Deuteronomy 24:16

Responsibility for Crime is Individual. The opposition of this principle to that which prevailed in many ancient nations (Herod. iii. 119, Esther 9:13 f., Daniel 6:24 (25)), and which seems to have prevailed in Israel (JE, Joshua 7:24; 2 Kings 9:26, cp. Deuteronomy 14:6), when the family was regarded as a moral unit, and the children were put to death with their father in expiation of his crime, is very striking, and the more so that the ethical solidarity of the nation is so constantly assumed by D. It has therefore been doubted whether the law belonged originally to D. Some take it as dependent on Jeremiah 31:29, or Ezekiel 18 on the ground that the principle of individual responsibility is there proclaimed as if for the first time, in opposition to the older ideas. But 2 Kings 14:6 records that Amaziah when putting to death the assassins of his father did not also slay their children apparently an innovation on the usual practice. The deuteronomic editor of Kings quotes D's law as the King's authority for his clemency. But general laws so often rose from individual cases that it is possible that this law (which is not found in any other code) was the result of Amaziah's innovating example, and is, therefore, one of the several incorporated by D from earlier sources. Note that it is not in the direct form of address nor otherwise deuteronomic in its phrasing. See further Jerus.ii. 113 ff.