In Ezekiel 18 the Lord counters a false proverb shared among the Jewish exiles in Babylon:

“The fathers eat sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”
– Ezekiel 18:2

The Lord countered the above proverb with one of his own that stated the truth by stressing the actual realization of his justice.

“The soul who sins is the one who will die.” – Ezekiel 18:20

Individual responsibility for sin is the focus of Ezekiel’s words. The practice of blaming God for personal disaster or crediting other people’s sin for personal judgment from God is rejected.

The Israelites’ false doctrine that taught God would punish children for their parent’s sin proved to them that God was unjust in his treatment of people. To this the Lord replied by saying it was not himself who was unjust, but the Israelites. The Israelites were unjust because they credited the righteous God with deeds that were not his. The Israelites’ false doctrine had led them to make unjust statements about God.

God will bring judgment, but it is not his desire. Twisted human reason may see God’s judgment as something that is pleasurable to God, but the message here is that God desires that people repent.

God is just. God will not punish the righteous man for the sins of another man.

“People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy.”
– G. K. Chesterton in this book “Orthodoxy,” an apologetic description of his journey from agnosticism to Christianity written in 1908.
(Read his book here.)

God established medical quarantines 3,000 years before man understood why quarantines prevented the spread of disease. According to Leviticus 13:45-46 and Numbers 5:1-4 God commanded Israel to isolate people with contagious disease and allow their return to society only after they
had been cured.