Deuteronomy 24:16

_THE FATHERS SHALL NOT BE PUT TO DEATH FOR THE CHILDREN, NEITHER SHALL THE CHILDREN BE PUT TO DEATH FOR THE FATHERS: EVERY MAN SHALL BE PUT TO DEATH FOR HIS OWN SIN._ The fathers shall not be put to death for the children. God, the sovereign author and proprietor of life, may, in certain circumstances, command this penalty; but the rule was addressed for the guidance of earthly magistrates, and it established the equitable principle that none should be responsible for the crimes of others, and that impartial justice should be blended with mercy in all their decisions. This law had a special reference to the commission of idolatry, which was not only a sin against God, but a crime against the state; and as treason in many of the most civilized states is punished both by the death of the offender and also by the confiscation of property, which involves his family in poverty and degradatio...

Here also God manifests how great is His regard for human life, so that blood should not be shed indiscriminately, when he forbids that children should be involved in the punishment of their parents. Nor was this Law by any means supererogatory, because on account of one man’s crime his whole race was often severely dealt with. It is not without cause, therefore, that God interposes for the protection of the innocent, and does not allow the punishment to travel further than where the crime exists. And surely our natural common sense dictates that it is an act of barbarous madness to put children to death out of hatred to their father. If any should object, what we have already seen, that God avenges “unto the third and fourth generation,” the reply is easy, that He is a law unto Himself, and that He does not rush by a blind impulse to the exercise of vengeance, so as to confound the inno...

14-22 It is not hard to prove that purity, piety, justice, mercy, fair conduct, kindness to the poor and destitute, consideration for them, and generosity of spirit, are pleasing to God, and becoming in his redeemed people. The difficulty is to attend to them in our daily walk and conversation....

Verse Deuteronomy 24:16. _THE FATHERS SHALL NOT BE PUT TO DEATH FOR THE_ _CHILDREN, C._] This law is explained and illustrated in sufficient detail, Ezekiel 18:1 c....

A caution addressed to earthly judges. Among other Oriental nations the family of a criminal was commonly involved in his punishment (compare Esther 9:13). In Israel it was not to be so; compare marginal references....

EXPOSITION LAWS RESPECTING DIVORCE, AGAINST MAN-STEALING AND INJUSTICE. DEUTERONOMY 24:1 _Of divorce_._ _If a man put away his wife because she did not any longer please him, and she became the wife of another man, by whom also she was put away, or from whom she was severed by his death, the first husband might not remarry her, for that would be an abomination in the eyes of the Lord, and would bring sin on the land. This is not a law sanctioning or regulating divorce; that is simply assumed as what might occur, and what is here regulated is the treatment by the first husband of a woman who has been divorced a second time....

THE FATHERS SHALL NOT BE PUT TO DEATH FOR THE CHILDREN,.... By the civil magistrates, for sins committed by them of a capital nature, and which are worthy of death: NEITHER SHALL THE CHILDREN BE PUT TO DEATH FOR THE FATHERS; for sins committed by them that deserve it: EVERY MAN SHALL BE PUT TO DEATH FOR HIS OWN SIN: which is but just and reasonable; see Ezekiel 18:4; which is no contradiction to Exodus 20:5; that respects what God himself would do, this what Israel, or the civil magistrates in it, should do; this is a command on Israel, as Aben Ezra observes; that the declaration of the sovereign Being, who is not bound by any law. Jarchi interprets these words differently, as that the one should not be put to death by the testimony of the other; and it is a rule with the

20. CONCERNING DIVORCE AND LAWS OF MERCY CHAPTER 24 _ 1. Concerning divorce (Deuteronomy 24:1)_ 2. Concerning pledge and slavery (Deuteronomy 24:6) 3. Concerning leprosy (Deuteronomy 24:8) 4. Concerning the oppression of the poor (Deuteronomy 24:10) 5. Concerning injustice (Deuteronomy 24:16) 6. The stranger, the fatherless and the widow remembered (Deuteronomy 24

XXIV. 6_ F_., 10- 13, which stood perhaps originally together, belong to the many humanitarian laws of D (Deuteronomy 15:12 *). Corn is still ground in the home in Palestine; this is done by the rotation of an upper on a lower round stone (_cf._ the British quern used in Scotland in 1880 according to E. B. Tylor (_Academy_, vol. xviii. (1880) p. 204). Deuteronomy 24:7. Exodus 21:16 (JE). Here the law is narrower. In CH (§ 14) it is only the nobleman who may not be stolen (Deuteronomy 15:12 *)....

FOR THE CHILDREN. This is Jehovah's law for man. His own right of judgment remains. Compare 2 Kings 14:6; 2 Chronicles 25:4....