Ezekiel 36:35 - Exposition

This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden. (For the reverse picture, see Joel 2:3 .) The thought of the first Paradise ( Genesis 2:8 ), in the historicity of which clearly Ezekiel believed, was one on which his mind often dwelt ( Ezekiel 28:13 ; Ezekiel 31:9 ) as an ideal of earthly beauty and fertility which should recur in the closing age of the world—a hope which appears to have been shared by Isaiah ( Isaiah 51:3 ), and taken up by John ( Revelation 2:7 ; Revelation 22:1-3 ). In the day when that hope should be realized for Israel, the waste, desolate, and ruined cities , on which the passers-by who visited Palestine gazed, should be fenced and inhabited ; literally, inhabited as fortresses . The three predicates, "waste," "desolate," and" ruined," have been distinguished as signifying "stripped of its inhabitants," "untilled in its lands," and "broken down in its buildings;" in contrast with which, in the golden era of the future, the towns should be inhabited, the fields tilled, and the ruined fortresses built.