Exodus 20: 5

You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me,  but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

This is the story throughout the bible: God is slow to get angry, but he will not clear the guilty. In the good ordering of the universe, sins have consequences. God would not reign if they did not. But what does it mean that He visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children? The word “visits” is tricky, since in other instances it is translated in a variety of ways. The most problematic translation is perhaps “punishing”. 

The question often asked is: should God punish the children for the wrongs of the fathers? Is that even what the verse says God will do? If it were, it should be against the teaching of the rest of the bible. In Ezekiel 18:20, for example, this is the verdict:

“The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.”

And if that were not sufficiently clear, Jeremiah 31:30 says:

“…Everyone shall die for his own sin. Each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge.”

Job’s testimony (Job 19:4) is in agreement:

“And even if it be true that I have erred, my error remains with myself.”

Yet there is a sense in which the sins of the father do punish the children. If a father rejects God’s way and leads his family in sin, the children will suffer the consequences, often for several generations. Is it God’s fault? It would be difficult to consider God to be gracious, if He did not limit the effects of sins. But look at the trajectory of the verse. That is exactly what he does! God is jealous for his children. He wants us to be His alone, so the idolatry of the fathers is not allowed to punish every subsequent generation of children. God restricts the effects of their misplaced service to three or four generations. Sins matter in living memory. This is why there are cartoons which joke about the depredations of the Vikings but no newspaper syndicates gags about the gas chambers.

In the ancient near east there was evidently a tradition of punishing the children for the sins of the fathers. The guidance in Deuteronomy condemns the process: “Fathers shall not be put to death because of their children, nor shall children be put to death because of their fathers. Each one shall be put to death for his own sin.”

In the story of Abraham’s priestly wrangle with God over Sodom, we see for the first time the principle in reverse.

“Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” And the Lord said, “If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”

Whereas in those days the guilt of one man was felt to be enough to condemn his neighbours - for who learns to be wholly guilty without the collusion of their society? - Abraham argued that the righteousness of the few might cover over the guilt of the many. And God, who shows steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love Him and keep His commandments, agreed. Ultimately, that agreement led to the suffering of his Christ, because God is jealous for us, and will not clear the guilty, and because sins have consequences, and because grace, though freely offered, is not cheap.