grievance over one fresh wrong. It is a hatred made permanent - a grudge handed down like an inheritance, nursed across generations until it became part of who Edom was. And this hatred was not content to brood. When Judah's long-dreaded judgment fell - in the time of their calamity, in the time that their iniquity had an end - Edom seized the moment and shed the blood of the children of Israel by the force of the sword. Picture what that means. As Jerusalem burned and her people were marched away in chains, Edom did not stand back in grief for a fallen kinsman; she drew the sword and helped finish the work. There is a particular ugliness here that Scripture marks elsewhere too - the cruelty of striking a brother who is already down, of turning a relative's worst day into your own opportunity. The deepest wound is not that an enemy attacked, but that a brother did.
The sentence answers the crime in its own coin: Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will prepare thee unto blood, and blood shall pursue thee: sith thou hast not hated blood, even blood shall pursue thee (v. 6). The word blood tolls four times in a single verse, and the logic is exact. Edom shed the blood of Israel; now blood will pursue Edom - hunt her down like an avenger who does not tire. The bitter phrase at the center is sith thou hast not hated blood: Edom had every chance to recoil from bloodshed and did not; she loved the violence, and so the violence she loved becomes her sentence. This is the measured justice that runs all through Scripture - that what a person sows, that shall he also reap; that the pit a man digs, he falls into himself. The judgment is not arbitrary cruelty from heaven. It is the precise, terrible mirror of the deed: the sword Edom raised against a brother is the sword now turned toward her own hills and valleys (v. 8), until Seir is left a perpetual desolation - the very word, perpetual, that was used of her hatred, now turned upon her ruin.1
Ezekiel 35:10-15Whereas the LORD Was There
10Because thou hast said, These two nations and these two countries shall be mine, and we will possess it; whereas the LORD was there: 11Therefore, as I live, saith the Lord GOD, I will even do according to thine anger, and according to thine envy which thou hast used out of thy hatred against them; and I will make myself known among them, when I have judged thee. 12And thou shalt know that I am the LORD, and that I have heard all thy blasphemies which thou hast spoken against the mountains of Israel, saying, They are laid desolate, they are given us to consume. 13Thus with your mouth ye have boasted against me, and have multiplied your words against me: I have heard them. 14Thus saith the Lord GOD; When the whole earth rejoiceth, I will make thee desolate. 15As thou didst rejoice at the inheritance of the house of Israel, because it was desolate, so will I do unto thee: thou shalt be desolate, O mount Seir, and all Idumea, even all of it: and they shall know that I am the LORD.
Now the chapter exposes the scheme beneath the violence: Because thou hast said, These two nations and these two countries shall be mine, and we will possess it (v. 10). The two nations and two countries are the fallen kingdoms of Israel and Judah, lying emptied and broken. Edom looks at the wreckage and sees only real estate going spare - two ruined lands with no one left to defend them, ripe for the taking. It is the logic of the opportunist in its purest form: a brother's catastrophe read as a windfall, a graveyard surveyed for its building lots. But the verse does not let the boast stand alone. It tacks on five quiet words that overturn everything: whereas the LORD was there. Edom did all the arithmetic on the land - counted the cities, the fields, the absent armies - and left the one decisive factor out of the sum. The land was not vacant. It was the LORD's, and the LORD had not departed from it. To covet that inheritance was not a clever land grab; it was to lay claim to what belonged to God Himself, in the very place where His presence still dwelt. The scheme was doomed not by Edom's weakness but by Edom's blindness - the failure to reckon with the God who was there all along.
The LORD now answers the coveting heart and the boasting mouth together: I will even do according to thine anger, and according to thine envy which thou hast used out of thy hatred against them (v. 11). The sentence is measured to the sin - the anger, the envy, the hatred Edom poured out will be poured back in full. And then the chapter turns to the thing Edom thought no one heard. Thou shalt know… that I have heard all thy blasphemies which thou hast spoken against the mountains of Israel, saying, They are laid desolate, they are given us to consume (v. 12). Edom spoke its triumph aloud over the ruined land - they are given us to consume - never imagining the words were heard anywhere that mattered. But the LORD answers plainly: Thus with your mouth ye have boasted against me, and have multiplied your words against me: I have heard them (v. 13). Here is the quiet terror and the quiet comfort of the passage. Edom thought it was only gloating over a broken neighbour; in truth it was boasting against the LORD Himself, because the land it scorned was His. Words flung at God's people in their lowest hour do not vanish into empty air. I have heard them. Nothing said against the LORD or against those He loves is ever truly spoken in secret.
