I’ll continue to look at y^ehôvâh’s fearful pronouncement: I punish the sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons for the sin of the fathers who reject me…^[1]  Two tables comparing/contrasting four partial verses follow.  In the center columns the Hebrew words read from top to bottom, beside them are my best effort at a word-for-word translation, and then the NET translations are in the outer columns.

There doesn’t seem to be anything about the Hebrew words themselves that would compel anyone to translate פקד (pâqad) I punish or עון (ʽâvôn) for the sin.^[2]  In fact, forms of pâqad were only translated punish or punishment three other times in the NET prior to Deuteronomy 5:9.  Two occur after Israel worshipped the golden calf.  Moses said (Exodus 32:30-35 NET):

“You have committed a very serious sin, but now I will go up to the Lord – perhaps I can make atonement on behalf of your sin.”

So Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Alas, this people has committed a very serious sin, and they have made for themselves gods of gold [Table].  But now, if you will forgive (nâsâh, תשׁא) their sin…, but if not, wipe me out from your book that you have written” [Table].  The Lord said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me – that person I will wipe out of my book.  So now go, lead the people to the place I have spoken to you about.  See, my angel will go before you.  But on the day that I punish (pâqad, פקדי; Tanakh: I visit), I will indeed punish (pâqad, ופקדתי; Tanakh: I will visit) them for their sin.”

And the Lord sent a plague (nâgaph, ויגף) on the people because they had made the calf – the one Aaron made.               

I don’t have any quarrel with describing this plague^[3] as punishment, but it occurs in a particular context.  Though Moses offered—wipe me out from your book that you have written—y^ehôvâh said, Whoever has sinned against me – that person I will wipe out of my book.  Later in his address recorded in Deuteronomy Moses said:  Fathers must not be put to death for what their children do, nor children for what their fathers do; each must be put to death for his own sin.^[4]

Rabbi Dr. Zev Farber in his article “Punishing Children for the Sins of their Parents,” on TheTorah online wrote about “the surprising claim” from Rabbi Yossi bar Chanina in the Babylonian Talmud “that in four cases the prophets overturned a decree Moses makes in the Torah.”  Apparently Rabbi Yossi bar Chanina held that not only Deuteronomy 5:9 but Exodus 20:5 “makes a clear and strong claim that in at least one case—worshipping other gods or idols—God punishes the descendants of the sinner until the fourth generation.”  Rabbi Farber took issue with one of the “four cases”:^[5]

The prophet Ezekiel, who was exiled to Babylon in 597, offers a torrent of arguments and rhetoric against the concept of punishing children for the sins of the parents. He does not frame it as an argument against the Torah…but rather he frames it as a response to a popular notion (Ezek 18).

Rabbi Yossi bar Chanina apparently did not accept that “God punishes the descendants of the sinner until the fourth generation” was an erroneous popular notion and so he pit Ezekiel against Moses and even y^ehôvâh Himself.  This tenacious aspect of the religious mind to justify itself should be familiar to us.  How many generations of English speaking followers of Jesus have believed that ἄνωθεν meant again, Nicodemus’ misunderstanding of Jesus’ words?  How can a man be born when he is old?  He cannot enter his mother’s womb and be born a second time, can he?^[6]  Jesus^[7]  answered (John 3:5-8 NET):

“I tell you the solemn truth, unless a person is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.  What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.  Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must all be born from above (ἄνωθεν).’  The wind blows wherever it will, and you hear the sound it makes, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

I want to simplify the world to consider pâqad in the context of Adam and two of his sons Cain and Abel.  First, for background, consider Paul’s understanding of their situation (Romans 5:12-14 NET Table):

So then, just as sin entered the world through one man [e.g., Adam] and death through sin, and so death spread to all people because all sinned – for before the law was given, sin was in the world, but there is no accounting for sin when there is no law.  Yet death reigned from Adam until Moses even over those who did not sin in the same way that Adam (who is a type of the coming one) transgressed.

And the Lord (y^ehôvâh, יהוה) was pleased with Abel and his offering…^[8]  But when Cain killed Abel it is apparently possible to argue by the Hebrew words of Deuteronomy 5:9 that y^ehôvâh punished Abel for Adam’s sin.  It’s not an argument I want to make before the judgment seat of Christ.  Then the Lord (y^ehôvâh, יהוה) said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?”^[9]  Cain lacked David’s knowledge of y^ehôvâh (Psalm 139:1-12 NET):

O Lord, you examine me and know.  You know when I sit down and when I get up; even from far away you understand my motives.  You carefully observe me when I travel or when I lie down to rest; you are aware of everything I do.  Certainly my tongue does not frame a word without you, O Lord (y^ehôvâh, יהוה), being thoroughly aware of it.  You squeeze me in from behind and in front; you place your hand on me.  Your knowledge is beyond my comprehension; it is so far beyond me, I am unable to fathom it.

