NOTES for Eze 35:1-15

This passage speaks of the desolation of Mount Seir, which represents the Edomites, the neighbors of the Judeans. The prophecy about the sad fate of their land was fulfilled literally; it remains desolate to this day, but what does this mean for us? We might conclude, for example, that retribution for sins is inevitable and that a visible image of it will remain until the end of time; such a conclusion would not be unfounded.

But we can also reflect on the fact that the consequences of sin are already contained within sin itself, and that this is precisely why it causes barrenness, turning once fertile lands into desert. Any desert can bloom again if its inhabitants fall down before the Source of living water. But the Edomites did not want to...

It might seem that Ezekiel's prophecies about the peoples neighbouring Israel ended in chapter 32. Why, then, does the prophet return to Edom's fate in chapter 35? Or perhaps the question should be put differently: why is this prophecy not in the middle part of the book, but placed precisely here, when the New Covenant is being discussed? The answer is fairly clear if we consider how the prophets usually speak about the coming of the Messiah and the New Covenant, and then look at the following chapter, chapter 36.

When speaking of the fulfilment of God's purpose, all the prophets illustrate it in one way or another with symbols, mostly using apocalyptic images. Among them are Isaiah's famous "the lion will lie down with the lamb", Joel's "blood and fire and columns of smoke", and many others. For the prophets, what matters is the meaning expressed by their images. Ezekiel's prophecy about Edom's destruction, placed in chapter 35, is of the same kind. The Edomites, a people related to Israel, had inflicted untold suffering on the chosen people. They greedily raided the settlements of Judah devastated by the Assyrians and especially the Babylonians, leaving true "scorched earth" behind them. The cruelty of the Edomites became a kind of reverse symbol of the chosen people's suffering.

The prophecy of Edom's destruction therefore continues the words of chapter 34: in the new "covenant of peace", God will grant His people deliverance and safety, and their wounds and suffering will be healed. It also continues the promise to heal the sick and bind up the injured sheep. For Ezekiel, Edom is essentially a symbol of death, which God will ultimately defeat in the New Covenant. It is also, of course, a symbol of injustice, treachery, and cruelty, which will likewise have no place on the earth transformed by Christ's Resurrection. The universal scope of this promise is underlined when, at the beginning of chapter 36, the Lord extends it to all oppressors.

Today the prophet denounces Edom (where Mount Seir is located) for the gloating of its inhabitants. Ever since David's time the Edomites had been at odds with Israel, so they welcomed the fall of the kingdom of Israel with joy. In the context of Old Testament morality, "love your neighbor and hate your enemy," Edom appears to be right in rejoicing over the fall of its enemy. Yet according to the prophet, here Edom is opposing God Himself, who dwells among His people.

The New Testament awareness that every person, bearing the image of God, is worthy of God's love makes gloating a fundamental sin against God. Every hatred and aggression toward a human being becomes rejection of the One in whose likeness that person was created. If we understand that all the people around us carry this seed of divine life within them, then the commandment to love our enemies will turn from a mad paradox into natural worship of God's presence in His greatest creation, the human person.

Sometimes, when reading Ezekiel’s prophecies—and those of other prophets too—we might think that God takes revenge on all the nations surrounding Israel for every defeat inflicted on his people. Yet things turn out not to be so simple: those same prophets say that God himself allows his people to experience the catastrophe they are undergoing. How, then, are those who in effect become instruments of God’s providence to blame? The answer concerns just one fact: awareness of what is happening, the attitude taken towards it by those participating in historical events. Of course, had God not allowed his people to pass through a national catastrophe, through captivity, there would have been no catastrophe. But here the point is something else.

The point is how those around the defeated people behaved towards them. Their conduct certainly cannot be justified by appealing to God’s providence, if only because they never thought about it and know nothing of it. Indeed, they do not know God either; perhaps they have only heard something about Yahweh, who is worshipped in Jerusalem. But to them this Yahweh is no different from the supreme deity of any other people. Yet God does not demand true knowledge of himself from pagans. He expects something else from them: conduct in accordance with the moral laws they know and understand.

Laws which, among other things, forbid gloating over other people’s misfortunes, even when those people are enemies. And which certainly forbid the treacherous blows in the back that Judah’s neighbours were then dealing it, taking advantage of its weakness. Of course, the temptation for Judah’s neighbours to seize a convenient opportunity for military and political revenge was great. But they could not fail to understand that this was vile and despicable—even by their own standards of universal human morality.

Politics and morality are, of course, hardly compatible, and the rulers of Mount Seir proceeded precisely from that premise. But then there is no reason to be surprised when, in due course, they themselves are treated in exactly the same way. A debt must be repaid. And God will not intervene then, just as he did not intervene when it concerned his own people. Why, indeed, should he show mercy to those who reject mercy as an obstacle to achieving military and political objectives? The “golden rule” of morality has not been abolished. And everyone knows it, even pagans.