Son of man, speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them, When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman:
Speak to the children of thy people - whom he had been forbidden to address, from Ezekiel 24:26-27, until Jerusalem was overthrown, and the "escaped" came with tidings of the judgment being completed. So now, in Ezekiel 33:21, the tidings of the fact having arrived, he opens his heretofore closed lips to the Jews. In the interval he had prophesied as to foreign nations. The former part of the chapter, from Ezekiel 33:2 to Ezekiel 33:20, seems to have been imparted to Ezekiel on the evening previous (Ezekiel 33:22), being a preparation for the latter part (Ezekiel 33:23-33) imparted after the tidings had come. This accounts for the first part standing without intimation of the date, which was properly reserved for the latter part, to which the former was the anticipatory introduction (Fairbairn).
If the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman. The first nine verses exhibit Ezekiel's office as a spiritual watchman; so in Ezekiel 3:16-21: only here the duties of the earthly watchman are detailed first, and then the application is made to the spiritual watchman's duty (cf. 2 Samuel 18:24-25; 2 Kings 9:17, "There stood a watchman on the tower in Jezreel, and he spied the company of Jehu as he came, and said, I see a company." Then as to the spiritual watchman, see Isaiah 21:6-10; Hosea 9:8; Habakkuk 2:1. "A man of their coasts" is a man specially chosen for the office out of their whole number. So Judges 18:2, "five men from their coasts;" also the Hebrew of Genesis 47:2 х miqtseeh (H7097) 'echaayw (H251)]: implying the care needed in the choice of the watchman, the spiritual as well as the temporal (Acts 1:21-22; Acts 1:24-26; 1 Timothy 5:22, "Lay hands suddenly on no man").