Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Ezekiel 18:23
Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord GOD: [and] not that he should return from his ways, and live?
23. The verse meets a feeling of despair both in regard to themselves and in regard to God which was beginning to take possession of the minds of some, perhaps many, among the people. The despair in regard to themselves is seen in ch. Eze 33:10-11, “We pine away in our iniquities, how should we live?” and the despair in regard to God, which is but another side of that in regard to themselves, is expressed in such passages as Lam 3:42-44, “We have rebelled and thou hast not pardoned Thou hast covered thyself with a cloud that our prayer should not pass through.” The Lord had brought the evil on them which he had purposed (Lam 2:8; Lam 2:17), and it was final (Lam 2:9). The same despondency, though softened in some measure by the lapse of time, appears in another prophet, Isa 40:27-31; Isa 49:14, “Zion hath said, The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me.” So long as the state existed the covenant might also be thought to remain, and the prophets could sustain the hearts of men by reminding them that the Lord was their God; but when the state fell and Israel was no more to appearance the people of Jehovah, they had to go behind the covenant and fall back on that unchanging nature of Jehovah which originated the covenant that mercy which endureth for ever. The prevailing disposition of the mind of Jehovah was towards the salvation of men.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Eze 18:23
Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die?
A summons to repentance
If we spare not our sins, but slay them with the sword of the Spirit, God will spare us. The words are uttered by a figurative interrogation, in which there is more evidence and efficacy, more life and convincing force. For it is as if He had said, Know ye not that I have no such desire? or think ye that I have any desire? or dare it enter into your thoughts that I take any pleasure at all in the death of a sinner? When the interrogation is figurative the rule is, that if the question be affirmative, the answer to it must be negative; but if the question be negative, the answer must be affirmative. For example: Who is like unto the Lord? the meaning is, none is like unto the Lord. Whom have I in heaven but Thee? that is, I have none in heaven but Thee. On the other side, when the question is negative, the answer must be affirmative; as: Are not the angels ministering spirits? that is, the angels are ministering spirits; and, Shall the Son of man find faith? that is, the Son of man shall not find faith. Here, then, apply the rule, and shape a negative answer to the first member being affirmative, thus: I have no desire that a sinner should die; and an affirmative answer to the negative member, thus: I have a desire that the wicked should return and five; and ye have the true meaning and natural exposition of this verse. But here some cast a dark mist, which hath caused many to lose their way. How (say they) do we maintain that God desireth not the death of a sinner, who before all time decreed death for sin, and sin for death? This mist in part is dispelled by distinguishing of three sorts of Gods decrees–
1. There is an absolute decree and resolute purpose of God, for those things which He determineth shall be.
2. There is a decree of mandate, or at least a warrant for those things which He desireth should be.
3. There is a decree of permission for such things, as if He powerfully stop them not, will be. Of the first kind of decree or will of God, we are to understand those words of the Psalmist (Psa 135:6), and of our Saviour (Joh 17:24). To the second we are to refer those words of the apostle (Rom 9:19; Eph 1:5; 1Ti 2:4; 2Pe 3:9; 1Th 4:3; Rom 12:2). If ye rightly apply these distinctions, ye may without great difficulty loosen the knots above tied: the first whereof was, whether God decreed sin original or actual. Ye may answer according to the former distinctions, that He decreed effectually all the good that is joined with it, or may come by it, or it may occasion; but He decreed permissively only the obliquity or malignity thereof: He neither doth it, nor approveth of it when it is done, but only permitteth it and taketh advantage of it for the manifestation of His justice.
To the second question, which toucheth the apple of the eye of this text, whether God decreeth the death of any? ye may answer briefly, that He doth not decree it any way for itself, as it is the destruction of His creature, or a temporal or eternal torment thereof; but as it is a manifestation of His justice.
1. Doth God take no pleasure in the death of the wicked that daily transgresseth His law, ungraciously abuse His mercy, and slightly regard His judgments? Doth He use all good means to reclaim them, and save them from wrath to come? Is the life of every man so precious in His eyes? Doth He esteem of it as a rich jewel engraven with His own image? How careful, then, and chary ought we to be, who are put in trust with it (locked up in the casket of our body), that we lose it not.
