Ezekiel 33:1-6

1-6. This command came the evening before the messenger arrived announcing the fall of Jerusalem (Ezekiel 33:21-22). For two years Ezekiel had been unable to speak to the people, and had spent his time in writing prophecies against foreign nations, but now he is commanded to speak, which must have been certain proof to him that information of the city’s fall was about to arrive. (See Ezekiel 24:26.) He seeks now to prepare the people for this awful news. He points out that it was not lack of patriotism and sympathy, but a grave and urgent sense of duty, which had led him to blow the trumpet of warning. (Compare Hosea 8:1; Habakkuk 2:1; Jeremiah 6:6; Jeremiah 4:5.) The spirit of the people (Ezekiel 33:10, compare Ezekiel 24:23) indicates that the rumor of this awful disaster had reached them even before the direct messenger to Ezekiel arrived. 7-9. Compare Ezekiel 3:17-21. The out-ward imagery vanishes in Ezekiel 33:7. It is of no Chaldean invader that the prophet had to give warning, but of each man’s own special sin, which was bringing ruin upon himself and on his country (Plumptre).