Bible Strands
Ezekiel 35:4
I will turn your cities into ruins, and you will become a desolation. Then you will know that I am the LORD.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The LORD addresses Mount Seir, pronouncing immediate ruin on its cities as a direct response to Edom’s longstanding hostility and betrayal of Israel during their crisis.
The words — שְׁמָמָה (she.ma.Mah) describes a total desolation, and יָדַעְתָּ (ya.da'.Ta) signals an unavoidable, experiential recognition rather than abstract knowledge.
The thread — The declaration that destruction will force recognition of divine authority appears again in Ezekiel 35:9 and mirrors the judgment motif in Malachi 1:3. The formula “so you may know that I am the LORD” follows the same revelatory pattern found in Exodus 9:14.
Why it lands — The text first records the factual outcome of city destruction and desolation before noting the intended result: forced acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty. It requires readers to accept that historical ruin is not random but the direct instrument of divine revelation.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
I will lay thy cities waste, and thou shalt be desolate, and thou shalt know that I am the Lord.
Cross-references
- Ezekiel 35:9 I will make you a perpetual desolation, and your cities will not be inhabited. Then you will know that I am the LORD.
- Malachi 1:3 but Esau I have hated, and I have made his mountains a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.”
- Exodus 9:14 Otherwise, I will send all My plagues against you and your officials and your people, so you may know that there is no one like Me in all the earth.
- Exodus 14:4 And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart so that he will pursue them. But I will gain honor by means of Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD.” So this is what the Israelites did.
- Ezekiel 6:6 Wherever you live, the cities will be laid waste and the high places will be demolished, so that your altars will be laid waste and desecrated, your idols smashed and obliterated, your incense altars cut down, and your works blotted out.
- Ezekiel 35:12 Then you will know that I, the LORD, have heard every contemptuous word you uttered against the mountains of Israel when you said, ‘They are desolate; they are given to us to devour!’
- Joel 3:19 Egypt will become desolate, and Edom a desert wasteland, because of the violence done to the people of Judah, in whose land they shed innocent blood.