Albert Barnes Commentary Ezekiel 18:9-13

"hath walked in my statutes, and hath kept mine ordinances, to deal truly; he is just, he shall surely live, saith the Lord Jehovah. If he beget a son that is a robber, a shedder of blood, and that doeth any one of these things, and that doeth not any of those [duties], but even hath eaten upon the mountains, and defiled his neighbor`s wife, hath wronged the poor and needy, hath taken by robbery, hath not restored the pledge, and hath lifted up his eyes to the idols, hath committed abomination, hath given forth upon interest, and hath taken increase; shall he then live? he shall not live: he hath done all these abominations; he shall surely die; his blood shall be upon him." — Ezekiel 18:9-13 (ASV)

Live ... die - In the writings of Ezekiel, there is a development of the meaning of “life” and “death.” In the Holy Land, the sanctions of divine government were largely temporal, so that the promise of “life” for “obedience” and the threatening of “death” for “disobedience” in the Books of Moses were regarded simply as temporal and national.

During their exile, this understanding could not continue to its full extent. The universality of the misfortune necessarily led people to look deeper into the words of God.

The word “soul” denotes a “person” viewed as an “individual,” possessing the “life” that God breathed into man when he became a living soul (Genesis 2:7). That is, it distinguishes “personality” from “nationality.” And this introduces that fresh and higher idea of “life” and “death,” which is not so much “life” and “death” in a future state as it is “life” and “death” as equivalent to communion with or separation from God—the idea of life and death that was explained by our Lord in the Gospel of John (John 8) and by Paul in Romans 8.