“Thus shall you say to them, Thus says the Lord Yahweh, Surely those who are in the waste places will fall by the sword, and he who is in the open field will I give to the beasts to be devoured, and those who are in the strongholds and in the caves will die of pestilence, and I will make the land a desolation and an astonishment, and the pride of her power will cease, and the mountains of Israel will be desolate, that none pass through.”
This is a vivid picture of the situation in the land. Those in waste places were those trying to reclaim the land that had been wasted by war, they would fall by the sword in civil war; those in the open fields probably scavenged for food and were themselves regularly attacked by hungry and scavenging beasts who had moved in to an area made empty of man; those in the strongholds had found refuge in holes and ruins in the devastated strongholds, those in the caves had returned to primitive ways of living. Both the latter would suffer pestilence because of the conditions. Thus the land would be desolated, an astonishment to all round about. ‘The pride of her power' (Ezekiel 7:24; Ezekiel 30:6), the authorities in the land, will be no more. The mountains will be empty and desolate, peopled no more.