Where can I go to escape your spirit?  Where can I flee to escape your presence?  If I were to ascend to heaven, you would be there.  If I were to sprawl out in Sheol, there you would be.  If I were to fly away on the wings of the dawn, and settle down on the other side of the sea, even there your hand would guide me, your right hand would grab hold of me.  If I were to say, “Certainly the darkness will cover me, and the light will turn to night all around me,” even the darkness is not too dark for you to see, and the night is as bright as day; darkness and light are the same to you.

Cain mistook y^ehôvâh’s question—Where is your brother Abel?—for ignorance of what he had done rather than as an opportunity to confess, and repent of, his rash act.  We can only imagine how differently this scene might have played out if Cain had expressed his own shock and horror at what he had done in anger, anger directed primarily at y^ehôvâh’s rejection of his offering.  But I don’t take that to mean that y^ehôvâh was ignorant that Cain murdered Abel: The voice of your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!^[10]  Nor do I take it to mean that David was disputing with Moses or imagining novel qualities of y^ehôvâh.  I assume that y^ehôvâh is ever this knowledgeable and Cain was simply ignorant of it.

Cain wasn’t stupid.  Consider his clever evasion to y^ehôvâh’s question, Where is your brother Abel: I don’t know!  Am I my brother’s guardian?^[11]  Apparently, he reasoned that his father had tripped himself up by being too forthright with y^ehôvâh: I heard you moving about in the orchard, Adam had answered y^ehôvâh’s question, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.^[12]  As Cain understood it, the knowledge Adam let slip—I was naked—enabled y^ehôvâh to infer what his father had done: Who told you that you were naked? y^ehôvâh asked Adam.  Did you eat from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?^[13]  But again, I don’t assume that y^ehôvâh had to infer what He already knew Adam had done simply because Cain didn’t know Him.

In a similar way I assume that the word of y^ehôvâh (יהוה) that came to Ezekiel is the same word of the same y^ehôvâh revealed to Moses and recorded in Deuteronomy 5:9.  The erroneous popular notion—Yet say ye, Why? doth not the son bear (nâsâh, נשׁא) the iniquity (ʽâvôn, בעון) of the father?^[14]—that the son should or must die for the father’s sin (Ezekiel 18:20 Tanakh) was the misunderstanding of religious minds no matter how many famous rabbis espoused it.  And so I take the translation of פקד (pâqad) as I punish in Deuteronomy 5:9 as a perpetuation of an erroneous popular notion of religious minds that was clearly corrected in Ezekiel 18.

I am not yet perfected in love.  The first thing that comes to mind when things don’t go my way is that God is punishing me for something.  Faith in y^ehôvâh comes from the fruit of his Spirit, along with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control.  If I think of verses like Deuteronomy 5:9 from the perspective of sons, grandsons and great grandsons, I will come to the same erroneous conclusion, what Rabbi Farber called Sour Grapes Theology:^[15]

The sour grapes theology paints the punishment of descendants as a harsh but necessary way of God dispensing justice. Full punishment of a sinner may include the punishment of his family.

I think it’s more productive to view Deuteronomy 5:9 from the perspective of iniquitous fathers, particularly iniquitous fathers who don’t want the horror of their iniquity visited upon their children.  For [our earthly fathers] disciplined us for a little while as seemed good to them, but [God] does so for our benefit, that we may share his holiness.^[16]  My children were not my biological offspring so I won’t even comment on passing on my iniquity via nature.  But the iniquity I passed on to them via nurture was not merely a matter of my inept blundering.

As I think of it now I recall how often I passed on my perverse views of life, the way things “really” work.  And I did so with as much or more conviction than anything I taught them about Christ and his righteousness.  Add to that my own on-again-off-again righteousness—sometimes led by the Holy Spirit, sometimes not so much—and I have a truly horrifying picture of y^ehôvâh visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children,^[17] my children!  And this, when I wanted what was best for them.

