Question:
Answer:
Ezekiel 33:11 Say to them: ‘As I live,’ says the Lord God, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of Israel?’
Deuteronomy 28:63 And it shall be, that just as the Lord rejoiced over you to do you good and multiply you, so the Lord will rejoice over you to destroy you and bring you to nothing; and you shall be plucked from off the land which you go to possess.
To understand the answer, we must first understand that God created each human being with the power of free choice. Each person must make decisions every day, using his/her free choice, and God abides by these decisions. We can see in the first passage below, that God begs the Israelites to use their free choice to choose life, not death. The reason is that God loves each one of us, and wants to have each person with Him forever, in a perfect place.
Deuteronomy 28 is known as the chapter of Blessings and Cursings. I picture God with a big umbrella over Him, under which we can shelter and be protected from harm and danger, if we are close to Him. These are the blessings mentioned in Deuteronomy 28. If the Israelites stay close to God, maintain their close relationship with Him, and keep His commandments, then they are assured of blessings from God forever. But if they reject God, worship idols and move far away from God, from under the protection of His umbrella of blessings, they auto-matically move into Satan’s domain, which will lead to the “cursings” that God proclaims. Like Adam and Eve, they have free choice; if they choose God it leads to eternal life, and if they choose idol worship (which means worshipping the devil) it leads to all the bad things mentioned in the chapter. It is not God that brings these things upon them, but it is the natural result of shunning God’s protective umbrella.
You have picked out one verse from the whole chapter, which seems to contradict the Ezekiel passage, but if you read the whole chapter, you will get the idea that God is pleading for the Israelites to stick with Him and reap the benefits, the blessings. But He also warns that the natural result of walking away from the Lifegiver, is eternal death, as God told Adam and Eve.
So, to answer your question, no, the two passages do not contradict each other. God is love, and wants us all to follow Him and live with Him forever, perfected people living face-to-face with the King of the universe. He pleads with each one of us to give our lives to Him, but He also gives the alternative, which is eternal death. If you come upon anything in the Bible that seems to contradict another, study it well, because the entire Bible is the Word of God, and God does not contradict Himself! God bless!
