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
19. and scattered them throughout the nations, just as they deserved.
20. Wherever they went, my name was disgraced, because foreigners insulted my people by saying I had forced them out of their own land.
21. I care what those foreigners think of me,
22. so tell the Israelites that I am saying:You have disgraced my holy name among the nations where you now live. So you don't deserve what I'm going to do for you. I will lead you home to bring honour to my name