I find myself crying aloud with Cain’s words (if not his meaning): My iniquity (ʽâvôn, עוני) is too great to endure (nâsâh, מנשׁא)!  What hope do I have but that which is to be found in the long name of y^ehôvâh?  The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, and abounding in loyal love and faithfulness, keeping loyal love for thousands, [bearing] (nâsâh, נשׁא) iniquity (ʽâvôn, עון) and transgression and sin.^[18]

In a prophecy that reads so much like history unbelievers doubt its authenticity, y^ehôvâh spoke of disobedient (Leviticus 26:13-17) survivors (Leviticus 26:39, 40 Tanakh):

And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them.  And they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, in their treachery which they committed against Me, and also that they have walked contrary unto Me.

Confession of one’s own iniquity is obvious.  Confession of one’s fathers’ iniquity is necessary because we are far too likely to mistake our fathers’ iniquity for the way things are done, especially if those fathers were religious leaders of some note.

In the movie The Shack in a dream within a vision during a life-threatening coma Mack (Sam Worthington) spends a weekend in a cabin at a lake with God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.  His wife Nan (Radha Mitchell) calls God Papa, a bit too familiar for Mack’s taste at the beginning of the film.

Papa (Octavia Spencer) appears to Mack as the neighbor woman who, looking at young Mack’s bruised face, said, “Daddies aren’t supposed to do that to their kids.  It ain’t love.  You understand?”  Papa explains to adult Mack, “After what you been through, I didn’t think you could handle a father right now.”  But once Mack has God in his hands, so to speak, he has a lifetime of blame to unleash.

“You’re the almighty God, right?” he accuses Papa.  “You know everything.  You’re everywhere, all at once.  And you have limitless power.  Yet, somehow you let my little girl die.  When she needed you most, you abandoned her.”  Mack’s 7-year-old daughter Missy (Amélie Eve) was abducted by a serial killer.  Nothing of her was ever found but her bloodstained dress.  Still, Mack’s first salvo is mostly a ruse that doesn’t quite get to the heart of his issue with God.

That first night he reads himself to sleep with the Old Testament and dreams of Missy’s abduction, a dream within a dream within a vision in a coma.  Missy calls out to him for rescue.  The next morning at breakfast Mack moves one step closer to the real issue.

Mack: Everybody knows you punish the people who disappoint you.

Papa: Hmm.  Nope.  I don’t need to punish people.  Sin is its own punishment.^[19]  As difficult as it is for you to accept, I’m in the middle of everything you perceive to be a mess, workin’ for your good.

Later, after a stroll across the lake with Jesus (Aviv Alush), Mack meets Wisdom (Alice Braga) in a cave beneath a waterfall.  She helps him take his first steps toward obeying Jesus’ command: Do not judge so that you will not be judged.^[20]  Sitting with Wisdom, Mack approaches the heart of the matter.

Mack: You know, what I don’t understand is how God can love Missy and put her through so much horror.  She was innocent.

Wisdom: I know.

Mack: Did he use her to punish me?  ‘Cause that’s not fair.  And she didn’t deserve it.  My wife and my children didn’t deserve it.  Now, I might.  ‘Cause you know I’m…

Mack can never bring himself to confess that he murdered his father.  Later that day Mack acknowledges being overly hard on God.  Papa responds: “I can work incredible good out of unspeakable tragedies.  But that doesn’t mean I orchestrate the tragedies.”

That evening Mack is taken to meet the abusive father he poisoned.  Before he can say anything more than “Dad” his father says, “Mack, I’m so sorry for everything.  I was blind and I couldn’t see you.  I couldn’t see anyone.”  Still, Mack can’t or won’t confess his murder, he only makes excuses.  “Son, I forgive you,” his father continues.  “You’ve become the father I could never be.  And I’m so proud of you.  Can you ever forgive me?”

In the movie Papa protested that she didn’t “orchestrate the tragedies.”  Still, woven into the fabric of The Shack is a serial killer who came to a campground to abduct a little girl.  His victim of opportunity was a murderer’s daughter.  Papa in Mack’s dream in a vision in a coma in a movie may want to leave it to chance or fate or karma, but in Scripture visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children is as much a part of y^ehôvâh’s self-proclaimed name as forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.^[21]  That’s as important in reality as it proved to be in The Shack.

The next morning Papa appears to Mack as a man (Graham Greene).  “For what we have to do today you’re gonna need a father,” Papa explains.  He wants Mack to forgive the man who murdered his daughter.

Mack: So, you just let him get away with it?

Papa: Nobody gets away with anything…I’m not asking you to excuse what he did.  I’m asking you to trust me to do what’s right and to know what’s best.