Personal Responsibility and
Generational Sin
How can Ezekiel’s prophetic pronouncement—that
each person will be judged for his own sin and not for the sins of his parents—be
reconciled with passages in the Old Testament that seem to say the opposite?
For example, right in the midst of the giving of the Ten Commandments we find
this passage: “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 mercy to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments”
(Exod 20:5-6). It seems that the passage is saying that three and even
four generations of descendants will be punished for the sins of their fathers.
Passages in the historical books would seem to confirm this understanding. In 2
Kings 24:3-4, the author concludes that disaster befell Judah “for the sins of
Manasseh, according to all that he had done.” And the author of Lamentations
boldly claims: “Our fathers sinned, and are no more; / and we bear their
iniquities” (Lam 5:7).
Many commentators—ancient and modern—have
concluded that Ezekiel is reversing an earlier practice and annulling
the teaching of Moses, by moving away from an era of corporate responsibility
and punishment to one in which individual responsibility holds sway. But the
picture is more complex than this. In Deuteronomy, Moses declares that each one
will be punished only for his or her own sin: “The fathers shall not be put to
death for the children, nor shall the children be put to death for the fathers;
every man shall be put to death for his own sin” (Deut 24:16). Ezekiel’s
teaching is in full accord with this law. Further, both 2 Kings and
Lamentations acknowledge that the generation that was punished was also itself
guilty of the sins of their fathers. In other words, it appears that punishment
befell the people because they themselves continued the same pattern of sins
that their fathers had committed. This is how some Church Fathers and Jewish
rabbis reconcile Exod 20:5-6 with Ezekiel: punishment continued to the third
and fourth generation only when those generations also sinned against the Lord
as their fathers had done. In any case, Ezekiel certainly underlines personal responsibility
for sin and, in the Lord’s name, rejects the notion that God punishes someone
solely on account of another’s sin.
But Ezekiel maintains a corporate sense
of responsibility as well: sin impacts the entire family and community,
and this can include future generations. For example, those born in the exile
in Babylon suffer this fate because of the sins of their parents, but God will rescue
them and bring them all back to the land (Ezek 39:28), also prophesies a general
judgment on the whole people, even as some (a remnant) are marked out by God
for deliverance (see 9:4). In Ezekiel, each person bears responsibility only
for his or her own sin, but the Lord still continues to relate Israel as a
family—a people—who are the recipients of his judgment and his deliverance. (Daniel
A. Keating, Ezekiel [Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture; Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Baker Academic, 2024], 138-39)
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