What Does Ezekiel 36:10 Mean?
And I will multiply people upon you, the whole house of Israel, all of it, and the cities will be settled, and the dry ruins will be built.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And I will multiply men upon you, all the house of Israel, even all of it: and the cities shall be inhabited, and the wastes shall be builded:THE KEY
Restoration means the whole community can inhabit its life again, not merely that its ruins are repaired.
THE MEANING
God’s restorative work reaches the whole house: people increase, cities are inhabited, and wasted places are rebuilt. Renewal here means shared life settling into a landscape that had gone empty, until it can hold a community again.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A place emptied of people is beyond restoration.
THE ROOT
וְנֹשְׁבוּ
venoshvu
GROWS FROM
י־ש־ב
To sit, dwell, or settle.
The root carries both sitting and dwelling, so “inhabited” evokes more than people being present: life has settled into the cities. The verse pictures places becoming lived-in again.
ALSO GROWS
yoshev: One who sits or dwells
יֹשֵׁב
The person who dwells is the living presence that makes a city inhabited.
moshav: Dwelling place, seat, or settlement
מוֹשָׁב
This branch gives dwelling a place: settled life has somewhere to take root.
הֶחֳרָבוֹת
hechoravot
GROWS FROM
ח־ר־ב
To become dry, be laid waste, or be desolate.
“dry ruins” in this verse is hechoravot. English “wastes” can sound like rubble, while the root also carries dryness and desolation. The verse names that emptied condition, then places it beside rebuilding: it is not the place’s final identity.
ALSO GROWS
ḥarev: Desolate, laid waste
חָרֵב
This branch describes the condition the verse says can change.
ḥaravah: Dry ground or a waste place
חָרָבָה
It echoes the image of a landscape deprived of life, which the verse sets within a promise of rebuilding.
וְהִרְבֵּיתִי
ve-hirbeiti
GROWS FROM
ר־ב־ה
To become many or increase; in a causative form, to make many.
“multiply” in this verse is ve-hirbeiti. The word describes people increasing in number, and the following clauses give that increase a home: cities are inhabited and waste places rebuilt. Here multiplication becomes shared life in a renewed landscape.
ALSO GROWS
rabah: Become many or increase
רָבָה
This is the root’s basic movement toward greater number.
hirbah: Increase or make many
הִרְבָּה
This causative form shares the verse’s sense of bringing about increase.
THE PATTERN
Restoration becomes tangible when people return to dwell and ruined places are built into lived-in communities.
Those who come from you shall build the dry ruins of the ages. You shall raise up the foundations of generation to generation, and you shall be called the mender of the breach, the one who turns the paths back to dwell in.And I will turn back the captives of my people Israel, and they shall build the emptied cities and settle in them. They shall plant vineyards and drink their wine. They shall make gardens and eat their fruit.Then the assemblies had wholeness throughout all Judaea and Galilee and Samaria, and were built up. And walking in the awe of the LORD and in the comfort of the Set-Apart Breath, they were multiplied.THE THREAD
And they shall build the dry ruins of the ages, they shall raise up the former stunned places, and they shall make new the dry cities, the stunned places of many generations.Both verses use חֳרָבוֹת (choravot), “waste places,” from ח־ר־ב (ḥ-r-b; charav), “to become dry or desolate.” The shared root lets the image sharpen: desolation names a condition that can be rebuilt, not the final identity of a place.
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