At one time I had promised a post on the concept of the sins of the fathers being visited upon the children. Doing some research these are some verses I found reference to this concept.

Exo 20:5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
Deu 5:9 Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me,
Exo 34:6 And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, long suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,
Exo 34:7 Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.


What I found was something entirely different from what I was looking for. Clearly the above verses are talking about God's punishment being transferred from one generation to another even to the 3rd and 4th generations. That is kind of a scary thought and not the idea of God that us modern folk care to think to much about.

What I was looking for was more along the lines of the sins of a person being transferred from one generation to another. It does not take too much imagination to see that abuse is often carried from one generation to the next and in many cases it grows in severity.

But in either case there is hope and, of course, it comes from God's mercy. You see, I noticed in the King James version, the word visit was used when talking about God's punishment, and I can also reason that this same word can be used in the concept of the transferal of sins from one generation to another. When I see the word visit I think in terms of something temporary like, when you visit a friend or family member you have every intention of leaving when certain conditions are met or when you have accomplished what you came to do in your visit. I think this same concept can be applied biblically as well.

It has been said that God always provides for a way out of any given situation. In each of the biblical references God is talking about how if someone hates or fails to love God, He will visit punishment on not only the person who fails to love Him but also on the following generations. But remember I said that visit implies a temporary condition. Too often we think of God's punishment as a permanent condition.

So here is God's way out of this multi-generational punishment. If a subsequent generation repents of the sins that they have been carrying on from past generations, would it not make sense that God through his loving grace would remove the punishment from that and future generations?

Put another way, a person hates God, so God punishes that person and then his children and his children's children. But if one of his children or children's children comes to love God, would that not break the cycle of hatred started generations ago? and I can only believe that God would acknowledge that generation breaking the cycle and thus end his cycle of punishment in reciprocation.

I like to think that way back in the Old Testament when, God gave Moses the 10 commandments, he included a much overlooked covenant with us that Jesus Christ sealed with his blood on the cross.