Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.
All souls are mine - therefore I can deal with all, being my own creation, as I please (Jeremiah 18:6). As the Creator of all alike, I can have no reason, but the principle of equity, according to men's works, to make any difference, so as to punish some and to save others (Genesis 18:25).
The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The curse descending from father to son assumes guilt shared in by the son: there is a natural tendency in the child to follow the sin of his father, and so he shares in the further's punishment; hence, the principles of God's government involved in Exodus 20:5; Jeremiah 15:4, are justified. The sons, therefore (as the Jews here), cannot complain of being unjustly afflicated by God (Lamentations 5:7); because they filled up the guilt of their fathers (Matthew 23:32; Matthew 23:34-36). The same God who "recompenses the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children" is immediately after set forth as "giving to every man according to his ways" (Jeremiah 32:18-19). In the same law (Exodus 20:5) which "visited the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation" (where the explanation is added, "of them that hate me" - i:e., the children hating God, as well as their fathers-the former being too likely to follow their parents, sin going down with cumulative force from parent to child), we find (Deuteronomy 24:16), "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither the children for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin." The inherited guilt of sin in infants is an awful fact, but one met by the atonement of Christ; Romans 5:14, "Death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression;" but it is of adults that he speaks here.
Whatever penalties fall on communities for connection with sins of their fathers, individual adults who repent shall escape, as Josiah did (2 Kings 23:25-26), and even Manasseh himself (2 Chronicles 33:12-13). This was no new thing, as some misinterpret the passage here: it had been always God's principle to punish only the guilty, and not also the innocent for the sins of their fathers. God does not here change the principle of His administration, but is merely about to manifest it so personally to each that the Jews should no longer throw on God, and on their fathers, the blame which was their own.
The soul that sinneth, it shall die - and it alone (Romans 6:23); not also the innocent.