Ezekiel 18:23 - Clarke's commentary and critical notes on the Bible

Bible Comments

Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord GOD: and not that he should return from his ways, and live? Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? - No! That is foreign to him whose name is love, and whose nature is mercy. On the contrary he "wills that he should return from his evil ways and live."

And if God can have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, he cannot have made a decree to abandon him to the evil of his nature, and then damn him for what he could not avoid: for as God can do nothing with which he is not pleased, so he can decree nothing with which he is not pleased. But he is "not pleased with the death of a sinner," therefore he cannot have made a decree to bring him to this death.

Ezekiel 18:23

23 Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord GOD: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?