Charles Ellicott Commentary Ezekiel 33:24

"Son of man, they that inhabit those waste places in the land of Israel speak, saying, Abraham was one, and he inherited the land: but we are many; the land is given us for inheritance." — Ezekiel 33:24 (ASV)

Inhabit those wastes. —It is said in 2 Kings 25:12, 2 Kings 25:22, and Jeremiah 52:16, that the poor of the people were left in the land for vine-dressers and for husbandmen, and that these were joined by fugitive Jews from Moab and Ammon and other places. It is to these that the present part of this prophecy (Ezekiel 33:23–29) is addressed, and it is plain that the murder of Gedaliah, and consequent flight into Egypt, had not yet taken place.

Abraham was one ... we are many.—The argument used by these people was a simple one: the land was promised to Abraham and his seed in perpetuity. He was but one, and the promise was fulfilled; we, his seed, are many, and it cannot fail us. This disposition to rely upon their descent from Abraham was characteristic of the Jews in all ages (see Matthew 3:9 and John 8:33-39). The same tendency to trust in the external privileges given them tends to be found in all ages among those whose hearts are alienated from God.

These Jews, to avoid the force of the prophet’s reproofs, passed from one subterfuge to another. First it was that God would not abandon His holy city and Temple; then that the judgments were so far in the future that they need cause no present alarm; now, when these warnings had all been fulfilled, they clung to the fact that the land was theirs by promise, forgetting the conditions which had been attached from the first to its enjoyment.