Sunday, July 25, 2021

Yehezkel Kaufmann on "No nation punished for the sin of another" in "Second Isaiah"

  

No nation punished for the sin of another

 

Thus, according to the biblical view, the righteous man shares in the sin of the community and is punished for this sin (even if it is not a personal sin) along with the entire community. Also, he may be punished for the iniquity of his fathers by reason of the association of sin and punishment encompassing generations, and because his punishment is accounted punishment of his fathers.

 

But we do not find in Scripture the idea of responsibility without association in the collective sin. The members of the community are responsible one for the other, but they are not liable for sin and punishment except on the basis of community association. The sons suffer for the sin of the fathers; but they do not bear the guilt of the fathers of other men. Subsequent generations of a people are punished for the sin of their nation but not for the sin of a foreign people. The idea that one community sins and another is punished in its stead is completely foreign to Scripture. There is nothing in the biblical idea of retribution (and in the moral sentiment generally) to support the idea that Israel or the children of Ammon or Moab are punished because the Philistines or the Pathrusim or the Casluhim sinned. Accordingly, there is no reason to seek in Isa. 53 the absurd idea that the sins of the nations brought the punishment of exile on Israel. (Yehezkel Kaufmann, The Babylonian Captivity and Deutero-Isaiah [History of the Religion of Israel Volume IV; New York: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1970], 143-44)