To the Third and Fourth Generation

“You see, your ancestors did not just play football. They invented the game. You even taught other tribes how to play. But you had one problem: no matter how hard you tried, you just always ended up losing, match after match, game after game. In fact, after many, many moons, you just gave up altogether. It was all too painful for you. It turns out your tribe were totally crap at football. You’re losers, caveman – always have been, always will be.”

Early Man (2018)

So here’s my thesis: God doesn’t punish people for the sins of their ancestors (or their children, or indeed anyone else except the responsible individual him- or herself). In fact, more than that, God has never been one to punish people for the sins of their ancestors, not at any point right back through the scriptures.

So if we’re all happy with that, then I suppose I can skip straight to the doxological bit. Crikey, this post is going to be a short one –

Wait, wait, wait. What about in Exodus 34 when the LORD proclaims his name to Moses on top of Mount Sinai and says of himself, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow of anger and great of lovingkindness and truth, keeping lovingkindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and he will certainly not acquit, visiting fathers’ iniquity upon children, and upon children’s children, upon third and upon fourth (generations).”?¹ Does that not rather unquestionably suggest that God does punish people for the sins of their ancestors – several generations down the family tree, indeed?

 

Sinai. You can make out the little rectangle of St. Catherine’s monastery down in the valley.

Um, actually, I really don’t think it does. But I suppose I should unpack that a bit before I get to the doxology, huh?

If you could.

Right then. Well, first thing to note is that this isn’t the first time in scripture we’ve come across God describing himself in these kinds of terms. Compare the following statement from some fourteen chapters earlier, which comes attached to the second of the ten commandments (the one about not making images to worship): “I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting fathers’ iniquity upon children, upon third and upon fourth (generations) for those who hate me, but doing lovingkindness to thousands for those who love me and for those who keep my commandments.”² For those who hate me – it’s just one little word in the Hebrew, and yet crucial for our understanding of what’s going on here. God continues to punish those who hate him down the generations. And I think we have to keep this earlier statement in mind when we look at Exodus 34. If the children carry on in the manner of their fathers, God won’t leave that ever-accumuluating sin unpunished; but if the children reject their fathers’ hatred of God and turn back to him, he won’t deal with them as if they hated him too.

This is made explicit elsewhere in scripture as well. Check out the story of the finding of the book of the Law, told in 2 Kings 22 and 2 Chronicles 34.³ King Josiah (he was a really good guy, we like him) was having the Temple repaired, and while they were w0rking on it, the High Priest Hilkiah stumbled upon this book that apparently nobody had been reading in ages, and it turned out that it was nothing less than ha-Torah, the very words of God, the foundational document of the nation, the complete collection of necessary instructions for how to be righteous and so prosper rather than be wicked and so be destroyed – so, you know, easy to leave lying around somewhere and forget about. When the book of the Law was read to Josiah (we really like him), one part of what he said was, “Great is the LORD’s wrath which is kindled against us on the account that our fathers did not listen to the words of this book, to do according to everything written about us.” He sent Hilkiah and co. to inquire of the LORD via a prophet, and they went to a lady called Huldah who told them that, yep, God was going to bring disaster on the nation because of all their sins, just like it said in the book – but, because Josiah had sincerely repented when he heard this stuff (yay Josiah! What a hero), the disaster wouldn’t happen until after he was dead.

Now, Josiah was the grandson of King Manasseh, who you can tell from a quick skim of the preceding chapter was basically the most utterly despicable king Judah ever had (and that’s against some pretty stiff competition). Indeed, it was Manasseh’s sins that were the final trigger that prompted God to declare (via prophets) that Judah would go the same way as its northern sister kingdom: disaster, defeat, exile. So if we were applying the three or four generations principle without the nuance I outlined above, Josiah should have borne the sins of his grandfather; God should have visited them upon him without granting respite in recognition of his righteous repentance. But, as is perfectly plain from what actually happened, that’s not how God deals with people.

The place in the Bible where this is made clearest is Ezekiel 18,⁴ where God has a go at people for complaining proverbially that the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are blunted, i.e. that their ancestors did things they shouldn’t, and now they the children are the ones suffering the painful consequences of those actions.⁵ That’s not how I work, says God, and he exposits a series of scenarios to drive home the point:

1) If a man is righteous, he shall live.

2) If that man’s son is unrighteous, he shall die.

3) If that man’s son is righteous, he shall live.

4) If a wicked person turns around and becomes righteous, he shall live.

5) If a righteous person turns around and becomes wicked, he shall die.