2. If judges, and all those who sit upon life and death, did enter into a serious consideration thereof, they would not so easily (as sometimes they do) cast away a thing that is so precious, much less receive the price of blood.
3. If a malefactor arraigned at the bar of justice should perceive by any speech, gesture, sign, or token, an inclination in the judge to mercy, how would he work upon this advantage?–what suit? what means would he make for his life? how would he importune all his friends to entreat for him? how would he fall down upon his knees and beseech the judge for the mercies of God to be good unto him? Ho, all ye that have guilty consciences, and are privy to yourselves of many capital crimes, though peradventure no other can appeach you! behold, the Judge of all flesh makes an overture of mercy, He bewrayeth more than a propension or inclination, He discovereth a desire to save you! Why do ye not make means unto Him? Why do ye not appeal from the bar of His justice to His throne of grace? Why do ye not fly from Him, as He is a terrible Judge? to Him, as He is a merciful Father? (D. Featly, D. D.)
God and the soul
One of the masters of Old Testament theology, a student of singular nobility of mind and penetration of judgment, Dr. A.B. Davidson, has said of this and of the kindred 33rd chapter: Perhaps there are hardly any more important passages in the Old Testament than those two chapters of Ezekiel. And why? Because, as he says, there we may say that we see the birth of the individual mind taking place before our eyes. It was the first, or one of the first, assertions of the truth that man is more than the circumstances of which he is a part; that in Gods sight he stands single and free. We can best understand the force of this particular chapter if we remember the historical circumstances out of which it came. Nebuchadnezzar, the ruthless conqueror, had laid waste Jerusalem. He carried away all Jerusalem, and all the princes, and all the mighty men of valour, and all the craftsmen, and none remained save the poorest of the people of the land. That band of exiles, among whom was the young Ezekiel, was carried to Babylon, and there the best of them lay astonished at the crushing blow which God had dealt to them. Jerusalem, the inviolable hill of Jehovah, spoiled and degraded, within eleven years laid waste and desolate, abandoned of God. It seemed to them that they were involved in the punishment of the sins of their fathers. There could be no escape, no penitence in the land of their exile could disentangle their souls from the ruin in which the sins of their forefathers had engulfed them. It was natural that their thoughts should run in such a channel. Hebrew religion tended to merge, the individual in the state or family. The covenant of God was made not with the individual so much as with the State. The dealings and punishments of God with His people embraced not only the person, but his whole family, to the third and fourth generation; and so it seemed to them that they could not, for all their anguish, escape the consequences of their fathers sins. It was the object of Ezekiel to lift the burden of despair from his fellow exiles. He discerned in the very breaking up of the national life a call to the individual to become deeper and more personal in his obedience and faith. He sought to disentangle the person from the nation and the family, to make him realise his own freedom and separate responsibility in the sight of God. God is sovereign over the dispensations of His own laws. He treats every man, at every moment, precisely as that man is by virtue of his own separate and solitary responsibility. Man is free morally, whatever the chain that may bind him to his ancestors. God is free morally, and judges every man by virtue of that freedom. But the prophet carried the truth a stage further. Among these exiles there were doubtless individual men and women who felt that the chain that bound them, bound them to an irreversible destiny, was not the chain of their fathers sins, but of the sins they themselves had committed. They remembered the law of Jehovah which they had despised, the worship of their fathers in the temple, which they had ignored or polluted by their idolatry. It seemed to them that their cup was full; they could not escape the punishment of the sins of the past. They were shut up to the impotence of unavailing remorse. To them the prophets message was like that which he gave to his community. He reminded each of them that still, in spite of their sins and shortcomings, there was within a separate life, a freedom which could arise from the past impenitence and return, and that matching that freedom there was also the sovereign grace of Almighty God. That was the prophets message to his own day. I wonder if any of you have discerned with what singular force it applies to our own? The place which was taken when Ezekiel wrote, by the customary habits and traditions and principles of Hebrew religion, is taken today by the characteristic teaching of modern science. The old words of the covenant of Gods punishment of men to the third and fourth generation have given place to the new words of heredity and environment. But the principle is the same. Science has been teaching us wonderfully, beautifully, terribly, with