Ezekiel 18 - Introduction

The moral freedom and responsibility of the individual man before God

This great idea is expressed in two parts:

First, Ezekiel 18:1. The individual man is not involved in the sins and fate of his people or of his forefathers.

Secondly, Ezekiel 18:21. Neither does he lie under the ban of his own previous life. His moral freedom raises him above both.

The prophet as usual attaches himself to the ideas of Jeremiah, who had prophesied that in the ideal days to come, those of the New Covenant, the perfect future that was about to dawn upon men, they should no more say, "The fathers ate sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge," but every one should die for his own iniquity (ch. Jeremiah 31:29-30). The outlook of Ezekiel is also in some measure ideal, and the principles which he enunciates must be judged in this light (ch. 33). His purpose is in the main practical. He desires to lay a basis for his exhortation "Turn yourselves from all your transgressions" (Ezekiel 18:30). His exhortations are addressed to the individuals of the people, for he contemplates the end of the state and only individuals remain, and he has to face and settle questions that from the circumstances of the time had begun to exercise and perplex men's minds. The strokes that had fallen one after another upon the state might be deserved, when the state was considered a moral person that had sinned all through her history (ch. 16); but the calamities that were deserved by the general mass fell with a crushing weight on many who had not been partakers in the sins that brought them down. The captives carried away under Jehoiachin were more righteous than those still left to inherit the mountains of Israel; and compared with the dark days of Manasseh even the generation subject to Zedekiah might think themselves better men. Such reflections made the people feel themselves involved as by a kind of fate in the deeds of their forefathers, a feeling which found expression in the proverb, "The fathers ate sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." This proverb might express various feelings as it came from different mouths. It might be uttered by some in self-exculpation, and in a satisfied, self-righteous tone; or it might be the expression of a perplexed condition of mind, which found God's providence dark, and went so far as well nigh to arraign the divine rectitude; or finally it might express the feeling of lying under a hopeless fate inherited from the past a feeling which crushed out individual life and paralysed all personal effort after righteousness, and delivered over the mind to an inactivity of despair (ch. Ezekiel 33:10). These difficulties could not fail themselves to suggest their own solution. They were partly due to the consciousness, which circumstances were everywhere creating, of the worth of the individual soul; and their solution lay in pursuing this idea further and giving it clearer expression.

The prophet meets the state of the people's mind with two great principles from the mouth of the Lord: (1) "All souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine." Each soul is the Lord's, his relation to each is direct and immediate (Ezekiel 18:4). And (2) "I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth," saith the Lord (Ezekiel 18:23; Ezekiel 18:32).

And two conclusions follow from these principles: (1) "Each soul being immediately related to God, its destiny depends on this relation the soul that sinneth shall die;" and (2) "Wherefore, turn yourselves and live" (Ezekiel 18:32). The emancipation of the individual soul is complete.

First, Ezekiel 18:1. The individual soul shall not be involved in the sins and fate of its people or forefathers.

(1) Ezekiel 18:1. Introduction. The current proverb that the children suffer the consequences of the sins of their fathers (Ezekiel 18:1). Answer of Jehovah: All souls are mine. None shall answer for the sins of another the soul that sinneth shall die (Ezekiel 18:3).

(2) Ezekiel 18:6. Developement of this principle in three instances: first, a man who is upright, doing truth and righteousness this man shall live (Ezekiel 18:5). Secondly, if this righteous man beget a wicked son who doeth evil, this wicked son of a righteous father shall die (Ezekiel 18:10). Thirdly, but if this wicked son of a righteous father himself beget a son who, seeing the evil of his father, avoids it and acts righteously, this righteous son of an evil father shall live (Ezekiel 18:14). To restate the principle: the righteous shall live in his righteousness, and the wicked shall die in his own evil (Ezekiel 18:19).