It’s kind of a really repetitive chapter as God lays out the principle with such determined clarity. And the conclusion is this: repent. Now, there’s no point in that as a conclusion if you’re going to suffer the penalty of your ancestors’ wickedness anyway: God urges people to repent because that means he’ll forgive them and grant them to live, and he’s much happier doing that than making them die.⁶

But one rather crucial thing that that conclusion implies is that, though the people were complaining that God was visiting their fathers’ sins on them when they didn’t deserve it, they in actual fact were deserving of punishment, otherwise there would have been no need for them to repent. They were one of those third or fourth generations of God-haters. And the thing is, if there’s a big disaster coming in recompense for ever-accumulating sin, some generation or other has to be the one upon which that big disaster actually falls. God is patient and patient and patient, providing opportunity after opportunity to repent – he left his own beloved nation in slavery for four hundred years to give the inhabitants of Canaan more than a fair chance to turn from their sins⁷ – but he will certainly not acquit. At some point the axe has to fall.

 

Yeah, let’s go with that as a metaphor.

It didn’t fall when Josiah was king, though, because Josiah was righteous (three cheers for Josiah!). Rather, it fell on those who continued in the wickednesses of their wicked ancestors. That’s obviously not to say that absolutely every single person in Judah when it fell to the Babylonians was a hater of God – one of them was Jeremiah the prophet, for instance – but dealing in broad strokes, the nation didn’t suffer because of what it had once been, but because of what it was at present. Take a look also at Isaiah 65:6-7: “Behold, it is written before me: I will not keep silent; on the contrary, I will repay. I will repay on their lap your iniquities and your fathers’ iniquities together, said the LORD, in that they made offerings on the mountains and on the hills defied me, and I will measure out their former deeds on their lap.”⁸ This blatantly isn’t to the effect of, well, your ancestors were wicked, so, tough cookies to you, I’m going to deal with you as wicked no matter what you do; it’s to the effect of, you haven’t turned from your ancestors’ wickedness and I’m afraid time’s up. Try Jeremiah 16:10-12 as well: if the people ask what sin they’ve committed to warrant such disaster, God tells Jeremiah, he’s to respond that their fathers were disobedient idolaters and they themselves are even worse.⁹

But of course, the falling of the metaphorical axe, in the form of the Babylonian exile, wasn’t the end of the story for the children of Israel. God has cut a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and he’s going to fulfil it. No amount of sin on the part of the covenant people can change that. And this, I think, is another key part of what God’s getting at in that little chunk of Exodus 34: he’ll maintain his lovingkindness to a people for a thousand generations, not merely three or four. Granted, there’ll be some visiting of iniquity on the unrighteous to be done along the way – God wouldn’t be righteous if he never took any action against evil – but the extent to which his lovingkindness trumps his desire to punish is mind-bogglingly vast. And why? Well, because God’s slow of anger and great of lovingkindness and truth (perhaps better ‘faithfulness’ there), like he literally just said.

The statement about generations in Exodus 34 doesn’t contradict the principle of each person being punished for his or her own sin; rather, it provides the context for it. God is a thousand generations’ worth of eager to show lovingkindness to his people – blimey, to this day there haven’t even been a thousand generations since Abraham – which means that, when they turn to him, he’s all primed and ready to deal with them according to those covenant blessings. And he brings disaster on the unrighteous after three or four generations of consistent unrighteousness, so that they might confess and repent and turn to him and likewise receive the covenant blessings. If you look at Leviticus 26:39-42, for example, that was the whole point of the Babylonian exile: that the people might see the mess they were in and understand what brought them there and confess their iniquity and that of their fathers and humble themselves before God and be remembered by him.¹⁰

Confessing the iniquity of one’s unrighteous fathers means acknowledging that what they did was bad and deciding that you don’t want to continue along that trajectory. It involves turning away from the ways in which you’re still like them. There are some nice examples of this sort of thing in Nehemiah 9 and Psalm 106, for example.¹¹ By way of contrast, check out Jesus’ words to the scribes and Pharisees in Matthew 23:30-34: “And you say: If we were in the days of our fathers, we wouldn’t have been participants with them in the blood of the prophets. Thus you testify of yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up the measure of your fathers! … Behold, I myself am sending to you prophets and wise men and scribes: some of them you’ll kill and crucify, and some of them you’ll flog in your synagogues and pursue from city to city.”¹² The scribes and Pharisees recognised that what their ancestors did was wrong, but they weren’t prepared to confess their own sins as well, and, ironically enough, it was that that would cause them to reject Jesus and continue along their ancestors’ unrighteous trajectory of persecuting and killing God’s messengers.