what a subtlety and closeness of tie we are bound through our brains and bodies to the ancestors from whom we sprang, the circumstances under which we live, the progeny which we leave behind us; we know that our character is the product of a thousand influences of climate, of scenery, of sights and sounds, of food, of tendencies in the blood, of faculties and perversions of the brain, and we accept the truth. It gives a very wonderful and real, as well as a very solemn, aspect to this universe of which we are part. We build upon it. It is the truth that is the main-spring of all our zeal for education, of all our efforts for social reform; to that truth we turn when we wish to measure the fulness of our social responsibility. But is it the last and only word? Is man nothing but the product of these circumstances, the creature of invisible laws? If it be so, then before long we may come to that feeling of despair which lay upon the breast of these exiles of Jerusalem. We must balance that truth with the other which Ezekiel recovered for his contemporaries–the truth that mans nature, though it is inwoven by the influences of blood and surroundings, yet has within it a personal life higher than, and apart from, that nature. It is free–it is capable, when aroused, of moulding that nature to its own will. God Himself is something more than an union of irreversible and irresistible laws. He is, He remains, a sovereign moral Personality, caring as a Father for the children that He has made, knowing them as individuals, dealing with them man by man in the separateness of their own single freedom and responsibility. I ask you to consider the basis which Ezekiel is teaching us in its reference to our lives as members of a community and as personal beings.
1. First of all, there is a message to us as members of a community. Sometimes the Hebrew took joy from the thought that he was bound with his fathers and children in the bonds of the covenant of the will of God. And sometimes we take joy in the thought that we are bound together by those subtle and intricate ties to the nature which surrounds us, and to our fellow beings in long distances of the past and future. But when the Hebrew realised Gods punishment in the waste of Jerusalem, he was filled with the chill of despair. No doubt, for a time, the thought that man is the product of his circumstances fills us with the energy of reform. It makes us, perhaps, with even greater zest, turn to every effort to improve the condition of the environment of the people. But when we try, how long the task seems, how thick and obstinate the difficulties, how impossible it seems to compass it within the short generation in which the necessities of life permit us to labour. And meanwhile, what have we to say to the individual men, women, and children who are living under these conditions? Think for a moment of those atoms of social waste whom we call the unemployable. You see them as they pass before your eyes, the product, indeed, of circumstances–the sins of their fathers written in the marks of disease, the sins of their own youth written in the furtive glance of the eyes and the shambling gait, the sins, it may be, of the community which has failed to find a place for them, in the hopelessness and futility of every effect that they may make. And yet, what are we to say to them? Are we to say to them with the mere teaching of determinist science: Your transgressions and your sins are upon you, and you pine away in them, why should you live? Yet apart from some vast, at present as it seems, inconceivable change of our industrial conditions, are they not hopeless? If science says the last word, surely they are. Yet when you find yourself placed face to face with an individual man of these multitudes, can you use that language? Can you turn to them and say: You are the doomed product of a bad environment; there is no hope for you. You must stay as you are? Nay! rather you make it your one object to disentangle the man from the mesh in which he is placed. You seek to find out somewhere the springs of the real man within him. You desire to create some emotion, some motive, some interest, by which that self of his, that manhood of his, may be aroused, re-created, and go forth and be strong. And you can venture upon that effort because you believe, with an instinct that is stronger than a one-sided theory, that somewhere or other in that poor, broken life there remains dormant and hidden the germ of a freedom of his own that he can arouse and use, if only there is sufficient strength and motive power given to him. You try to reach and touch and find the man within him; and that instinct of yours restores the balance of the truth. Science is true. There is this product of the environment. We must work and labour with unremitting toil to change and improve it. But the one inevitable, indispensable factor of social reform is the individual freedom and responsibility of the man. Even when you change his circumstances, this alone will be powerless unless you have changed the whole mans will so that he cooperates with the change in his circumstances; and therefore every scheme of charity which neglects this truth, which belittles this factor of the mans own individual freedom and power and responsibility, is a real danger.
