Thou shalt devour men no more. From the middle of Ezekiel 36:12 the form of address changes from the plural to the singular, the whole country, mountains, and valleys being regarded as one land, as in Deuteronomy 3:25.
The charge preferred against the country by her enemies was that she had been a land that devoured men and "bereaved its nations" (or, "nation," Revised Version); literally, an eater-up of men and a bereaver of thy nations; i.
e. of Israel and Judah, perhaps also of the Canaanites, their predecessors (Fausset), the image being that of a wild beast which ravages the population and makes them childless, as in Ezekiel 5:17 and Ezekiel 14:15 (Smend), rather than that of an unnatural mother, a Rabenmutter, as in 2 Kings 6:29, who devours her offspring (Ewald).
This charge, in which, perhaps, the prophet detected an allusion to Numbers 13:32, had certainly in times past been true; not, however, as Hengstenberg suggests, because the land had been "an apple of discord for the Asiatic and African powers," or, as Ewald explains, because "the tremendous restlessness, the excited push and hurry of such a mentally active city must in any case have used up its inhabitants more rapidly;" but, as Keil, Plumptre, and others interpret, because of the judgments of sword, famine, and pestilence sent upon the land by Jehovah for its sins.
These judgments had so destroyed its inhabitants, first the Canaanites, and latterly the two peoples of Israel and Judah, that "those who looked upon it deemed it a fatal land, which brought destruction to all who should occupy it" (Currey).
In the golden age to which the prophet looked forward, no such reproach should be possible. Not only should the laud not bereave its nations (according to the Keri, followed by the Authorized and Revised Versions, as well as by Ewald and Smend), but (according to the Chethib, preferred by Keil, Kliefoth, Havernick, Heugstenberg, Schroder, and Plumptre) it should not even cause them (or it) to stumble; i.
e. should no more cause its inhabitants to lapse into those sins, amongst which idolatry stood prominent, which entailed on them ruin. Hengstenberg's idea, that "moral stumbling is not to be thought of in this connection," is certainly to be rejected.