Bible Strands
Ezekiel 36:31
Then you will remember your evil ways and wicked deeds, and you will loathe yourselves for your iniquities and abominations.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — God speaks through Ezekiel to the house of Israel during a prophetic declaration of future restoration and judgment. The address occurs immediately after a promise of agricultural provision and immediately before a command to acknowledge that the coming actions are not for Israel's sake.
The words — The Hebrew verb וּ/זְכַרְתֶּם (u./ze.khar.Tem) means "and you will remember," paired with דַּרְכֵי/כֶם הָ/רָעִים (dar.khei./Khem ha./ra.'Im), literally "your evil ways." The supplied lexical data explicitly marks these ways as לֹא טוֹבִים (not good), anchoring the memory to a concrete assessment of past conduct rather than an abstract moral lesson.
The thread — This pattern of remembering past rebellion appears in Ezekiel 6:9, where exiled survivors remember how they grieved God, and Ezekiel 20:43, which pairs remembering defiled ways with loathing oneself. Nehemiah 9:26 records the identical historical sequence of Israel rejecting the law and killing the prophets.
Why it lands — The text requires the hearer to acknowledge the factual record of their iniquities and abominations before any restoration is realized. It places the burden of self-assessment on the audience, demanding that they confront the actual nature of their past actions without shifting the cause of God's intervention to their own merit.
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
Then shall ye remember your own evil ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall lothe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations.
Cross-references
- Ezekiel 6:9 Then in the nations to which they have been carried captive, your survivors will remember Me—how I have been grieved by their adulterous hearts that turned away from Me, and by their eyes that lusted after idols. So they will loathe themselves for the evil they have done and for all their abominations.
- Ezekiel 20:43 There you will remember your ways and all the deeds with which you have defiled yourselves, and you will loathe yourselves for all the evils you have done.
- Nehemiah 9:26 But they were disobedient and rebelled against You; they flung Your law behind their backs. They killed Your prophets, who had admonished them to return to You. They committed terrible blasphemies.
- Job 42:6 Therefore I despise myself, and I repent in dust and ashes.”
- Isaiah 6:5 Then I said: “Woe is me, for I am ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips dwelling among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of Hosts.”
- Ezekiel 16:61 Then you will remember your ways and be ashamed when you receive your older and younger sisters. I will give them to you as daughters, but not because of My covenant with you.
- Luke 18:13 But the tax collector stood at a distance, unwilling even to lift up his eyes to heaven. Instead, he beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner!’
- Leviticus 26:39 Those of you who survive in the lands of your enemies will waste away in their iniquity and will decay in the sins of their fathers.
- Ezra 9:6 and said: “O my God, I am ashamed and embarrassed to lift up my face to You, my God, because our iniquities are higher than our heads, and our guilt has reached the heavens.
- Jeremiah 31:18 I have surely heard Ephraim’s moaning: ‘You disciplined me severely, like an untrained calf. Restore me, that I may return, for You are the LORD my God.