Ezekiel 36:4
“therefore, you mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord Yahweh: Thus says the Lord Yahweh to the mountains and to the hills, to the watercourses and to the valleys, to the desolate wastes and to the cities that are forsaken, which have become a prey and derision to the residue of the nations that are all around;”
What does Ezekiel 36:4 mean?
God is speaking through the prophet Ezekiel to the land of Israel itself, personifying its mountains and valleys as if they can listen. After years of exile and destruction, the Israelite landscape had become a wasteland, mocked by neighboring nations who saw it as abandoned and conquered. This poetic approach treats the land as something that has suffered alongside its people, stripped of dignity and purpose. What follows this verse (in the next few lines) is God's promise to restore not just the people but the land itself, reassuring both that they haven't been forgotten and that renewal is coming. If you're going through a season where everything feels desolate or diminished, this reminds us that even what seems most broken and abandoned matters deeply to God.