Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: The connector therefore introduces God’s judgment here as a response to the insults of Israel’s neighbors. For thus says the Lord GOD, see Ezek 36.2.

I swear that the nations that are round about you shall themselves suffer reproach: The Hebrew expression for I swear is literally “I lift my hand,” which means God makes a “solemn promise” (Contemporary English Version; similarly Good News Translation), not that he used bad language. Some translations reflect the Hebrew idiom of raising the right hand while swearing an oath, as happens in many law courts today; for example, King James Version says “I have lifted up mine hand,” Revised English Bible has “I swear with uplifted hand,” and New Living Translation (1996) translates “I have raised my hand and sworn an oath.” It is best not to try to retain the Hebrew gesture, but rather to give the meaning or to use an equivalent local gesture for swearing an oath or making a promise (see the comments on 20.5 for help on how to translate this expression). For the nations that are round about you shall themselves suffer reproach, see the previous verse. The punishment that God will bring on Israel’s surrounding nations will be insults and humiliation equal to what they did to Israel (see the comments on 35.11, 15). One way to express this sentence is “I solemnly promise that the nations that surround you will be the ones that people will insult and humiliate.”

Quoted with permission from Gross, Carl & Stine, Philip C. A Handbook on Ezekiel. (UBS Helps for Translators). Miami: UBS, 2016. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .