Sins of the Father

Jewish Lords' Witness

Date of Publication: 26th March 2026

What Are The Sins of the Father?

Courtesy of Crosswalk.com

The Sins of the Father

Introduction

A little while ago the thought struck me, no doubt from the Holy Spirit, that some scriptures tell us that God visits the sins of the fathers upon their offspring. That notion struck me as rather harsh since I believe that each one of us is responsible for our own actions and behaviour. This does not sound like the justice of a loving God to me. So here, in time-honoured fashion, is the latest crusade of the JLW to determine what the scriptures really have to say on this potentially troubling matter. Amen.

3rd/4th Generations

Let us start out as we mean to continue with the key verses from the Books of Exodus and Deuteronomy:

5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them, for I Jehovah thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them that hate me, (Exodus 20 ASV)

6 And Jehovah passed by before him, and proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in lovingkindness and truth,
7 keeping lovingkindness 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, upon the third and upon the fourth generation. (Exodus 34 ASV)

9 thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them; for I, Jehovah, thy God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them that hate me;
10 and showing lovingkindness unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. (Deuteronomy 5 ASV)

This message is repeated verbatim in the Book of Numbers, so is clearly of great importance to our God:

18 Jehovah is slow to anger, and abundant in lovingkindness, forgiving iniquity and transgression; and that will by no means clear [the guilty], visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation. (Numbers 14 ASV)

The third and fourth generations represent the great and great great grandchildren of the father. So why just pick on these guys? My thought here is that, given the human lifespan, these generations will be the last ones that the fathers will see during their lifetime at best. Later generations will be born after the fathers’ deaths. So, God’s Punishment and Vengeance will only be on those personally known by the fathers thereby making it an on-going curse visible to them.

We do, though, need to consider the repeated phrase ‘of them that hate me’ which is highly relevant here. Clearly all these verses are directed at those that worship false idols which, as we have seen before (Idolatry), is about the worst sin in the Book. It is a form of behaviour that is a deliberate act against the True God and is likely to be carried down through the generations as a matter of custom and practice.

The Book of Leviticus also makes it clear that fathers and sons will all suffer God’s vengeance, through all the idolatrous generations:

39 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.
40 If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me; (Leviticus 26 KJV)

A message that is repeated by the Prophet Isaiah:

6 Behold, it is written before me: I will not keep silence, but will recompense, yea, I will recompense into their bosom,
7 your own iniquities, and the iniquities of your fathers together, saith Jehovah, that have burned incense upon the mountains, and blasphemed me upon the hills; therefore will I first measure their work into their bosom. (Isaiah 65 ASV)

And the Prophet Jeremiah:

10 And it shall come to pass, when thou shalt show this people all these words, and they shall say unto thee, Wherefore hath Jehovah pronounced all this great evil against us? or what is our iniquity? or what is our sin that we have committed against Jehovah our God?
11 Then shalt thou say unto them, Because your fathers have forsaken me, saith Jehovah, and have walked after other gods, and have served them, and have worshipped them, and have forsaken me, and have not kept my law;
12 and ye have done evil more than your fathers; for, behold, ye walk every one after the stubbornness of his evil heart, so that ye hearken not unto me:
13 therefore will I cast you forth out of this land into the land that ye have not known, neither ye nor your fathers; and there shall ye serve other gods day and night; for I will show you no favor. (Jeremiah 16 ASV)

However, those later generations that do not hate Jehovah and do not worship false gods, will NOT have the iniquity of the fathers visited upon them. So, in these initial very telling and definitive verses from the Books of the Law and the Prophets, I think we can see that those later generations will not suffer the consequences of idolatry if they do not practice it in favour of worshipping the One True God.

Just in case of doubt, we are told that God will keep faith with those that love Him for a thousand generations. That would be more than enough to cater for the whole of Adamic mankind’s existence from Adam to the end of this system. That will include everyone who God considers to be righteous:

9 Know therefore that Jehovah thy God, he is God, the faithful God, who keepeth covenant and lovingkindness with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations,
10 and repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face. (Deuteronomy 7 ASV)

A message that is confirmed by King David:

17 But the lovingkindness of Jehovah is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, And his righteousness unto children's children;
18 To such as keep his covenant, And to those that remember his precepts to do them. (Psalms 103 ASV)

Whoops, have I just completed this paper?? Probably, but best read on for further scriptures and insight on the matter of the fathers’ sins.

Personal Responsibility

The Book of Deuteronomy goes on to confirm the notion that every man will be tried for his own sins, not his father’s or his son’s:

16 The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin. (Deuteronomy 24 KJV)

Later books in scripture also support the conclusion reached in the previous section. Jeremiah makes it clear that we will only suffer for our own sins, not those of our fathers:

29 In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge.
30 But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge. (Jeremiah 31 KJV)

A message referenced a decade later by the Prophet Ezekiel:

2 What mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge?
3 As I live, saith the Lord Jehovah, ye shall not have [occasion] any more to use this proverb in Israel.
4 Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die. (Ezekiel 18 ASV)

17 has turned back his hand off the poor, and has not received interest and increase. He has done My judgments, has walked in My statutes. He shall not die for the iniquity of his father. Living he shall live.
18 His father, because he did extortion, robbed [his] brother by robbery, and did [what is] not good among his people, behold, even he shall die in his iniquity.
19 Yet you say, Why? Does not the son bear the iniquity of the father? When the son has done justice and righteousness, he has kept all My statutes and has done them, living he shall live.
20 The soul that sins, it shall die. A son shall not bear the iniquity of the father. And a father shall not bear the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be on him. (Ezekiel 18 GLT)