2. Secondly, the prophets message is to the personal life. There were men to whom Ezekiel spoke who felt the burthen upon them, not of the load of their fathers sins, but of their own. It may be that among the men to whom I speak there are some who are conscious of the same impotence of remorse. The sins of your body have immeshed your body and mind in the bondage of evil habit. You can think of some mistake that you made, irreversible now, which has spoilt your life. You are tied up in the doom of your destiny. Or, perhaps, there are others, who have not gone so far, but when there comes to them the prompting of some better impulse they meet it with such replies, expressed or unexpressed, as this: It is no good, it is too late; my nature is made, I cannot change. These heights are for others, I cannot attain unto them. Like Sir Lancelot, the quest is not for me. I am what my life has made me, and it is too late to change. And so when these better impulses come they are avoided, they are refused. Possibly they gradually die out, and the prison gates begin to close. Now, in this there is a truth which cannot be gainsaid. We cannot escape, not even God Himself can enable us to escape, from the actual consequences of our sins. That is true; we cannot quarrel with the teaching both of science and conscience. But it is not the whole truth. There remains that hidden self, that inner man, and it is free. It has always the power of rising from its past and going forth to a new future. You say it is impossible. With man perhaps it is impossible. But with God all things are possible. For that freedom of mine, however feeble and broken, is not alone; there is another free and sovereign power waiting for it, acknowledging it as His own image, welcoming it, coming down upon it, with His own strength and power. When I use my freedom I meet and touch the freedom of the sovereign grace of God Himself. If only we act upon that impulse which is the sign of the persistence of our better self, we find somehow that that strength comes down upon us. It may be a miracle. Our Lord asks the unanswerable question whether it is easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Arise and walk, or to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee. I know not what mystery may be behind that truth, but truth it is if only we will act upon it; if only that will, broken and feeble as it may be, will emerge from the ruins of its past, and act for itself in the spirit of return. Then it will find that the freedom of Gods grace is at its hand, and will come to it and strengthen it. We must, it is true, continue to bear our sins, but there is all the difference in the world between that and being borne by them. When we bear them, our recovered spirit is master of them. Even remorse can be a continual reminder of the long-suffering of God. The weakness, baffling and humiliating to the end, can be the occasion for the triumph of the strength of God. You have seen sometimes the coast when the tide is far out. It looks a mere barren tract of sand and stone, but somewhere far out in the deep a movement takes place. The tide turns, and soon the water covers the waste land. So my life, when I look back upon it, may be the barren tract of sand, the grave of lost opportunities, strewn with stones of stumbling and rocks of offence. But if only in the great deep, where the Spirit of God touches the spirit of man, my free self can go out to Him, then there is the turning of the tide, and sooner or later that full tide of Gods refreshing and restoring grace will cover the waste places. I am–in my own personal self; God is–in His own sovereign Personality; and on these two truths we can all base the perpetual hope of a new beginning. (Bishop Lang.)
Sin slays the sinner
Manton says: The life of sin and the life of a sinner are like two buckets in a well–if the one goeth up, the other must come down. If sin liveth, the sinner must die. It is only when sin dies that a man begins truly to live. Yet we cannot persuade our neighbours that it is so, for their hearts are bound up in their sins, and they think themselves most alive when they can give fullest liberty to their desires. They raise up their sins, and so sink themselves. If they could be persuaded of the truth, they would send the bucket of sin to the very bottom that their better selves might rise into eternal salvation. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Gods solemn inquiry of Gospel hearers
I. The evidence in every Christian country of Gods having no pleasure at all in the death of sinners.
1. A true penitent is readily forgiven. Two striking illustrations suggested here: a rebellious fathers repentant son (verse 14, etc.) , and a man once rebellious who amends (verses 21, 22). In each instance his soul is saved. None can fairly meditate on the promptness of such pardons without perceiving Gods delight in mercy (Mic 7:18).
2. The reason why the righteous God can so promptly pardon (Tit 3:4-7; Joh 3:16; Rom 8:32).
3. God has appointed a class of men to urge on the unworthy His unspeakable gift (2Co 5:20). Did He wish the destruction of the Ninevites when He sent Jonah to them? He has as little pleasure in the death of the wicked now (Rev 22:17).
II. The one simple duty of hearers is to return (verse 32).
1. With the turning of true repentance, which involves a thorough change of service. Note details of practical love in this chapter (verse 17), and see conduct of Thessalonians (1Th 1:9).
2. With the turning of trust (in the appointed Mediator) for all the needed mercy and grace. (See the description in 1Pe 2:24-25.)
