18:1–4 The prophets were regularly called upon to address and counteract contemporary sayings of the people. Indeed, the book of Malachi is entirely structured around the people’s sayings and the Lord’s responses. These sayings were often either proverbial or proverb-like: brief assertions about the ordering of the world, often in direct contradiction to the Lord’s Word. For example, in Malachi 2:17 the people are saying, “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and he delights in them.” To the contrary, Psalm 5:4 asserts, “You are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you.”

In Ezekiel’s case the proverb (Hb. mashal; cf. Ezek. 17:2) being widely disseminated is this: “The fathers have eaten sour grapes,133 and the children’s teeth are set on edge” (18:2). That is, the children suffer the consequences of their parents’ bad choices, even though they themselves have done nothing to deserve it. This proverb evidently has currency not only among the exiles but also among those who remain behind in Judah, as Jeremiah also has cause to address it (Jer. 31:29–30; cf. Lam. 5:7). The Chronicler also counters the same perspective with his stress on the theology of immediate retribution, in which he highlights the way in which good kings prosper and wicked kings suffer the consequences of their actions.134 In fact, in many ways the Chronicler’s emphasis dovetails closely with Ezekiel 18, not least in his stress on the importance of repentance.

The exilic generation is experiencing God’s judgment in the form of the Babylonian invasion, but it is blaming its forefathers in previous generations for its fate. This not only removes any responsibility from the exiles but also takes away any hope of change in the situation. It is not surprising that Ezekiel’s fellow exiles might be drawn to this conclusion, given the emphasis that finds expression in Kings on the long history of Israel’s sins that have piled up over many generations, leading to exile.135 Kings traces the causes of the exile back through many of the kings of Israel and Judah to Solomon’s own failures in building temples for the gods of his various foreign wives (1 Kings 11). Manasseh’s sins in particular are singled out as being so bad that from his time on it seemed that exile was inevitable (2 Kings 21:11–15). The point stressed by the writer of Kings is that the Lord’s abandonment of his people is not a capricious or thoughtless action; it has been precipitated by generation after generation of covenant breaking. But it is easy to see how that thought might provide illegitimate comfort for the generation upon whom the exile descends, tempting them to shift the blame away from themselves onto the heads of others. It is this tendency that the prophet is told to address.

In contrast to the popular proverb, the Lord asserts that all generations belong to him and are therefore accountable to him and will be judged by him. What is more, no one dies undeservedly because of the sins of another. This judicial principle is asserted in Deuteronomy 24:16: “Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.” The Lord is more just than human judges; no one will ultimately have cause to complain of the unfairness of the Lord’s verdict, or that he suffered for someone else’s actions. This does not let Ezekiel’s generation off the hook, however. Rather, “the soul who sins shall die” (Ezek. 18:4). The exiles themselves have incurred more than sufficient guilt to account for their fate. Yet this chapter is not simply a general defense of the Lord’s justice; it is specific pastoral wisdom for Ezekiel’s audience and others like them who suffer great tragedies not to blame others for their sufferings but instead to recognize in them the call to repent and turn from their sins and find life (cf. Luke 13:1–5).

18:5–9 The first generation in Ezekiel’s priestly case study136 concerns a man who is deemed “righteous”—he lives faithfully to his covenant commitments when measured against a basic checklist of moral behaviors that reflect his piety, chastity, and charity. He does not “eat upon the mountains” (the idolatrous high places), nor does he lift up his soul to Israel’s idols (Ezek. 18:6). He does not defile his neighbor’s wife or approach a woman in her time of menstrual impurity (v. 6).137 He does not oppress anyone. Specifically, he returns objects given to him in pledge—not just at the end of the loan period, but also by returning each night the outer garment of a poor man who uses it as his pledge so that he has something in which to sleep. Instead of robbing people, he generously feeds the hungry and clothes the naked (v. 7) while refraining from taking interest or profit from the needy (cf. Lev. 25:36–37). As a general summary, he refrains from injustice and pursues true justice between his neighbors, walks in the Lord’s statutes, and keeps his rules. He acts faithfully, in contrast to the behavior described in Ezekiel 16–17. Such a righteous person deserves to live, declares the Lord (18:9). This is not a pronouncement of absolute moral perfection, of course. It is a judicial declaration—he is not subject to covenant curse.

