What Does Ezekiel 36:4 Mean?
Therefore, you mountains of Israel, hear and respond to the word of the Lord GOD. Thus says the Lord GOD to the mountains and the hills, to the rivers and the valleys, to the emptied and dry ruins, and to the cities left behind, which became plunder and a laughingstock to the remnant of the nations all around.
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
Therefore, ye mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord GOD; Thus saith the Lord GOD to the mountains, and to the hills, to the rivers, and to the valleys, to the desolate wastes, and to the cities that are forsaken, which became a prey and derision to the residue of the heathen that are round about;THE KEY
The ruined land is not scenery here: it is summoned to hear, and the word is spoken directly to the places called forsaken.
THE MEANING
The word meets you in places exposed to ruin and other people’s contempt; even there, the LORD GOD addresses the forsaken directly. Their condition is named plainly, yet it does not place them beyond the reach of that word.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that abandoned, publicly mocked places are beyond God’s reach: they are the very places addressed by the word.
THE ROOT
שִׁמְעוּ
shimʿu
GROWS FROM
שמע
hear, listen
“hear and respond” in this verse is shimʿu. The plural command is directed to the mountains themselves, not to people standing nearby. Hearing here opens toward response, making the terrain a receiver of the word rather than a passive backdrop.
ALSO GROWS
shamaʿ: To hear or listen, with response often carried by context.
שָׁמַע
The verse’s command comes from this root and makes the mountains its addressee.
shemuʿah: A report or something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
The same root can name what is heard, linking the addressed landscape to the word it receives.
הַנֶּעֱזָבוֹת
hanneʿezavot
GROWS FROM
עזב
leave, abandon
The cities are described with a form of the root for leaving or abandoning. The root gives their desolation the shape of being left behind, while the verse names those very cities as recipients of the LORD GOD’s speech.
ALSO GROWS
ʿazav: To leave or abandon.
עָזַב
This verb supplies the root behind the cities’ condition of being forsaken.
ʿazuvah: A feminine form meaning forsaken or abandoned.
עֲזוּבָה
The same word family appears in Isaiah’s promise that the land will no longer be called “Forsaken.”
THE PATTERN
The created world is an active participant in divine address and movement, not a mute setting.
Let the rivers clap their palms; let the mountains ring out together.For you shall go out in joy, and be carried forth in wholeness. The mountains and the hills shall burst into singing before you, and all the trees of the field shall clap their palms.For we know that the whole creation groans together and labors together in the pangs of birth until now.THE THREAD
You shall no more be called Left Behind, and your land shall no more be called Stunned; but you shall be called Hephzibah, my delight is in her, and your land Beulah, wedded; for the LORD delights in you, and your land shall be wed.“Forsaken” in both verses comes from עזב (ʿazav), meaning to leave or abandon. Ezekiel names the cities by that condition; Isaiah shows the name “Forsaken” lifted from the land.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us