3. With the turning quickened by the Holy Spirit (Joh 16:8), which should be fostered by prayer (Psa 80:18-19).
4. With the turning which issues in life; the life of the acquitted and holy (Rom 5:1-21 :l, 2), which is a sure earnest of life everlasting (Joh 6:40). (D. D. Stewart, M. A.)
And not that he should return from his ways, and live?—
The best return
St. Austin, lying on his death bed, caused divers verses of the penitential psalms to be written on the walls of his chamber, on which he still cast his eyes, and commented upon them with the fluent rhetoric of his tears. But I could wish of all texts of Scripture that this of the prophet Ezekiel were still before all their eyes who mourn for their sins in private. For nothing can raise the dejected soul but the lifting-up of Gods countenance upon her; nothing can bring peace to an affrighted and troubled conscience but a free pardon of all sins, whereby she hath incurred the sentence of death, which the prophet tendereth in the words of the text. I will endeavour to open two springs in my text–the one a higher, the other a lower; the one ariseth from God and His joy, the other from ourselves and our salvation. That the conversion of a sinner is a joy and delight to God, I need not to produce arguments to prove, or similes to illustrate; He that spake as never man spake, hath represented it unto us by many exquisite emblems (Luk 15:4; Luk 15:8; Luk 15:10; Luk 15:32). Scipio (as Livy writeth) never looked so fresh, nor seemed so beautiful in the eyes of his soldiers, as after his recovery from a dangerous sickness which he took in the camp; neither doth the soul ever seem more beautiful than when she is restored to health after some dangerous malady. The Palladium was in highest esteem both with the Trojans and Romans, not so much for the matter or workmanship, as because it was catched out of the fire when Troy was burnt. And certainly no soul is more precious in the eyes of God and His angels than that which is snatched out of the fire of hell and jaws of death. I have opened the first spring, and we have tasted the waters thereof; I am now to open the second, which is this, That as our repentance is joy unto God and His angels, so it is grace and salvation to ourselves. As repentance is called repentance from dead works, so also repentance unto life. For God pawns His life for the life of the penitent: As I live, saith the Lord, I desire not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should return and live. Pliny writeth of a fountain in Africa, in which torches that are blown out being dipped are kindled again: such is the fountain of tears in the eyes of a penitent sinner; if the light of his faith be extinguished to his sense and all outward appearance, yet dipped in this fountain it is kindled again, and burns more brightly than ever before. The Scripture furnisheth us not with many examples in this kind, lest any should presume; yet some we find that none might despair. To comfort those that are wounded in conscience, the good Samaritan cured him that was wounded between Jerusalem and Jericho, and left half-dead; to comfort them that are sick in soul, He recovered Peters wifes mother lying sick in her bed; to comfort them that have newly, as it were, given up the ghost, He raised Jairuss daughter; to comfort them that have been sometimes dead in sins and transgressions, He raised the widows son; to comfort them that have been so long dead in sins that they begin to putrify, He raised up Lazarus stinking in His grave. Therefore, if we have grievously provoked Gods justice by presumption, let us not more wrong His mercy by despair; but hope even above hope in Him whose mercy is over all His works. Against the number and weight of all our sins, let us lay the infiniteness of Gods mercy, and Christs merits, and the certainty of His promise confirmed by oath: As I live, I desire not the death of a sinner; if he return, he shall live. It is a most sovereign water which will fetch a sinner again to the life of grace, though never so far gone. It is not well water springing out of the bowels of the earth, nor rain poured out of the clouds of passion, but rather like a dew falling from heaven, which softeneth and moisteneth the heart, and is dried up by the beams of the Sun of Righteousness. Turn and live. Should a prisoner led to execution hear the judge or sheriff call to him, and say, Turn back, put in sureties for thy good behaviour hereafter, and live–would he not suddenly leap out of his fetters, embrace the condition, and thank the judge or sheriff upon his knees? And what think ye if God should send a prophet to preach a sermon of repentance to the devils and damned ghosts in hell, and say, Knock off your bolts, shake off your fetters, and turn to the Lord and live? Would not hell be emptied and rid before the prophet should have made an end of his exhortation? This sermon the prophet Ezekiel now maketh unto us all. (D. Featly, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 23. Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die?] No! That is foreign to him whose name is love, and whose nature is mercy. On the contrary he “wills that he should return from his evil ways and live.”
