8. Trees will grow on you mountains of Israel and produce fruit for my people, because they will soon come home.
9. I will take care of you by ploughing your soil and planting crops on your fertile slopes.
10. The people of Israel will return and rebuild your ruined towns and live in them.
11. Children will be born, and animals will give birth to their young. You will no longer be deserted as you are now, but you will be covered with people and treated better than ever. Then you will know that I am the Lord.
12. I will bring my people Israel home, and they will live on you mountains, because you belong to them, and your fertile slopes will never again let them starve.
13. It's true that you have been accused of not producing enough food and of letting your people starve.
14-15. But I, the Lord, promise that you won't hear other nations laugh and sneer at you ever again. From now on, you will always produce plenty of food for your people. I, the Lord God, have spoken.
16. The Lord said:
17. Ezekiel, son of man, when the people of Israel were living in their own country, they made the land unclean by the way they behaved, just as a woman's monthly period makes her unclean.
18. They committed murders and worshipped idols, which made the land even worse. So in my anger, I punished my people