Fathers v Jehovah

This next scripture from Jeremiah takes a bit of unravelling. At first sight verse 18 seems to be saying that the punishment resulting from fathers’ iniquities are passed on to their children. But then verse 19 says that all will be treated by God according to their own behaviour. A closer analysis of verse 18 reveals that the iniquitous acts of the fathers can have live-changing impacts on their children. This is not due to any punishment from God but the worldly results of men’s actions while on this Earth. God is not responsible for all that befalls mankind. Much of what we see around us is due to the evil acts of men:

17 Ah Lord Jehovah! behold, thou hast made the heavens and the earth by thy great power and by thine outstretched arm; there is nothing too hard for thee,
18 who showest lovingkindness unto thousands, and recompensest the iniquity of the fathers into the bosom of their children after them; the great, the mighty God, Jehovah of hosts is his name;
19 great in counsel, and mighty in work; whose eyes are open upon all the ways of the sons of men, to give every one according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings: (Jeremiah 32 ASV)

Exceptions to The Rule?

Having written the bulk of this paper on the sins of the father, a couple of possible challenges to my understanding on the subject have occurred to me. The first one was God’s curse on Adam upon his fall from grace:

16 And Jehovah God commanded the man, saying, Eating you may eat of every tree in the garden;
17 but of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil you may not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, dying you shall die. (Genesis 2 GLT)

22 And Jehovah God went on to say: Here the man has become like one of us in knowing good and bad, and now in order that he may not put his hand out and actually take [fruit] also from the tree of life and eat and live to time indefinite, --
23 With that Jehovah God put him out of the garden of Eden to cultivate the ground from which he had been taken. (Genesis 3 NWT)

5 And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died. (Genesis 5 KJV)

God originally created Adam to live an indefinite lifespan. When Adam broke the one and only commandment that God gave him, Jehovah banished him from the Garden of Eden thereby denying both Adam and Eve that indefinite lifespan. That diminished lifespan has been passed down to all the generations of Adam’s offspring, i.e. all of adamic humanity including us. You can get the full story of Adam’s downfall and punishment at: Introduction 10 - Why do we die?.

So, the punishment of one man’s sin has been passed down to all his offspring down to the present generation. This sounds like God’s breaking of His own promise does it not? But wait! God’s Law and promise was handed down to Moses originally and was a promise to Adamic mankind at that time. It was not a promise made to Adam. So no, despite initial appearances, God did not break His rule in this highly significant case, according to my understanding.

Let us now look at a second possible exception to God’s rules on the sins of the father. This case involves the dreadful sins of King David. I cover the details of David’s sins and punishments in my recently published paper on God’s Flawed Heroes. Now this is a much more difficult one to explain away. The first part of David’s various punishments was the death of his first-born child from Uriah’s wife:

14 Howbeit, because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of Jehovah to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die.
15 And Nathan departed unto his house. And Jehovah struck the child that Uriah's wife bare unto David, and it was very sick. (2 Samuel 12 ASV)
18 And it came to pass on the seventh day, that the child died. And the servants of David feared to tell him that the child was dead; for they said, Behold, while the child was yet alive, we spake unto him, and he hearkened not unto our voice: how will he then vex himself, if we tell him that the child is dead! (2 Samuel 12 ASV)

So, I have to say, that this does seem to be a case where Jehovah did not keep His promise regarding the sins of the father. I cannot recall any other case in which God broke one of His promises to mankind. So let us look at the circumstances surrounding this case and the scriptures already presented, one such being from the Prophet Ezekiel:

20 The soul that sins, it shall die. A son shall not bear the iniquity of the father. And a father shall not bear the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be on him. (Ezekiel 18 GLT)

When Ezekiel talks here of the death of a soul that sins, he is commenting on the second death, i.e. condemnation into Gehenna, not the physical death of mankind to which we are all susceptible according to time and circumstance. Consequently, one would see the death of David’s first-born to be an earthly punishment on David, not on his child. Again, this needs us to try to think of the bigger picture from God’s viewpoint, something I have previously raised in my paper on War.

The Lords’ attitude to innocent children is made clear in the New Testament:

14 Jesus, however, said: Let the young children alone, and stop hindering them from coming to me, for the kingdom of the heavens belongs to suchlike ones. (Matthew 19 NWT)

So, while these two cases do seem to push the boundaries of fathers’ sins not being paid for by their children, I believe they do not break the rule. Amen.

Synopsis

The 3rd and 4th generations mentioned in the Books of the Law cover those generations that the sinful father might know personally should he live so long.
Those generations and those following will only suffer for the sins of the father, should they continue in their idolatrous ways.
Consequently, those generations that ‘do not hate Jehovah’, will NOT have the iniquity of the fathers visited upon them.
God’s promise to not punish those generations that are righteous covers all the generations of mankind down to the present day.
Scripture makes clear that we are all responsible for our own behaviour, fathers for theirs and sons for their own also.
Where sons may suffer for their fathers’ sins are cases where the fathers’ actions have caused worldly problems that their children must face. These are not the actions of a vengeful God but are man-made issues.
While Adam’s curse is upon all Adamic mankind, this punishment from God was meted out prior to the giving of the Law to Moses. Consequently, this does not run counter to God’s promise of justice through all the generations of Adamic mankind.
The early death of David’s first-born infant, as a result of his awful sins, does initially seem like God’s breaking this promise. However, a relevant scripture from the Prophet Ezekiel tells us that the true punishment is the second death whereby evil ones must spend an appropriate sentence in Gehenna. The New Testament tells us that innocent children will inherit the Kingdom.