Twin to this oracle is another in the same Ezekiel1, concerning which Jerome writes2: “If we read negligently, it seems to us to be the same prophecy as that above3, in which it is said: ‘Do I, willing, desire the death of the unjust, says the Lord, rather than that he be converted from his evil way and live?’ and at the end of the same prophecy4: ‘Be converted and return from all your impieties, and your iniquities shall not be unto torment—’”
—.” For there the discourse is made to those who will to do penance and to blot out sins by justice, that they may be converted with confidence and do penance with a full mind. But here he speaks to those who, on account of the magnitude of their sins, indeed of their impieties, despair of salvation and say5: “Our iniquities and our sins are upon us, and in them we waste away; how, therefore, shall we be able to live?” And the sense is: since death has once been proposed to us, and no medicine can restore health to our wounds, what necessity is there to labor and be consumed in vain, and not to pass the present life in desperation, so that we may at least enjoy this life, since we have lost the future one? God answers these men6 that he does not will the death of the impious, but that he return and live. And he makes an apostrophe to the despairing impious: “Be converted from your most evil ways.” And that we may know who are the impious to whom he speaks, the following discourse demonstrates: “Why will you die, O house of Israel?” But life and death in this passage7 do not signify this life by which, according to the law of nature common to beasts, we all either live or are dissolved by death, but that concerning which it is written8: “I shall please the Lord in the land of the living.” And9, “The soul which sins, it itself shall die.”
Therefore, God thus addresses through the prophet the Israelites despairing of life and salvation10: “Say to them: As I live, says the Lord God, אם־אחפץ במות הרשע, if I delight in the death of the—”
—impious, כי אם־בשוב רשע מדרכו וחיה, but in the impious man’s returning from his way, and he shall live.” These things will be adjusted more fittingly to the genius of the Latin language if it is considered in the mind: a) that the particle אם, which of itself bears the force of a condition, in formulas of oath, such as the present, contains the signification of negating11 and has the same force as “not”; and then b) that the particles כי אם, more closely joined and referred to the same sentence, after a preceding negation, are equivalent12 to the adversative particle “but.” When these things have been established, it appears that the genuine sentence of the words which we have adduced is this: “Say to them: As I live, says the Lord God, I do not delight13 in the death of the impious, nor do I will it; but I delight in the repentance of the impious from his way, I will this, and he shall live.”
But these things are such that they agree most exactly no less with the preceding oracle than with the testimonies of Peter and Paul, and exhibit no less the amplitude than the efficacy and sincere character of the salvific will. They agree with the preceding oracle and the testimonies of Peter and Paul; for what 1) is here, “Say to them: As I live, says the Lord God, I do not delight in the death of the impious,” stands thus in the preceding oracle: “I by no means delight in the death of the impious”; or, as is added with several things interposed14, “because I do not will the death of the dying man,” that is, of him15 who is worthy of death and who, unless he repents, is going to die. But Peter, expressing this very thing, writes of God: “who does not will any to perish.” Again, 2) what is here, “but I delight in the repentance of the impious from his way, and he shall live,” corresponds both to these words of the preceding oracle, “but, willing, I will—”
—the conversion of the impious from his way, and he shall live,” and to these words of Peter, “but he wills all to convert themselves to penance,” or of Paul, “who wills all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
Footnotes
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Ezek. XXXIII.11. ↩
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In the commentary at this place. ↩
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Ezek. XVIII.23. ↩
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Ibid., v. 32. ↩
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Ezek. XXXIII.10. ↩
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Ibid., v. 11. ↩
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“Indeed,” Rosenmüller writes in the scholia at this passage, “it can scarcely be doubted that natural death must be understood. For Jewish affairs were then in such a state that the citizens of Jerusalem were not far removed from death, or from that life, if it should happen that they escaped death, which on account of miserable and harsh servitude would have the likeness of a most bitter death.” But a) neither the words nor the sequence of the discourse are so constituted that the things said can be understood only of temporal and natural death and destruction. Moreover, b) if God of himself so greatly abhors the temporal destruction of men, he will certainly much more vehemently abhor their eternal destruction. ↩
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Ps. CXVI.9. ↩
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Ezek. XVIII.4. ↩
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Ibid. XXXIII.11. ↩
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I Sam. XIV.45; II Sam. XIX.14; XX.20; Ps. XCV.11. ↩
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Gen. XV.4; XXXII.29; Josh. XVII.3; I Sam. VIII.19. Whence אם is more than once omitted in the Keri. ↩
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The Alexandrian version in this passage also exhibits a comparative discourse in place of the absolute; for it is of this kind: εἰπὲ τοίνυν αὐτοῖς, ζῶ ἐγώ, λέγει ἀδωναι κύριος, ὅτι οὐ βούλομαι τὸν θάνατον τοῦ ἁμαρτωλοῦ, ὡς τὸ ἀποστρέψαι αὐτὸν ἀπὸ τῆς ὁδοῦ αὐτοῦ, καὶ ζῆν αὐτόν. “Say therefore to them: As I live, says Adonai the Lord, because I do not will the death of the sinner, as that he be converted from his way and live.” ↩
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Ezek. XVIII.32. ↩
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This is the force of המת, the dead man, as Kimchi and afterward Michaelis and Rosenmüller observed. ↩