33:12, 13, "The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in
death would be the consequence, unless he knew that they were included in the threatening?
Some have objected against Adam's posterity's being included in the threatening delivered to Adam, that the threatening itself was inconsistent with his having any posterity: it being that he should die on the day that he sinned.
To this I answer, that the threatening was not inconsistent with his having posterity, on two accounts:
I. Those words, "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," according to the use of such-like expressions among the Hebrews, don't signify immediate death, or that the execution shall be within twenty-four hours from the commission of the fact; nor did God by those words, limit himself as to the time of executing the threatened punishment; but that was still left to God's pleasure. Such a phrase, according to the idiom of the Hebrew tongue, signifies no more than these two things:
1. A real connection between the sin and the punishment. So Ezek. 33:12, 13, "The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him in the day of his transgression. As for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall thereby in the day that he turneth from his wickedness: neither shall the righteous be able to live … in the day that he sinneth: … but for his iniquity that he hath committed, he shall die for it." Here 'tis said, that in the day he sinneth, he shall not be able to live, but he shall die; not signifying the time when death shall be executed upon him, but the connection between his sin and death; such a connection as in our present common use of language is signified by the adverb of time, "when"; as if one should say, "According to the laws of our nation, so long as a man behaves himself as a good subject, he may live; but when he turns rebel, he