The judgment closes with a precise reversal: As thou didst rejoice at the inheritance of the house of Israel, because it was desolate, so will I do unto thee: thou shalt be desolate, O mount Seir, and all Idumea, even all of it (vv. 14-15). Edom's crowning sin was not only that it hated and seized, but that it rejoiced - took open delight in a brother's ruin, celebrated the desolation as good news. So the measure is returned exactly: the gladness Edom felt over Israel's emptied land will become the LORD's sentence over Edom's own. The line When the whole earth rejoiceth, I will make thee desolate sets the two joys against each other - there will come a day of rejoicing across the whole earth, and Edom, who rejoiced wrongly, will have no part in it. This is the dark mirror-image of the chapter that follows, where these same desolate mountains of Israel are promised that they shall be tilled and sown, shall shoot forth their branches and yield their fruit, and be inhabited again. Seir made waste; Israel's mountains made fruitful. And over both stands the single purpose the whole oracle has been driving toward, sounded one last time: they shall know that I am the LORD. The judgment is never destruction for its own sake. It is the LORD making Himself known - to Edom, to Israel, and to a watching world - as the God who rules, who hears, and who was there all along.3
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Ezekiel 35 with Rashi, Radak, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for eivat olam (v. 5, the “perpetual hatred” that reaches back to Esau and Jacob), for the wordplay on dam (v. 6, “blood” that pursues the one who loved bloodshed), and for the loaded phrase whereas the LORD was there (v. 10).
- Ezekiel 35 ↔ Genesis 25-27 · Malachi 1 · ObadiahIntertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Ezekiel 35 to the rest of Scripture - the oracle against Edom read alongside the birth of Esau and Jacob (Gen. 25), the LORD's word over the two brothers in Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated (Mal. 1:2-4), and the parallel judgment of Edom for violence against a brother in Obadiah (vv. 10-15).
- Ezekiel 35 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Ezekiel 35 - the identification of mount Seir with Edom, the legal force of set thy face against in verse 2, the difficult clause about the time that their iniquity had an end in verse 5, and the boast and gloating of verses 10-15.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Because Thou Hast Had a Perpetual Hatred
- Genesis 25:29-34Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me?... thus Esau despised his birthright.The root of the “perpetual hatred” of verse 5 - the birthright Esau despised, the seed of the long grudge between the brothers.
- Obadiah 10-11For thy violence against thy brother Jacob shame shall cover thee... in the day that the strangers carried away captive his forces... even thou wast as one of them.The same charge as verses 5-6 - Edom’s violence against a brother in the day of his calamity.
- Hebrews 12:16-17lest there be any... profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.The New Testament’s verdict on Esau - the profane heart standing behind the nation judged here.
- Matthew 5:43-44Love your enemies, bless them that curse you... and pray for them which despitefully use you.The call out of the perpetual hatred of verse 5 - the opposite of the sword Edom raised against a brother.
- Galatians 6:7Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.The principle of verse 6 - the blood Edom shed becomes the blood that pursues her.
Whereas the LORD Was There
- Ezekiel 48:35and the name of the city from that day shall be, The LORD is there.The glad answer to verse 10 - what Edom denied in scorn, the LORD proclaims over His restored city: The LORD is there.
- Psalm 139:7-8Whither shall I flee from thy presence?... If I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.The truth Edom forgot in verse 10 - there is no place, however desolate, where the LORD is not present.
- Proverbs 24:17-18Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth.The sin named in verse 15 - the gloating over a brother’s ruin that the LORD turns back upon the gloater.
- Ezekiel 36:8-11But ye, O mountains of Israel, ye shall shoot forth your branches, and yield your fruit to my people of Israel.The bright companion to this dark oracle - Seir made desolate (v. 15), Israel’s mountains made fruitful again.
- Matthew 28:20and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.The Immanuel promise behind verse 10 - the LORD present with His people, the abiding answer to every God-forsaken place.