Ezekiel 18:4

Behold, all souls are mine As they are all equally my creatures, and in my power, so my dealings with them shall be without prejudice or partiality. The soul that sinneth, it shall die The very same man that committeth sin shall be punished for it. Some commentators explain this of the temporal death which was about to come on the wicked Jews by the sword, famine, and pestilence; and they would confine the whole chapter to these events. “But,” as Mr. Scott justly observes, “it cannot be proved that every righteous man escaped those temporal judgments, or that all who survived them were righteous: without which this whole interpretation must fall for want of a foundation. Many, indeed, of the pious Jews had

‘their lives given them for a prey,' but even what Jeremiah, Baruch, and others endured in the siege, and after the taking of Jerusalem, nearly equalled the external sufferings of many wicked men among them; and none of those who survived the siege escaped captivity or exile. So that facts, in this particular, did not so fully ascertain the equality of the divine conduct toward these distinct characters, as this hypothesis requires.” Temporal death, therefore, which, as the consequence of the first transgression, passes equally upon all men, cannot be only, or even chiefly, if it be at all, intended here. But, as life signifies in general all that happiness which attends God's favour, so death denotes all those punishments which are the effects of the divine displeasure, (see 2 Samuel 12:13,) under which are comprehended the miseries of the next world. And these shall be allotted to men according to their deeds, (Romans 2:6,) without any regard to the faults of their ancestors, which shall not then be laid to their charge, or taken into account to aggravate their guilt. This the prophets well knew, and therefore, as they instruct men in the practice of inward and evangelical righteousness, and in order to it speak slightingly of the mere external duties of religion, (see Isaiah 1:11; Jeremiah 7:22,) so they raise men's minds to look beyond the temporal promises and threatenings of the law, to the eternal rewards and punishments of another life, Isaiah 66:24; Daniel 12:2. In both which respects they prepared men's minds for the reception of the gospel when it should be revealed. See Lowth.