Ezekiel 18

Ezekiel 18:1-32 . THE PARABLE OF THE SOUR GRAPES REPROVED.

Vindication of God's moral government as to His retributive righteousness from the Jewish imputation of injustice, as if they were suffering, not for their own sin, but for that of their fathers. As in the seventeenth chapter he foretold Messiah's happy reign in Jerusalem, so now he warns them that its blessings can be theirs only upon their individually turning to righteousness.

2. fathers . . . eaten sour grapes, . . . children's teeth . . . set on edge--Their unbelieving calumnies on God's justice had become so common as to have assumed a proverbial form. The sin of Adam in eating the forbidden fruit, visited on his posterity, seems to have suggested the peculiar form; noticed also by Jeremiah ( Jeremiah 31:29 ); and explained in Lamentations 5:7 , "Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities." They mean by "the children," themselves, as though they were innocent, whereas they were far from being so. The partial reformation effected since Manasseh's wicked reign, especially among the exiles at Chebar, was their ground for thinking so; but the improvement was only superficial and only fostered their self-righteous spirit, which sought anywhere but in themselves the cause of their calamities; just as the modern Jews attribute their present dispersion, not to their own sins, but to those of their forefathers. It is a universal mark of corrupt nature to lay the blame, which belongs to ourselves, on others and to arraign the justice of God. Compare Genesis 3:12 , where Adam transfers the blame of his sin to Eve, and even to God, "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat."

3. ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb--because I will let it be seen by the whole world in the very fact that you are not righteous, as ye fancy yourselves, but wicked, and that you suffer only the just penalty of your guilt; while the elect righteous remnant alone escapes.

4. all souls are mine--Therefore I can deal with all, being My own creation, as I please ( Jeremiah 18:6 ). As the Creator of all alike I can have no reason, but the principle of equity, according to men's works, to make any difference, so as to punish some, and to save others ( Genesis 18:25 ). "The soul that sinneth it shall die." The curse descending from father to son assumes guilt shared in by the son; there is a natural tendency in the child to follow the sin of his father, and so he shares in the father's punishment: hence the principles of God's government, involved in Exodus 20:5 and Jeremiah 15:4 , are justified. The sons, therefore (as the Jews here), cannot complain of being unjustly afflicted by God ( Lamentations 5:7 ); for they filled up the guilt of their fathers ( Matthew 23:32 Matthew 23:34-36 ). The same God who "recompenses the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children," is immediately after set forth as "giving to every man according to his ways" ( Jeremiah 32:18 Jeremiah 32:19 ) which "visited the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation" (where the explanation is added, "of them that hate me," that is, the children hating God, as well as their fathers: the former being too likely to follow their parents, sin going down with cumulative force from parent to child), we find ( Deuteronomy 24:16 ), "the fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither the children for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin." The inherited guilt of sin in infants ( Romans 5:14 ) is an awful fact, but one met by the atonement of Christ; but it is of adults that he speaks here. Whatever penalties fall on communities for connection with sins of their fathers, individual adults who repent shall escape ( 2 Kings 23:25 2 Kings 23:26 ). This was no new thing, as some misinterpret the passage here; it had been always God's principle to punish only the guilty, and not also the innocent, for the sins of their fathers. God does not here change the principle of His administration, but is merely about to manifest it so personally to each that the Jews should no longer throw on God and on their fathers the blame which was their own.
soul that sinneth, it shall die--and it alone ( Romans 6:23 ); not also the innocent.