Ezekiel chapter 18

vs 11

So this father, who is righteous, has a son who is... shall we say less than righteous? A total let down, and quite corrupt.

vs 12

Detestable is used quite a lot in Ezekiel. I think it describes this son pretty well.

vs 13

I love this verse. "Will he live?" and you're thinking, "Oh, he'll be happy for a while, in his selfish ways, doing these awful practices." But God's like, "Wrong! He'll die!" Wickedness gets punished.

vs 14

And you think this is crazy, but not only does it happen in real life, but we also see it happen with the kings of Israel - well, Judah. The kings of Israel are basically all detestable. But the kings of Judah have some good seeds, even after they have really, really bad fathers.

vs 15

The repetition here is quite obvious, and we assume purposeful. It lets us know what kinds of things are being done in Ezekiel's time, I assume - because they are the things he is picking on. Idolatry obviously being big, along with sexual immorality (if you didn't pick that up from, say, chapter 16).

vs 16

You notice, though, how much of it revolves around oppression of the weak and poor. This is the injustice and oppression that Ezekiel talks about so much. God's society might have rich and poor, but it was not meant to oppress the poor and delinate class structures so heavily. It had a generational reset button!

vs 17

God has shown quite strongly here that, over three generations, he will judge only the sin of the individual. Of course, those of us who read more broadly know that this doesn't mean that the sin of person number 2 doesn't hurt both person number 1 and person number 3 in the generational chain. But that doesn't mean it will condemn them. That's the point here. Yes, grandchild (3) might grow up in an abusive household, or grandparent (1) might get assaulted by child (2), just to give obvious examples. But 1 and 3 won't be condemned for the actions of 2 unless they also act in those ways.

vs 18

Now of course 1 and 3 will also die - I mean, everyone was expecting that anyway. But they won't die in God's judgment. The thing is that, reading this description, how many people do you know who it fits now, let alone that it would have fit at the time this prophecy was being given? Exactly.

It's easy for us now to say things like, "Bad people go to hell, and righteous people go to heaven", the idea of eternal punishment or reward guiding where such people go (yes, oversimplified). It's a lot harder when you're talking in terms of just life and death to see the deliniation, isn't it? Because everyone dies. So the term must have a more pregnant meaning. It's like saying that, "DUI drivers die" or "Smokers die" or "People with AIDS die" or "Starving kids die". I mean, of course they die, everyone dies (rapture excepted). But you know what I mean when I say those things - I'm saying that "those practices lead to death". There's a difference.

vs 19

Because basically God is awesome.

vs 20

Yes, those acts will have temporal consequences - righteous things will affect people generally positively, and wickedness will make life harder for lots of people. But it won't affect God's judgment of people ultimately. CS Lewis thinks it will in a way - the idea being that God knows the situation of the individual and judges them according to what God gave them and how they dealt with that. I don't have a problem with that, because it allows for both a subjective and objective judgment within the one action, which is paradoxical, and therefore fits God perfectly.

And yes, I know it's not necessarily paradoxical, but it certainly has some problematic overlap which would not be easily resolvable if you weren't God.Luckily for us, God is God. Makes things easier.