If he beget a son that is a robber, a shedder of blood, and that doeth the like to any one of these things,
Ezekiel 18 stands as a vindication of divine fairness against the grievance that a wicked person who turns away from wrongdoing is set on equal footing with the righteous and his transgressions are remembered no more. The guilt described in the verse about a son who becomes a robber and a shedder of blood is personal and is punished personally. More broadly, the chapter lays down the general rule that divine dealings answer to each person's own conduct, so that wickedness brings judgment while turning from evil alters the threatened outcome.
The law's penalty of death falls only upon the impenitent sinner, while life is granted to the penitent person even when his father was wicked. If a righteous person turns from righteousness and commits iniquity, his former righteousness shall not be remembered and he shall die. In this setting, living and dying denote moral outcomes rather than whether a person continues to exist, since the wicked can turn and live and the righteous can turn and die without either undergoing natural death as a result.
The death so threatened is the second death by direct implication. One who dies in his iniquity suffers temporal death, which is dying in Adam, yet must still die for the iniquity he died in, and that is accomplished only in the second death. Thus dying in sin requires dying for sin, which requires a resurrection to life in order to die a second time. This same principle of conduct answered by judgment is applied to the scattering of a wicked people.
Ezekiel 18 stands as a vindication of divine fairness against the grievance that a wicked person who turns away from wrongdoing is set on equal footing with the righteous and his transgressions are remembered no more. The guilt described in the verse about a son who becomes a robber and a shedder of blood is personal and is punished personally. More broadly, the chapter lays down the general rule that divine dealings answer to each person's own conduct, so that wickedness brings judgment while turning from evil alters the threatened outcome.
The law's penalty of death falls only upon the impenitent sinner, while life is granted to the penitent person even when his father was wicked. If a righteous person turns from righteousness and commits iniquity, his former righteousness shall not be remembered and he shall die. In this setting, living and dying denote moral outcomes rather than whether a person continues to exist, since the wicked can turn and live and the righteous can turn and die without either undergoing natural death as a result.
The death so threatened is the second death by direct implication. One who dies in his iniquity suffers temporal death, which is dying in Adam, yet must still die for the iniquity he died in, and that is accomplished only in the second death. Thus dying in sin requires dying for sin, which requires a resurrection to life in order to die a second time. This same principle of conduct answered by judgment is applied to the scattering of a wicked people.