And if God can have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, he cannot have made a decree to abandon him to the evil of his nature, and then damn him for what he could not avoid: for as God can do nothing with which he is not pleased, so he can decree nothing with which he is not pleased. But he is “not pleased with the death of a sinner,” therefore he cannot have made a decree to bring him to this death.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Now, O ye perverse Jews! if by these truths you will judge of me, could it enter the thoughts of any one of you, that I should, as delighting in the death of sinners, impute other mens sins to you, that you might die for them, when I could not slay you for your own? Think not thus of the God of mercy, who pities, forbears, and though at last hath punished obstinate sinners, yet never delighted in their death. Is it not my command that you and other sinners repent? Have not you and others found mercy upon seeming repentance? And as for that repentance which is sound, it ever had a full pardon; and the promise of life and pardon hath been repeated and confirmed to you again and again; so that it is the most unjust, unreasonable, and impious quarrel you, O Jews, have taken up against your God, who would have you repent of your own sins, and you should live, but if you repent not, you shall die, but for your own sins, not your fathers. Since therefore I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God, turn yourselves, and live ye, as it is Eze 18:32; for this 23rd verse equally declares Gods mercy and our duty, the one in his pleasure at our return, the other in our pleasing him herein.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
23. (1Ti 2:4;2Pe 3:9). If men perish, it isbecause they will not come to the Lord for salvation; not thatthe Lord is not willing to save them (Joh5:40). They trample on not merely justice, but mercy; whatfarther hope can there be for them, when even mercy is against them?(Heb 10:26-29).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord God,…. Perish by sword, famine, or pestilence, or go into captivity; this, though the Lord’s will and work, yet is his strange work; mercy is his delight. This is to be understood not absolutely; for the Lord does take pleasure in these things, as they fulfil his word, secure the honour of his truth and holiness, and glorify his justice, and especially when they are the means of reclaiming men from the evil of their ways; but comparatively, as follows:
[and] not that he should return from his ways, and live? that is, it is more pleasing to God that a man should repent of his sins, and forsake his vicious course of life, and enjoy good things, than to go on in his sins, and bring ruin on himself, here and hereafter.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
He confirms the same sentiment in other words, that God desires nothing more earnestly than that those who were perishing and rushing to destruction should return into the way of safety. And for this reason not only is the Gospel spread abroad in the world, but God wished to bear witness through all ages how inclined he is to pity. For although the heathen were destitute of the law and the prophets, yet they were always endued with some taste of this doctrine. Truly enough they were suffocated by many errors: but we shall always find that they were induced by a secret impulse to seek for pardon, because this sense was in some way born with them, that God is to be appeased by all who seek him. Besides, God bore witness to it more clearly in the law and the prophets. In the Gospel we hear how familiarly he addresses us when he promises us pardon. (Luk 1:78.) And this is the knowledge of salvation, to embrace his mercy which he offers us in Christ. It follows, then, that what the Prophet now says is very true, that God wills not the death of a sinner, because he meets him of his own accord, and is not only prepared to receive all who fly to his pity, but he calls them towards him with a loud voice, when he sees how they are alienated from all hope of safety. But the manner must be noticed in which God wishes all to be saved, namely, when they turn themselves from their ways. God thus does not so wish all men to be saved as to renounce the difference between good and evil; but repentance, as we have said, must precede pardon. How, then, does God wish all men to be saved? By the Spirit’s condemning the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment at this day, by the Gospel, as he did formerly by the law and the prophets. (Joh 16:8.) God makes manifest to mankind their great misery, that they may betake themselves to him: he wounds that he may cure, and slays that he may give life. We hold, then, that; God wills not the death of a sinner, since he calls all equally to repentance, and promises himself prepared to receive them if they only seriously repent. If any one should object — then there is no election of God, by which he has predestinated a fixed number to salvation, the answer is at hand: the Prophet does not here speak of God’s secret counsel, but only recalls miserable men from despair, that they may apprehend the hope of pardon, and repent and embrace the offered salvation. If any one again objects — this is making God act with duplicity, the answer is ready, that God always wishes the same thing, though by different ways, and in a manner inscrutable to us. Although, therefore, God’s will is simple, yet great variety is involved in it, as far as our senses are concerned. Besides, it is not surprising that our eyes should be blinded by intense light, so that we cannot certainly judge how God wishes all to be saved, and yet has devoted all the reprobate to eternal destruction, and wishes them to perish. While we look now through a glass darkly, we should be content with the measure of our own intelligence. (1Co 13:12.) When we shall be like God, and see him face to face, then what is now obscure will then become plain. But since captious men torture this and similar passages, it will be needful to refute them shortly, since it can be done without trouble.