18:10–13 The next generation is different, however. The man’s son rejects everything his father stands for, embracing the entire catalog of sins his father abhorred. His creed is an apostate version of Psalm 121 (“I lift my eyes to the high places. From where does my help come? My help comes from the idols of the house of Israel”).138 His behavior matches his creed as a comprehensive rejection of Yahwism, plunging into every forbidden action with abandon. This is clearly an extreme example of wickedness, but the point is simply to ask this: what does such a person deserve? If the righteous covenant-keeper deserved to live, then this man is equally clearly subject to the judicial decree of death (Ezek. 18:13). No one else is to blame for his fate—in terms of the original proverb, he has eaten the sour grapes, and so his blood is on his own head.

18:14–20 In the third generation, though, there is another turn. The grandson sees and rejects his father’s godlessness, returning to the ways of his godly grandfather, embracing piety, chastity, and charity. What sentence should be decreed for him? If the proverb quoted by the people is true, he should suffer for his father’s sin, while his wicked father should prosper on account of his father’s faithfulness. Ezekiel rejects this notion. The grandson should live, in accordance with his own faithful behavior, while his father should die for his own covenant-breaking unfaithfulness (vv. 17–18).

Ezekiel then envisages a hypothetical objection from someone committed to the original proverb: “What! Does the son not share the guilt of the father?” (v. 19).139 But the objection is so obviously unfounded that it proves the absurdity of the original claim. Clearly, the grandson does not share the guilt of his father; his whole life has consistently followed a different course from that of his father. How can he share guilt for action that he has not only not committed but has thoroughly repudiated? No one could dispute the prophet’s conclusion: “The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son” (v. 20). Of course, the implication of the conclusion in the exiles’ own situation is inescapable also: if the soul that sins is the one who dies, then this generation that is suffering the death of the exile must itself be as guilty as the preceding ones (as 20:30–32 makes explicit). The picture in this case is not alternating righteous and unrighteous generations but consistently unrighteous generations, one following the other in a depressing succession. Since in the current case the sons share the iniquity of their fathers, they can hardly complain about God’s injustice in judging them.

18:21–24 But if God is justly judging Ezekiel’s hearers for their own sins and has turned them over to the death of exile, then what hope is there? If they are a doomed generation by God’s just decree, what else is there to do but to eat, drink, and be merry in the time that remains? This is the question that Ezekiel addresses in the remainder of the chapter, by means of another pair of case studies.

The first case envisages a wicked person who repents and changes his ways. Such a person is not trapped by his former status; he shall live and not die (v. 21). The Lord is a God of grace and mercy who delights in welcoming the repentant sinner, not a harsh and unyielding God who delights in the death of the wicked (cf. Ex. 34:6–7). Yet God is not soft on sin, either. The formerly righteous person who abandons his righteous ways and chooses the pathway of wickedness instead cannot presume on the Lord’s favor. Right standing before God is not about acquiring a positive balance of merit, in which the good a person does is weighed against the bad and an overall positive score is all that is required. Rather, it is the outcome of one’s present actions: faith, which issues in repentance and obedience, leads to life; unbelief, demonstrated by its own ugly fruits, leads to death. Apostasy remains a fearful possibility, but the focus of the passage is on the former option (cf. Heb. 6:4–10).

18:25–32 Despite the Lord’s gracious character as a forgiving God who deals with each generation on its own merits, the exiles apparently persist in saying that “The way of the Lord is not just” (Ezek. 18:25). In reality the problem is the reverse—it is the people whose ways are not just. Although the Lord is faithful to judge the unfaithful, he is also swift to forgive the sinner who turns to him. The Lord will certainly be their just judge, dealing with each with perfect fairness according to his or her ways (v. 30). Since this is so, and since the exiles are all as wicked as their fathers, their only hope is to turn away from their former transgressions, repent, and acquire for themselves140 a new heart and new spirit (v. 31). Death is not the inevitable outcome of their lives, though it will be if they continue on the same path as before. There is still time for them to return to the God of all grace and to live (v. 32).

If the exiles do repent, God will give them what he has already promised: a new heart and a new spirit (11:19). There is no tension between the prophet’s calling upon the hearers to acquire a new heart and a new spirit and the Lord’s promise to give them those things. The same rhetorical device is found in Deuteronomy, where Moses tells the people both to circumcise their hearts (Deut. 10:16) and that God will circumcise their hearts (Deut. 30:6). God will act faithfully on his promises and carry through to completion in us the good work he has begun, which is marked by our repentance and turning to him. Everything in this chapter—the case studies, the declaration of God’s justice, the statement of God’s mercy—leads to the prophet’s passionate appeal to his hearers to choose life and live through the pathway of repentance and change (cf. Deut. 30:15–20).