Do you believe that your actions will have an effect on the 3rd and 4th generations?
Are there any examples in the Torah where a descendent is held responsible for the act of their ancestors?
(14) Then the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you did this, More cursed shall you be Than all cattle And all the wild beasts: On your belly shall you crawl And dirt shall you eat All the days of your life. (15) I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your offspring and hers; They shall strike at your head, And you shall strike at their heel.”
(16) And to the woman He said, “I will make most severe Your pangs in childbearing; In pain shall you bear children. Yet your urge shall be for your husband, And he shall rule over you.”
(17) To Adam He said, “Because you did as your wife said and ate of the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ Cursed be the ground because of you; By toil shall you eat of it All the days of your life:
(4) I will make them a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth, on account of King Manasseh son of Hezekiah of Judah, and of what he did in Jerusalem.’”
While Manasseh, having reigned for fifty-five years, died in peace, his son, Amon, reigned only two years and was killed in a palace conspiracy. Josiah, Amon's son, died a violent death on the battlefield. Josiah's son, Jehoahaz, is exiled to Egypt. His other son, Jehoaikim, is attacked by invading Chaldeans, Arameans, Moabites, and Ammonites. This, too, is attributed to the wrath of God against Menashe. Jehoiakim's son, Jehoiachim, is besieged by the Babylonians and exiled."
Are there texts in the Torah to support holding children accountable for the sins of their ancestors?
(ז) נֹצֵ֥ר חֶ֙סֶד֙ לָאֲלָפִ֔ים נֹשֵׂ֥א עָוֺ֛ן וָפֶ֖שַׁע וְחַטָּאָ֑ה וְנַקֵּה֙ לֹ֣א יְנַקֶּ֔ה פֹּקֵ֣ד ׀ עֲוֺ֣ן אָב֗וֹת עַל־בָּנִים֙ וְעַל־בְּנֵ֣י בָנִ֔ים עַל־שִׁלֵּשִׁ֖ים וְעַל־רִבֵּעִֽים׃
(7) extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; yet He does not remit all punishment, but visits the iniquity of parents upon children and children’s children, upon the third and fourth generations.”
According to these 2 texts above, what is God's view on the sin passing from parent to child for multiple generations?
ועל רבעים means AND UPON THE FOURTH GENERATION — It follows, therefore, that the measure of good (reward) is greater than the measure of punishment in the proportion of one to five hundred, for in respect to the measure of good it says: “Keeping mercy for thousands” (two thousands at least)
What difficulty is Rashi trying to solve with his commentary above?
(4) וחטאה, additional to the taunting sin called פשע. We encounter an illustration of this in Jeremiah 11,15 כי רעתכי אז תעלוזי, “for you exult while performing your evil deeds.” We must remember that the degree of evil committed by different people is never a duplicate, i.e. each one commits evil according to his own agenda; hence G’d’s reaction to such evil varies after taking into consideration all the circumstances.
ויעבור ה' על פניו ויקרא א"ר יוחנן אלמלא מקרא כתוב אי אפשר לאומרו מלמד שנתעטף הקב"ה כשליח צבור והראה לו למשה סדר תפלה אמר לו כל זמן שישראל חוטאין יעשו לפני כסדר הזה ואני מוחל להם
(commentary on Exodus 34:6)
The verse teaches that the Holy One, Blessed be He, wrapped Himself in a prayer shawl like a prayer leader and showed Moses the structure of the order of the prayer. He said to him: Whenever the Jewish people sin, let them act before Me in accordance with this order. Let the prayer leader wrap himself in a prayer shawl and publicly recite the thirteen attributes of mercy, and I will forgive them.
Doesn't God believe in forgiveness? How does this concept of sin from our earlier texts coalesce with God's teachings about forgiveness?
Does God believe in forgiveness?
(4) ויעתר לו [AND THE LORD] WAS ENTREATED OF HIM — of him and not of her, because there is no comparison between the prayer of a righteous person who is the son of a righteous person and the prayer of a righteous person the child of a wicked-person — therefore God allowed himself to be entreated of him and not of her (Yevamot 64a).
What does this Rashi text suggest about whose prayers God will answer?
Personal Responsibility:
(5) Once he had the kingdom firmly in his grasp, he put to death the courtiers who had assassinated his father the king. (6) But he did not put to death the children of the assassins, in accordance with what is written in the Book of the Teaching of Moses, where the LORD commanded, “Parents shall not be put to death for children, nor children be put to death for parents; a person shall be put to death only for his own crime.”
- Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
(יב) רַבִּי יוֹסֵי אוֹמֵר, יְהִי מָמוֹן חֲבֵרְךָ חָבִיב עָלֶיךָ כְּשֶׁלָּךְ, וְהַתְקֵן עַצְמְךָ לִלְמֹד תּוֹרָה, שֶׁאֵינָהּ יְרֻשָּׁה לָךְ. וְכָל מַעֲשֶׂיךָ יִהְיוּ לְשֵׁם שָׁמָיִם:
(12) Rabbi Yose said: Make yourself fit to study Torah for it will not be yours by inheritance.
(16) Parents shall not be put to death for children, nor children be put to death for parents: a person shall be put to death only for his own crime.
How does this text from Deuteronomy conflict with the previous Torah texts in Exodus and Numbers?
(2) איש בחטאו יומתו EVERY MAN SHALL BE PUT TO DEATH FOR HIS OWN SIN — This suggests: but one who is not yet an איש, a man, does sometimes die on account of his father’s sins: little children sometimes die at the hands of Heaven because of their parents’ sins (Sifrei Devarim 280:3).
"Visiting the iniquity (sins) of the fathers upon the children" (Exod. 34.7) and it is written, "The children shall not be put to death for the fathers" (Deut. 24. 16)! We set these verses one against the other and conclude there is no contradiction ; because the former passage refers to those children who continue in their fathers' ways, and the latter to those who do not continue in their fathers' ways.
How does the text in Berakhot explain the apparent contradiction in the Torah?
As Maimonides says, whoever has the power of preventing someone from committing a sin but does not do so, he is seized (i.e. punished, held responsible) for that sin.
(2) פוקד עון אבות על בנים, “visiting the sins of the fathers on the children;” this is another aspect of G–d’s attribute of Mercy, that He delays punishing the fathers, waiting if the children or grandchildren will return to Him before carrying out the punishment that had been deserved by them.
In what ways to you agree or disagree with this explanation?
(29) In those days, they shall no longer say, “Parents have eaten sour grapes and children’s teeth are blunted.” (30) But every one shall die for his own sins: whosoever eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be blunted.
While it is forbidden for human authorities to kill children on account of the sins of their father, G’d reserves the right for Himself to do so, as we know from Exodus 20,4 פוקד אבות על בנים, He requites the sins of the fathers to the children, if they continue in the evil footsteps of their fathers whose punishment G’d had suspended while hoping for their children to redeem their fathers by their exemplary conduct.
This principle has been spelled out even more clearly in Ezekiel 18,2 where the prophet had been challenged by the exiles with the question: ‘if the parents ate unripe grapes, why should their children suffer from the resulting diarrhoea?’ They meant that seeing they had been exiled, rejected by their master, G’d, the laws of the Jewish religion should no longer apply to them.
The thrust of our verse here is that the court does not have the right to use an innocent child as hostage for the crimes of his father in absentia..