Ezekiel 18:13

Hath given forth upon usury, and hath taken increase: shall he then live? he shall not live: he hath done all these abominations; he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon him.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(13) Hath done all these abominations.—This expression is collective, while that in Ezekiel 18:10 is partitive. This is not because he who commits one sin is considered as having committed all, but because he who willingly commits any sin thereby puts himself into the class of sinners, of those who do not wish or intend to abide by the Divine will, but choose rather to do their own. Such a man places himself among the enemies of God. (Comp. James 2:10.)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

18:1-20 The soul that sinneth it shall die. As to eternity, every man was, is, and will be dealt with, as his conduct shows him to have been under the old covenant of works, or the new covenant of grace. Whatever outward sufferings come upon men through the sins of others, they deserve for their own sins all they suffer; and the Lord overrules every event for the eternal good of believers. All souls are in the hand of the great Creator: he will deal with them in justice or mercy; nor will any perish for the sins of another, who is not in some sense worthy of death for his own. We all have sinned, and our souls must be lost, if God deal with us according to his holy law; but we are invited to come to Christ. If a man who had shown his faith by his works, had a wicked son, whose character and conduct were the reverse of his parent's, could it be expected he should escape the Divine vengeance on account of his father's piety? Surely not. And should a wicked man have a son who walked before God as righteous, this man would not perish for his father's sins. If the son was not free from evils in this life, still he should be partaker of salvation. The question here is not about the meritorious ground of justification, but about the Lord's dealings with the righteous and the wicked.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Live ... die - In the writings of Ezekiel there is a development of the meaning of "life" and "death." In the holy land the sanctions of divine government were in great degree temporal; so that the promise of "life" for "obedience," the threatening of "death" for "disobedience," in the Books of Moses, were regarded simply as temporal and national. In their exile this could not continue in its full extent, and the universality of the misfortune necessarily made men look deeper into the words of God. The word "soul" denotes a "person" viewed as an "individual," possessing the "life" which God breathed into man when he became a "living soul" Genesis 2:7; i. e., it distinguishes "personality" from "nationality," and this introduces that fresh and higher idea of "life" and "death," which is not so much "life" and "death" in a future state, as "life" and "death" as equivalent to communion with or separation from God - that idea of life and death which was explained by our Lord in the Gospel of John John 8, and by Paul in Romans 8.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

13. shall he … live?—because of the merits of his father; answering, by contrast, to "die for the iniquity of his father" (Eze 18:17).

his blood shall be upon him—The cause of his bloody death shall rest with himself; God is not to blame, but is vindicated as just in punishing him.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

See Ezekiel 18:8.

Shall he then live? Do you think his father’s righteousness shall preserve him from the punishment his own unrighteousness deserveth, my law threateneth, and my justice inflicteth? Shall he not with other sinners be spoiled, besieged, die by the sword or famine, or languish in a long captivity, and there die?

He shall not live; a decisive answer to the former question; such a one shall not prosper, nor long escape the strokes of my justice; and the answer is parallel with that Ezekiel 17:10.

He hath done all these abominations; is personally involved in the sins which are worthy of death, and which are so expressly threatened by law and prophets.

Done; not only winked at, or not hindered, but hath been a forward, voluntary, active doer of them.

All these that are here, and elsewhere in this prophet, and in others, charged on the Jews as the cause of their calamities at this day.

Abominations; great enormities, sins to be abominated and hated, not practised and justified by shameless sinners.

He shall surely die; most certainly die; or if you suppose such a one finally impenitent, he shall surely die under temporal judgments, and so by the first death fall under the second death also: dying he shall die; a Hebrew phrase, and very full.

His blood shall be upon him; Heb. it is plural, bloods: both the blood of the innocent which he murdered, and his own blood, which thereby he forfeited, the blood of his own soul and life, that is, the whole blame of his misery in time and eternity, shall lie upon himself, who brought all those sorrows on himself by his own wickednesses.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Hath given forth upon usury, and hath taken increase,.... Contrary to the law of God; See Gill on Ezekiel 18:8;

shall he then live? by virtue of his father's righteousness and goodness, free from calamities, and in the quiet possession of the land of Israel, and the good things of it:

he shall not live; but go into captivity, and be destitute of the good things of life he has enjoyed; and, without repentance, shall never have eternal life:

he hath done all these abominations; before mentioned; theft, murder, idolatry, adultery, oppression of the poor, and usury, sins against both tables of the law:

he shall surely die; the death of affliction, or undergo temporal punishment; and not only die corporeally, but eternally too, if grace prevent not: "in dying he shall die" (f); as in the Hebrew text; he shall die both the first and second death; his father's goodness shall not save him from either:

his blood shall be upon him; or "bloods" (g); the innocent blood he has shed, which he must answer for being guilty of, and shall not escape righteous judgment, and his own blood, the destruction of himself; he shall be the cause of his own ruin, and bring just punishment on his own head.

