Ezekiel 35:10 - Exposition

Because thou hast said . The second ground of Edom's punishment lay in this, that she had presumptuously as well as confidently exclaimed, not concerning Idumea and Judah, as Jerome conjectured, but concerning Israel and Judah when she saw them stripped of their inhabitants, These two nations and these two countries shall be mine, and we will possess it ; "it" meaning either the region over which the two countries extended, or, as Schroder suggests, Jerusalem their common capital (see Ezekiel 36:2 ; and comp. Psalms 83:4-12 ). And what constituted the gravamen of Edom's offense was that she had so spoken, whereas (or, though ) the Lord was there . It is not necessary, with the LXX . and Kliefoth, to read "is there," to guard against the supposition that Ezekiel designed to suggest that, though Jehovah had formerly been in the land, he was there no longer. But, in point of fact, Jehovah had for a time withdrawn his visible presence from the temple and the city (see Ezekiel 10:18 ; Ezekiel 11:22 , Ezekiel 11:23 ), though he had by no means renounced his right to the land; and Edom's error lay in not regarding this, but in acting as if Jehovah had departed from Israel for ever (Havernick); or (better, "and") in thinking he could appropriate to himself what really belonged to Jehovah, viz. the territory out of which Israel and Judah had been cast (Hengstenberg).