Ezekiel 12:1 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The word of the Lord also came, &c. This is supposed to have happened in the sixth year of Zedekiah, and five years before the siege of Jerusalem: and the prophecies contained in the following Chapter s, to the twentieth, are thought to be of the same year. Thou dwellest in the midst of a rebellious house “He was among them of the captivity in Chaldea, as appears from Ezekiel 12:10; Ezekiel 11:24; Ezekiel 14:22, and Ezekiel 24:2. And these seem to have disbelieved the prophecies that Jerusalem should be smitten and burned, and its inhabitants scattered abroad: see Ezekiel 4:2; Ezekiel 9:5; Ezekiel 10:2; Ezekiel 11:9.” Newcome. They saw Jerusalem still inhabited, and under the government of its own king. And as they who were left in Judea thought themselves much more highly in God's favour than those who had been carried away captives, so those who had been made captives repined at their lot, and thought those who remained in their own country were in a much better condition than themselves; therefore the following symbolical representations were designed to show, that they who were left behind, to endure the miseries of a siege, and the insults of a conqueror, would be in a much worse condition than those who were already settled in a foreign land: see Lowth. Which have eyes to see, and see not, &c. Who will not make use of that sense and understanding which God has given them, nor learn from those examples and incidents which have happened, and by which God intended they should be instructed.