Generational Curses

This reading belongs to the Pentecostal and charismatic deliverance ministries and to the Christian and Missionary Alliance renewal stream. It holds that curses pass through a family line from ancestral idolatry, unrighteousness, occult involvement and broken covenants. Derek Prince teaches it in Blessing or Curse: You Can Choose, published in 1990. John Eckhardt follows Prince and supplies the prayers in Prayers That Break Curses (2010). Robert Henderson sets the same teaching in the court of heaven, where a family's sin is legal ground for accusation until repentance and prayer settle it, in Unlocking Destinies From the Courts of Heaven (2016). Rob Reimer teaches the breaking of family sin patterns as the third principle of his Soul Care. The reading gives the believer something to do with the words visiting the iniquity, and it grounds that work in the cross.

This reading belongs to the rabbinic tradition and to the evangelical commentators, and it takes the words of those who hate Me as the key to the verse. Targum Onkelos, the Aramaic translation of the Torah, adds to Exodus 20:5 that the visiting falls on rebellious children when they complete the sinning after their fathers. Rashi explains those words the same way: the children are punished when they hold to the evil deeds of their ancestors. The Talmud in Berakhot 7a sets Exodus 34:7 against Deuteronomy 24:16 and resolves the two by the same rule. John Calvin, in his Harmony of the Law, says that God punishes the children justly as imitators of their fathers. Adam Clarke's Commentary says the clause necessarily implies that the children walk in the steps of their fathers. The reading's strength is that it keeps Exodus 20:5 and Ezekiel 18:20 within one law.

This reading belongs to the Puritans and to the German commentators of the nineteenth century. Keil and Delitzsch, in their Biblical Commentary on the Pentateuch, call the human race a living organism in which the curse of sin and the punishment of wickedness pass from parents to children. They deny that this is a fate, since a righteous and gracious God governs the world. Matthew Henry reads the visiting as judgments that bring the total ruin of families and cast children out of the covenant with their idolatrous parents. The reading's strength is the history it accounts for, from Achan's household in Joshua 7 to Saul's sons in 2 Samuel 21.

Only the two forms of the warning inside the commandments name those who hate Him. Rashi carries the words of Exodus 20:5 over to Exodus 34:7, so that the shorter form means what the longer says. He also counts the measure of reward as five hundred times the measure of punishment. Keil and Delitzsch count the third generation as great-grandchildren and the fourth as the generation after them.

This reading has to answer Ezekiel 18:20 and Deuteronomy 24:16, and it has to say why a believer who is a new creation in Christ still carries a curse from his fathers. Prince answers that a curse which still shows itself in a believer's life calls for deliverance ministry, beyond a declaration of what the believer has in Christ.

This reading has to answer the shorter form of the warning and the households of Achan and Saul. Calvin grants that God's judgments are a great depth, and that what passes understanding in them is to be received with sobriety and reverence.

This reading has to answer the word visit itself, which Calvin reads as taking note of a sin in order to punish it. Keil and Delitzsch themselves gloss visits as punishes.