Notes on Ezekiel 18: Does God Change His Mind about Sin?
Notes on Ezekiel 18: Does God Change His Mind about Sin?
August 19 2022
AFBR
I am reading through the Bible and am in Ezekiel right now. Now, Ezekiel was a prophet who wrote around the time of the Babylonian siege and captivity of Jerusalem, about 587 BCE. This text, as we’ve received it, was later edited and added to by scribes (as is the case for all the Bible’s books), and revised to fit certain exigent realities of the Hebrew people during and after captivity. His (their?) main thrust is the ‘word of the Lord’ that comes to the prophet telling Judah – the Southern Kingdom (Israel was already captured by Assyria by this time) – about the consequences of their sins, the coming tragedies of captivity, and the hope they might enjoy upon repentance at a later time.
Some reflections:
First, this is very interesting book. The writer(s) use a variety of forms to communicate messages to the reader. For example, the use of allegory is prolific and I am grateful for the scholarly footnotes provided in my Revised Standard Version with the Aprocrypha to help me study this work. In chapter 17, the voice of God outlines the allegory of the eagles to describe how the House of David fell to Nebuchadrezzar. The language is engaging and makes the reader’s mind work on the text like puzzle pieces fitting together. There are other examples and I’d encourage anyone interested in this kind of text to read through it, too.
What caught my eye for this essay, though, was a footnote in chapter 18 drawing my attention to the contrast between the message from God, via His prophet, and the direct message from the Lord in Exodus 20, verse 5. And, as do many other places in the Christian Old Testament, this comparison brings up the question, “Does God change His mind when it comes to sin and punishment?”
Now, I am making some assumptions in my study here about how we read and receive the Bible as a whole. I realize there are various ways to ‘resolve’ many of the obvious contradictions in the Bible. These ways vary. There is the more progressive stance of, well, the scripture was written over long periods of time by flawed men trying to preserve their culture and religion, and, sure, they will be inconsistent because they each speak for a specific time and place when they present their idea of God’s will.
Then there is the conservative position that the whole Bible is inerrant and, since a perfect God could not be inconsistent and, therefore, the Holy Scripture can’t contain error, then it is we who, in our sinful and imperfect condition, must realize there is always a way the whole Bible fits together, even if we can’t see it. So much theological gymnastics has been spent to resolve these problems from this point of view. And, of course, there are shades of scholarship that fade in between each extreme here.
What I am concerned with is how the more conservative point of view – the one that takes the Bible as a whole as God’s perfect message – might compare the conflict between Exodus 20: 5-6 and much of the rest of the Bible, especially Ezekiel 18. In Exodus, just as the Lord is saying not to make any graven images of other gods, we read: “… for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.”
But the whole thrust of Ezekiel 18 is the exact opposite of what we find in the Ten Commandments. Just one example will illustrate this contradiction. In chapter 18:20 we read: “… The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.”
Indeed, very many of the prophets’ messages in the Old Testament, and in which the voice and clear intention of the Lord is inculcated, are about how Israel and Judah have worshipped other gods, made grave images to them, bowed down to them, and provoked the Lord to anger so much so that He will have them carried off to captivity for years. And, in other places, it is God who causes His peoples’ cities to be besieged, causing mothers to eat their children (see Jeremiah 19:9 for just one example). If this isn’t punishing subsequent, and innocent, generations for their father’s and king’s sins, I don’t know what is.
Or, does the more progressive theological position briefly outlined above make the most sense of this contrast in the character of God, if there is such a being?