36:1-15 Those who put contempt and reproach on God's people, will have them turned on themselves. God promises favour to his Israel. We have no reason to complain, if the more unkind men are, the more kind God is. They shall come again to their own border. It was a type of the heavenly Canaan, of which all God's children are heirs, and into which they all shall be brought together. And when God returns in mercy to a people who return to him in duty, all their grievances will be set right. The full completion of this prophecy must be in some future event.
Yea, I will cause men to walk upon you,.... And not beasts, as during the captivity; and that without fear of wild beasts, or any enemy; and not as travellers upon them, but as inhabitants of them; who shall walk to and fro upon them, as the owners of them, and doing their proper business there:
even my people Israel; and them only: some read it, "with my people Israel" (i); as if other men, Gentiles called by grace, should dwell with the Jews at this time, particularly at their restoration in the latter day; which may be true, and, which seems to be the sense of the whole sixtieth chapter of Isaiah's prophecy:
and they shall possess thee, and thou shall be their inheritance; that is, thou mountain; a change of number, meaning everyone of the mountains, even the whole land of Canaan, which was given to the Israelites for an inheritance; and was typical of the eternal inheritance in heaven:
and thou shall no more henceforth bereave them; of men, or of children; or be no more the cause of their being childless, or of bereaving them of men; sins committed on the mountains being the cause of provoking the Lord to bereave them; or men should be no more killed upon them, as they had been.
(i) "cum populo meo Israele", Junius & Tremcellius.