Turn and Live
21 “But if the wicked turns from all his sins that he has committed, and keeps all my statutes, and does that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live. He shall not die. 22 None of his transgressions that he has committed will be remembered against him. In his righteousness that he has done, he shall live. 23 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? 24 “But when the righteous turns away from his righteousness, and commits iniquity, and does according to all the abominations that the wicked man does, should he live? None of his righteous deeds that he has done will be remembered. In his trespass that he has trespassed, and in his sin that he has sinned, in them he shall die. 25 “Yet you say, ‘The way of the Lord is not equal.’ Hear now, house of Israel: Is my way not equal? Aren’t your ways unequal? 26 When the righteous man turns away from his righteousness, and commits iniquity, and dies in it, then he dies in his iniquity that he has done. 27 Again, when the wicked man turns away from his wickedness that he has committed, and does that which is lawful and right, he will save his soul alive. 28 Because he considers, and turns away from all his transgressions that he has committed, he shall surely live. He shall not die. 29 Yet the house of Israel says, ‘The way of the Lord is not fair.’ House of Israel, aren’t my ways fair? Aren’t your ways unfair? 30 “Therefore I will judge you, house of Israel, everyone according to his ways,” says the Lord Yahweh. “Return, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions, so iniquity will not be your ruin. 31 Cast away from you all your transgressions in which you have transgressed; and make yourself a new heart and a new spirit. For why will you die, house of Israel? 32 For I have no pleasure in the death of him who dies,” says the Lord Yahweh. “Therefore turn yourselves, and live!
The same rule that frees a man from his father's record frees him from his own, and the chapter ends by asking why anyone would choose to die.
The second half applies the principle to a single life rather than to a family line, and it cuts both ways. A wicked man who turns from all his sins and keeps the statutes shall surely live, and the clause attached is absolute: None of his transgressions that he has committed will be remembered against him. Not weighed, not offset, not held in reserve. Not remembered.
The mirror image is given with equal force. A righteous man who turns away and does what the wicked do will die, and none of his righteous deeds that he has done will be remembered. Both halves offend a reader's arithmetic in opposite directions, and both follow from the same rule. A record is not a balance. What is being judged is a direction, and the question in each case is which way a man was facing at the end.
Between the two stands the sentence that keeps this from being a cold accounting, and it is put as a question: Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked?... and not rather that he should return from his way, and live? The chapter repeats it at the close in even plainer terms. The judge who has just laid down an exact and unsentimental rule states that he does not want the outcome the rule permits, and the whole passage exists to make the other outcome available.
The complaint quoted next is the natural one — The way of the Lord is not equal — and the reply turns it back with the same words. What is left is an appeal in the imperative, and its middle clause is unexpected: Cast away from you all your transgressions... and make yourself a new heart and a new spirit. The book elsewhere says twice that God gives the new heart and puts the new spirit within Ezekiel 11:19 Ezekiel 36:26. Here the same thing is commanded. The two are not in competition, and the chapter shows why by holding them a few lines apart. A gift that has to be received is still refused by anyone who will not turn, and the command is how the gift is asked for. The last words in the chapter are the point of all thirty-two verses: Therefore turn yourselves, and live!
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