“But you, O mountains of Israel, shall shoot forth your branches and yield your fruit to my people Israel, for they will soon come home. For behold, I am for you, and I will turn to you, and you shall be tilled and sown. And I will multiply people on you, the whole house of Israel, all of it. The cities shall be inhabited and the waste places rebuilt. And I will multiply on you man and beast, and they shall multiply and be fruitful. And I will cause you to be inhabited as in your former times, and will do more good to you than ever before. Then you will know that I am the LORD.
Man lives by earthly vision. Meaning that he is temporal in nature. That might have been one of the biggest struggles in the Gospels as Jesus attempted to talk to disciples, religious leaders and the Jewish people about the Kingdom of Heaven. When they heard the word kingdom they could only translate that to the rule of Rome and a new kingdom coming to defeat Roman sovereignty over them. When Jesus began to talk of his death, Peter objected. His mind was on an earthly kingdom:
Mark 8:33 (ESV)
But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”
God knows this about mankind and especially His people. So He gives us tangible ways to know who He is and His plan for us. In chapter 36, the prophet is told to prophecy to the mountains of Israel. God wants to encourage His people that are in captivity for disobedience. But there is hope. God is going to do a new thing for them. He first explains it in a tangible message: The mountains surrounding Jerusalem are going to be blessed. His message is that even though you are in captivity for discipline, I will bless your land. The land in Israel’s history has always been a tangible sign of God’s promises and blessings. This is why that little strip of Israel in the Middle East is always up for grabs. God gave it to Israel. It is a sign of His blessings to Israel. Ezekiel wants them to know they will once again have the land. The land will be blessed, which means the people will be blessed. The mountains are a word picture of God’s care. Later, however, in this chapter, the prophet will pivot from the blessings on the physical land to the blessings in the heart and mind (Ezekiel 36:22-30). The entire point of the prophecy is found in the last sentence in the above passage: Then you will know that I am the LORD. God will bless the land (material) so that you know Him (spiritually). God gives us tangible so that we can grasp the non-tangible. We are not to make the tangible a replacement for our non-tangible relationship with God. We are not to worship the creation over the Creator. But God will bless the tangible. He wants to show us His great love and He uses what we see to bring us into faith for what we do not see.
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