Ezekiel 35:4

"I will lay thy cities waste, and thou shalt be desolate; and thou shalt know that I am Jehovah. Because thou hast had a perpetual enmity, and hast given over the children of Israel to the power of the sword in the time of their calamity, in the time of the iniquity of the end; therefore, as I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, I will prepare thee unto blood, and blood shall pursue thee: since thou hast not hated blood, therefore blood shall pursue thee."

"A perpetual enmity ..." (Ezekiel 35:5). This enmity is indeed a historical phenomenon. It began when Esau sold his birthright for a plate of lentils and continues until this very day in the conflict between the Arabs and the Israelites, despite the fact of the Edomites being no longer a recognizable group. The hatred, however, in both cases goes back to the old conflicts between Esau and Jacob, and between Isaac and Ishmael.

This perpetual enmity is mentioned in Amos 1:11. The historical disasters that have accompanied this vein of hatred are a pitiful example of how hatred, no matter what the source of it, in human hearts can produce disastrous results in the persons harboring the hatred. Christ himself has warned us, that "If we will not forgive those who trespass against us, God will not forgive us our trespasses!" (Matthew 6:14-15; 18:35).

"In the time of her calamity, in the time of the iniquity of the end ..." (Ezekiel 35:5). Plumptre has summarized the various opinions of scholars on what this means: Keil thought it meant the time of Judah's final transgression; Currey saw the meaning as the time when the capture of Jerusalem put an end to her iniquity;

Hengstenberg suggested that it was the time of the iniquity that brought on her end; and Ewald translated it, "At the time of her extremist punishment."[8]

The long hatred for Israel on the part of Edom led to their refusal of permission for Israel to pass through their land (Numbers 20:14-21); to their invasion of Judah (2 Chronicles 20:10-11); to their aiding Nebuchadnezzar in the overthrow of Jerusalem (Obadiah 1:1:13); and to the outrageous conduct of the Herods and their dynasty against the purposes of God during the days of Christ and the apostles. The Herods were Idumaeans (Edomites). See much more on this in Isaiah 34-43.

"Since thou hast not hated blood ..." (Ezekiel 35:6, KJV). Those who are still familiar with the KJV will no doubt wonder about the first word here. Sith is an Old English term that means since, or seeing that.