God is said not to wish the death of a sinner. How so? since he wishes all to be converted. Now we must see how God wishes all to be converted; for repentance is surely his peculiar gift: as it is his office to create men, so it is his province to renew them, and restore his image within them. For this reason we are said to be his workmanship, that is, his fashioning. (Eph 2:10.) Since, therefore, repentance is a kind of second creation, it follows that it is not in man’s power; and if it is equally in God’s power to convert men as well as to create them, it follows that the reprobate are not converted, because God does not wish their conversion; for if he wished it he could do it: and hence it appears that he does not wish it. But again they argue foolishly, since God does not wish all to be converted, he is himself deceptive, and nothing can be certainly stated concerning his paternal benevolence. But this knot is easily untied; for he does not leave us in suspense when he says, that he wishes all to be saved. Why so? for if no one repents without finding God propitious, then this sentence is filled up. But we must remark that God puts on a twofold character: for he here wishes to be taken at his word. As I have already said, the Prophet does not here dispute with subtlety about his incomprehensible plans, but wishes to keep our attention close to God’s word. Now, what are the contents of this word? The law, the prophets, and the gospel. Now all are called to repentance, and the hope of salvation is promised them when they repent. this is true, since God rejects no returning sinner: he pardons all without exception: meanwhile, this will of God which he sets forth in his word does not prevent him from decreeing before the world was created what he would do with every individual: and as I have now said, the Prophet only shows here, that when we have been converted we need not doubt that God immediately meets us and shows himself propitious. The remainder tomorrow.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(23) Have I any pleasure at all?This brings out that fundamental truth which underlies the whole teaching of both the Old and New Testaments, and which should have satisfied Israel of the Lords readiness to receive every penitent sinner. God created man; and when he had fallen, ordered both the old and the new dispensations, and employed methods of infinite love to win him to salvation. He can have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; His delight can only be when man fulfils the design for which he was created, and returns to obedience and communion with God. Yet neither, as is declared in the next verse, can the Almighty suffer that His creature should set at nought His love and despise His salvation.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
23. Have I any pleasure that the wicked should die The prophecies of coming calamity were regarded by many as not being from Jehovah at all. The dangers which were before the nation were merely due to political complications and could be escaped by making a favorable alliance with Egypt (Eze 17:7). Many of those who believed the prophecies accepted them as final and irrevocable decrees of Jehovah (Lam 2:8-9; Lam 2:17; Lam 3:42-44). Many of these also believed that the predestination of evil was in consequence of the unfaithfulness of former generations (Eze 18:2, etc.). The prophet brings to these different classes of people three propositions which he forcibly states and illustrates: (1) These afflictions are divine punishments for sin; (2) They are punishments for the sins of the people who are bearing or shall bear them; (3) They can be escaped by repentance and reformation.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
“Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked?” says the Lord Yahweh, “and not rather that he should return from his way and live?”
These words should be seared on all our hearts. God has no desire for, or pleasure in, the death of the wicked. He does not want any to be lost in the judgment. But inevitably it must be so for they choose that way themselves. Their wills are turned against Him and they will not repent. But God would rather that they returned to Him and found mercy, so that He might give them life.