(f) "moriendo morietur", Pagninus, Montanus. (g) "sanguines ejus", Montanus.

Geneva Study Bible

Hath given forth upon interest, and hath taken increase: shall he then live? he shall not live: he hath done all these abominations; {c} he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon him.

(c) He shows how the son is punished for his father's sin: that is, if he is wicked as his father was and does not repent, he will be punished as his father was, or else not.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

13. shall surely die] The formula common in the law, “shall surely be put to death,” Leviticus 20:11; Exodus 21:15; Exodus 22:18.

his blood … upon him] He shall suffer the death due to his own deeds, ch. Ezekiel 33:4; Leviticus 20:9; 2 Samuel 1:16.

Ezekiel 18:14-20. Third link in the chain of illustration: this unrighteous man on the other hand begets a son who, seeing his father’s iniquities, is deterred by them and lives righteously. This son shall not die for the sins of his father, but live because of his own righteousness.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 13. - One holes the special emphasis, first of the question, and then of the direct negative, as though that, in the judgment alike of God and man, was the only answer that could be given to it in the very words of the Law (Leviticus 20:9, 11, 13). Ezekiel 18:13

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The righteousness of the father does not protect the wicked, unrighteous son from death. - Ezekiel 18:10. If, however, he begetteth a violent son, who sheddeth blood, and doeth only one of these things, Ezekiel 18:11. But he himself hath not done all this, - if he even eateth upon the mountains, and defileth his neighbour's wife, Ezekiel 18:12. Oppresseth the suffering and poor, committeth robbery, doth not restore a pledge, lifteth up his eyes to idols, committeth abomination, Ezekiel 18:13. Giveth upon usury, and taketh interest: should he live? He shall not live! He hath done all these abominations; he shall be put to death; his blood shall be upon him. - The subject to והוליד, in Ezekiel 18:10, is the righteous man described in the preceding verses. פּריץ, violent, literally, breaking in or through, is rendered more emphatic by the words "shedding blood" (cf. Hosea 4:2). We regard אח in the next clause as simply a dialectically different form of writing and pronouncing, for אך, "only," and he doeth only one of these, the sins previously mentioned (Ezekiel 18:6.). מאחד, with a partitive מן, as in Leviticus 4:2, where it is used in a similar connection; the form מאחד is also met with in Deuteronomy 15:7. The explanation given by the Targum, "and doeth one of these to his brother," is neither warranted by the language nor commended by the sense. עשׂה is never construed with the accusative of the person to whom anything is done; and the limitation of the words to sins against a brother is unsuitable in this connection. The next clause, לא עשׂה...והוּא, which has also been variously rendered, we regard as an adversative circumstantial clause, and agree with Kliefoth in referring it to the begetter (father): "and he (the father) has not committed any of these sins." For it yields no intelligible sense to refer this clause also to the son, since כּל־אלּה cannot possibly refer to different things from the preceding מאלּה, and a man cannot at the same time both do and not do the same thing. The כּי which follows signifies "if," as is frequently the case in the enumeration of particular precepts or cases; compare, for example, Exodus 21:1, Exodus 21:7,Exodus 21:17, etc., where it is construed with the imperfect, because the allusion is to things that may occur. Here, on the contrary, it is followed by the perfect, because the sins enumerated are regarded as committed. The emphatic גּם (even) forms an antithesis to אח מאחד (אך), or rather an epanorthosis of it, inasmuch as כּי גּם resumes and carries out still further the description of the conduct of the wicked son, which was interrupted by the circumstantial clause; and that not only in a different form, but with a gradation in the thought. The thought, for instance, is as follows: the violent son of a righteous father, even if he has committed only one of the sins which the father has not committed, shall die. And if he has committed even the gross sins named, viz., idolatry, adultery, violent oppression of the poor, robbery, etc., should he then continue to live? The ו in וחי introduces the apodosis, which contains a question, that is simply indicated by the tone, and is immediately denied. The antique form חי for חיּה, 3rd pers. perf., is taken from the Pentateuch (cf. Genesis 3:22 and Numbers 21:8). The formulae מות יוּמת and דּמיו בּו dna are also derived from the language of the law (cf. Leviticus 20:9, Leviticus 20:11, Leviticus 20:13, etc.).