Incidentally, in Jesus’ day, the idea that people were punished for their ancestors’ sins still hadn’t quite gone away, despite the startling clarity of Ezekiel 18. When Jesus and his disciples encountered a man born blind, they asked him whether it was he or his parents who had sinned such that he was born blind. Neither, Jesus replied: this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. And he restored the man’s sight.¹³

So let’s summarise: God doesn’t punish people for their ancestors’ sins. He won’t let people go on hating and disobeying him without some sort of recompense for too long, but even punishment is designed to turn those who undergo it back to him. And if people do repent, he won’t deal with them as if they hadn’t, no matter what trajectory their ancestors had set them on. He is much keener on showing lovingkindness to the righteous than punishing the wicked; that’s his character. And whatever he does, he does to display the glory of his character and his works.

Can I do the doxological bit now?

Go on then.

See, the people of Ezekiel’s day complained that God was unjust, because they thought he was punishing them for their ancestors’ sins, when what was really going on was that he was putting them through suffering in order that they might understand that they had followed in their ancestors’ footsteps and also needed to repent. Far from punishing those who don’t deserve it, God shows patience and mercy to those who don’t deserve either. Of course he does: he’s slow of anger and great of lovingkindness and faithfulness, even to a thousand generations’ worth. Because he is so good and righteous, he will forgive and forgive and forgive every kind and manner of sin, and because he is so good and righteous, he will certainly not let the unrepentantly evil off the hook. Because he is so good and righteous, he will not punish any human being for someone else’s sin. Well, with one rather important exception. How is God who will certainly not acquit able to forgive all manner of sins? Because he lays the sins of those who repent and put their trust in him, on his very own beloved and righteous Son. The sheer enormity of his lovingkindness stretches as far as that.

God doesn’t punish people for the sins of their ancestors. He has never been one to punish people for the sins of their ancestors. The instinct we have that that would not be just, is a right one. He punishes each person for his or her own sin – except that the sins of those who have believed in Jesus are laid on him instead. Hallelujah and then some, huh guys?

Footnotes

¹ Whole chapter, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ex+34&version=ESVUK, though here and throughout, as usual of late, I’ve given my own translation. It’s deliberately clunky to reflect the structure of the original text more closely, because I figure you’re not short of smoother and more idiomatic translation to which to compare.

² Whole chapter: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ex+20&version=ESVUK. Here and throughout I’ve translated the Hebrew חֶסֶד (ḥesed) as ‘lovingkindness’, which is a traditional English rendering that I’m pretty sure comes out of the KJV. The ESV prefers ‘steadfast love’. ‘Love’ by itself just doesn’t really seem to do the job somehow.

³ Have the Kings, because why not: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+kings+22&version=ESVUK. While we’re on the subject of kings of Judah, also relevant to my case is Amaziah, who was another good ’un (though not quite on Josiah’s level). Not all that much is said about him in scripture, but one thing he’s commended for is not putting to death the children of those who murdered his father; the author then quotes Deuteronomy 24:16, where God commanded precisely that: that nobody be put to death for the sins of his ancestors or descendants, only his own. So this is another key indication that such a thing is unjust and therefore not consistent with God’s character, but since I’m really dealing with how God relates to humans rather than how they relate to each other, and this post is long enough already, I decided to leave it out of the main body. You can read Amaziah’s story in 2 Kings 14 and 2 Chronicles 25; here’s the Kings: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Kings+14&version=ESVUK.

⁴ If you only read one of these chapters I’m linking to today, please make it this one: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ezek+18&version=ESVUK.

⁵ The same proverb shows up in Jeremiah 31, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Jeremiah+31&version=ESVUK, which is about how amazing everything’s going to be when Israel is restored, and one of the good things about it will be that nobody will feel the need to use this proverb any more, because a person shall die for his or her own sin.

⁶ If you’re thinking, but the righteous don’t always live longer than the wicked, you’d be right; the fact that we’re talking about life and death on a spiritual rather than a natural level is indicated by verse 31, methinks.

⁷ Check Genesis 15:13-16: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=gen+15&version=ESVUK.

⁸ Lots of interesting stuff in this chapter: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=is+65&version=ESVUK.

⁹ One of those chapters that’s really grim and then hits you with an amazing promise of faithfulness: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=jer+16&version=ESVUK. Thinking about it, that actually describes an awful lot of chapters…

¹⁰ Note also that God had told the people that early on that exile was going to happen: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=lev+26&version=ESVUK. God’s sovereignty is another thing to keep in mind when looking at this stuff.

¹¹ Aren’t I generous giving you all these links? Here’s the Nehemiah, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=neh+9&version=ESVUK, and the Psalm, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ps+106&version=ESVUK.

¹² Penultimate link: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matt+23&version=ESVUK.

¹³ Last one: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john+9&version=ESVUK. Oh, and before I go, thanks to Springfield!Springfield! for saving me some trouble with my opening quotation: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=early-man.