Ezekiel 18:21-22 - Exposition

But if the wicked will turn, etc. Here, however, there is a distinct advance. The question is carried further into the relations between the past and the present of the same man, between his old and his new self. And in answering that question also Ezekiel becomes the preacher of a gospel. The judgment of God deals with each man according to his present state, not his past. Repentance and conversion and obedience shall cancel, as it were, the very memory of his former sins (Ezekiel's language is necessarily that of a hold anthropopathy), and his transgressions shall not be mentioned unto him (comp. Ezekiel 33:16 ; Isaiah 43:25 ; Isaiah 64:9 ; Jeremiah 31:34 ). Assuming the later date of Isaiah 40-66, the last three utterances have the interest of being those of nearly contemporary prophets to whom the same truth had been revealed.