These words were an offer to those in Jerusalem, even in their last extremity. God had no pleasure in what He was about to bring on Jerusalem. He longed that they might respond and be saved. They were a cry to the exiles too. If they would but hear there was a way back. Any who responded would be saved. That was why Jeremiah had been sent among them. That was why Ezekiel was now speaking the words of Yahweh. Hope was there. If it had happened in Nineveh (Jonah 3) it could happen in Jerusalem. And yet all the while the inexorable message of judgment on Jerusalem revealed that it would not be. God knew that on the whole they would continue to reject Him, is spite of His offer of mercy. But when they did so it would not be because He had not sought them.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
When the Lord puts the question, Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, and not that he should return from his ways and live? We cannot suppose that the sense is, the Lord hath no pleasure in securing the honour and glory of His holy name, by the destruction of sin and evil. This cannot be the case, for all the parts of scripture prove the reverse. But the sense is, that while sinners, whose hearts are savingly turned by grace to the Lord, are his glory and delight, the incorrigible and unreclaimed, when punished, are fearful monuments of his justice. So, in like manner, when it is said, when the righteous turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, and dieth in them, for his iniquity that he hath done shall he die. This cannot be said of a righteous man in Christ; and, strictly and properly speaking, there can be none righteous but in Christ; and from this righteousness he cannot turn, neither can it he lost, for the Lord hath said, My salvation shall be forever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished. Isa 51:6 . Israel shall be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation; ye shall not be ashamed nor confounded, world without end. Isa 45:17 . But the sense is, when the moral man and one that counteth himself righteous, turneth from it, as that he will sooner or later, and lose all his vain confidence and proud boasting, when such an one falls into trespasses, he hath no resource in Christ, no hope of salvation in his blood and righteousness; and therefore dies in his iniquity, unwashed, unregenerated, unrenewed in the spirit of his mind. This point is more plainly shown in the parallel passage, Eze 33:13 where the Lord denotes this self-righteousness a trusting to it; so that, by comparing both together, the reader may be able, under divine teaching, to discern the poor, imperfect, law-righteousness of men, which never did, nor ever will save a soul, and that rich and all-perfect gospel righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ, which becomes the believer’s most complete and justifying robe of salvation before the Lord Jehovah, in grace here, and glory forever. Isa 45:24-25 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Eze 18:23 Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord GOD: [and] not that he should return from his ways, and live?
Ver. 23. Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? ] No, verily; for then he should do nothing but do and undo, make a world and unmake it again, since we provoke him continually; but he is longsuffering.
“ Atque dolet quoties cogitur esse ferox. ”
And not that he should return.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Have I any pleasure. ? Answered in Eze 18:32.
ways. Many codiecs, with eight early printed editions, read plural; but others, with Aramaean, Septuagint, and Syriac, read “way” (singular)
saith the Lord GOD = [is] Adonai Jehovah’s oracle.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
I any: Eze 18:32, Eze 33:11, Lam 3:33, Hos 11:8, 1Ti 2:4, 2Pe 3:9
not that: Exo 34:6, Exo 34:7, Job 33:27, Job 33:28, Psa 147:11, Jer 31:20, Mic 7:18, Luk 15:4-7, Luk 15:10, Luk 15:22-24, Luk 15:32, Jam 2:13
Reciprocal: Jer 8:4 – turn Jer 18:11 – return Jer 36:3 – they may Luk 15:5 – rejoicing Rom 11:11 – Have they stumbled
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Eze 18:23. The primary object in all scriptural discipline is the possibility of reforming the sinner (1Co 5:5; 2Co 7:12; 2Th 3:14; 2Th 3:16; Hebrews 12; 6-11; 13; 17). God does not obtain any pleasure out of the punishment of his creatures (2Pe 3:9), but inflicts it solely for their good.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
18:23 {f} Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord GOD: [and] not that he should return from his ways, and live?
(f) He speaks this to commend God’s mercy to poor sinners, who rather is ready to pardon than to punish, as his long suffering declares, Eze 33:11 . Though God in his eternal counsel appointed the death and damnation of the reprobate, yet the end of his counsel was not their death only, but chiefly his own glory. Also because he does not approve sin, therefore it is here said that he would have them turn away from it that they might live.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
"Why would God allow a sinner who repented to avoid judgment? The answer lies in God’s character." [Note: Dyer, "Ezekiel," p. 1261.]
God explained that He took no delight in people dying because of their sins. What gave Him pleasure was their turning from their sinful conduct and so continuing to live.
"Such a longing should be shared by every preacher who ventures to speak about the judgment of God." [Note: Taylor, p. 151.]