And they shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden; and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are become fenced, and are inhabited.

They shall say: This land that was untilled is become as a garden of pleasure: and the cities that were abandoned, and desolate, and destroyed, are peopled and fenced.

And they shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden; and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are fenced and inhabited.

And they have said: This land, that was desolated, Hath been as the garden of Eden, And the cities, the wasted, And the desolated, and the broken down, Fenced places have remained.

And they will say, This land which was waste has become like the garden of Eden; and the towns which were unpeopled and wasted and pulled down are walled and peopled.

They shall say, 'This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden; and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are fortified and inhabited.'

then they shall say: 'This uncultivated land has become a garden of delight, and the cities, which were deserted and destitute and overturned, have been settled and fortified.'

This land that was desolate by sin, is become like the garden of Eden by righteousness - Satan's blast is removed; God's blessing has taken place.

And they shall say,.... Either the neighbouring nations that lived round about the land of Israel, Ezekiel 36:36, or rather the travellers, as before, who having as they passed by observed what it had been, and now see what it is; these shall say to one another:
this land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden; for delight and fruitfulness: this may well be applied to the flourishing and fruitful state of the church of God, consisting of converted Jews, in the latter day:
and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are become fenced, and are inhabited; which, as it will be true of cities in a literal sense, so of the churches of Christ in Judea in a spiritual sense; which will be rebuilt by the grace of God, fenced and fortified by his almighty power, and inhabited by true believers.

they shall say--The heathen, who once made Israel's desolation a ground of reproach against the name of Jehovah Himself (Ezekiel 36:20-21); but now He so vindicates its sanctity (Ezekiel 36:22-23) that these same heathen are constrained to acknowledge Israel's more than renewed blessedness to be God's own work, and a ground for glorifying His name (Ezekiel 36:36).
Eden--as Tyre (the type of the world powers in general: so Assyria, a cedar "in the garden of God, Eden," Ezekiel 31:8-9), in original advantages, had been compared to "Eden, the garden of God" (Ezekiel 28:13), from which she had fallen irrecoverably; so Israel, once desolate, is to be as "the garden of Eden" (Isaiah 51:3), and is to be so unchangeably.

And they - Strangers, or foreigners.