Does God punish children for the sins of their parents? What about punishing parents for their children’s sins? There seems to be conflicting scripture on this, but I believe there is a simple explanation.
In Exodus 34:6-7 (NLT), God says, “… I lay the sins of the parents upon their children and grandchildren; the entire family is affected—even children in the third and fourth generations.” That seems at odds with Deut 24:16. Deut 24:16 says, “Parents must not be put to death for the sins of their children, nor children for the sins of their parents. Those deserving to die must be put to death for their own crimes.” This law was put into practice in 2 Kings 14:5-6 by Amaziah, who spared the children of those who assassinated his father Josiah. How do we resolve this?
Exodus 34:6 The Lord passed in front of Moses, calling out, “Yahweh! The Lord! The God of compassion and mercy! I am slow to anger and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness. 7 I lavish unfailing love to a thousand generations. I forgive iniquity, rebellion, and sin. But I do not excuse the guilty. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children and grandchildren; the entire family is affected— even children in the third and fourth generations.”
Notice God agrees to forgive sins and show compassion, yet he will not exonerate the guilty. So, there must be a difference between the guilty and those who are forgiven. A sacrifice is required to forgive sins, and this is done out of repentance; however, people who continue living in sin and never repent remain guilty. Sin can be passed down because children often repeat what their parents do, so family lines that persist in the same sin will also face the same consequences. He does not plan to punish people for their parents’ sins. However, the parents’ sin can be repeated for multiple generations. For example, if the parents worship idols or practice necromancy, the kids will copy it and continue the family tradition. Another aspect of this is that people’s sin can negatively affect their children. For example, suppose a woman uses alcohol while pregnant. In that case, the child will be born with issues (like Fetal Alcohol Syndrome), or if a man commits a crime like stealing, even if he is forgiven, he will owe, and even his family may be indebted and enslaved. In the modern era, God can forgive someone for murder, but that person still has to go to prison according to the law, which will affect their children. The third aspect of this is that the consequences of certain sins can have a domino effect. For example, an adulterous woman can get pregnant by another man, and her child is treated with contempt because he is illegitimate, and that child grows up with a broken childhood. If the child doesn’t deal with the trauma, they may end up abusing or neglecting their children.
King David sinned by having sex with another man’s wife and killing the man to cover it up (2 Samuel ch. 11). In the next chapter, the prophet, Nathan, tells David that there will be consequences for his sin (2 Sam 12:10-12). He will have violence in his own house, and another man will sleep with his wives, as he did with Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba. He said what David did in private would be done to him in public. Later on, David’s son Absalom overthrew the kingdom and slept with his concubines in a tent on the palace roof in front of everyone (2 Sam 16:21-22). Chapters 12 through 16 are all the product of David’s sin. Amnon, David’s firstborn from his first wife, raped David’s daughter from his third wife, Tamar. David did nothing about it; there is no suggestion that he even made Amnon pay a bride price to take care of Tamar. Tamar asked Amnon to see their father about marrying her so that she would not be a non-virgin spinster, but he hated her after raping her, and he rejected her. In that culture, it was hard for a woman to remarry because most men preferred virgins. In addition, since Tamar was the king’s daughter, she had some value in a treaty marriage with another country, but that value was now gone because she was no longer a virgin. Two years later, Absalom (Tamar’s brother) had Amnon killed and fled to his grandfather’s kingdom (David’s third wife was the daughter of a foreign king). After three years in exile, Joab pressured David to reconcile with Absalom and bring him back, and David did. However, he refused to talk to Absalom, so at least four years later, Absalom began campaigning against him by forming alliances for a coup.
Amnon’s rape of Tamar may have made David feel extra guilty because his firstborn son was following in his footsteps by committing sexual sin. Not only was this fornication, but it was incestuous since Tamar was his half-sister (Lev 18:9, Lev 20:17), yet David gave him a pass and did nothing. This led to Absalom wanting revenge and killing his brother because his sister did not get justice. After hiding for three years, he thought his father had forgiven him, but David ignored him, so he saw his father as unjust and decided to take the kingdom for himself. David’s actions with Bathsheba were forgiven when the child died in 2 Sam 12:13-14, but the corruption inside him caused him to make mistakes in his family that fulfilled Nathan’s prophecy.
Furthermore, the firstborn child between David and Bathsheba died, not David, for his crimes. This wasn’t because the child was being punished for David’s sins; the child’s death itself was a punishment for David. God already promised David that the Messiah would come through his lineage (2 Sam 7), so he couldn’t kill David at the time. David had not had his son Nathan from Bathsheba, which is his connection to Jesus through Mary (Luke 3:31-32).
Ezekiel 18:1-22 gives an elaborate example of a righteous man with a wicked son and a righteous grandson. Only the wicked man among the righteous generations is put to death. Take a look at this:
Ezekiel 18:19 (NLT) What?’ you ask. ‘Doesn’t the child pay for the parent’s sins?’ No! For if the child does what is just and right and keeps my decrees, that child will surely live. 20 The person who sins is the one who will die. The child will not be punished for the parent’s sins, and the parent will not be punished for the child’s sins. Righteous people will be rewarded for their own righteous behavior, and wicked people will be punished for their own wickedness. 21 But if wicked people turn away from all their sins and begin to obey my decrees and do what is just and right, they will surely live and not die. 22 All their past sins will be forgotten, and they will live because of the righteous things they have done.
The primary rule is that when the Israelites were to enact death by stoning, they were only allowed to punish the guilty, not their children (Deut 24:16). God typically doesn’t hold people accountable for their parents’ sins. This topic primarily concerns the effects of sin trickling down through generations. Based on everything said in Ezekiel 18 (including all the verses after 22), it is clear that God typically avoids this, except under rare circumstances. God, in his sovereignty, can command the death of a whole family for a man’s violation of his laws, like Achan in Joshua 7:16-26, who violated Deuteronomy 7:26 by taking some plunder from Jericho.
Deuteronomy 7:26 says, “Do not bring any detestable objects into your home, for then you will be destroyed, just like them [the Canaanites]…” Achan had to be destroyed because by taking the Canaanites’ stuff, he participated in their sin and inherited their destruction. The city was to be wiped out, meaning no survivors (unless they fled Canaan entirely), so Achan received the curse, which was the annihilation of his family and lineage, just like the inhabitants of the city of Jericho. This rule applied to all of the Canaanites because God said to drive them out and destroy their culture (Deut 20:10-18). God already warned that breaking this law would lead to being destroyed “just like them (the Canaanites),” so this is an exception, executed under certain conditions, and only God determines these exceptions. The rest of Ezekiel 18 can be summarized in verse 23, which says, “Do you think that I like to see wicked people die? says the Sovereign Lord. Of course not! I want them to turn from their wicked ways and live.”
One last thing to think about. In Numbers 14:18, Moses quotes what God says in Exodus 34:6-7 back to him when interceding for the Israelites. In Exodus 34, God extended mercy to them after they sinned by making a golden calf idol (Exodus 32).
In Numbers 14, we see a similar scenario where the Israelites sinned by wanting to revolt against Moses and God because they believed he had misled them when they discovered they would have to fight the Canaanites in walled cities and against giants to obtain the promised land. They didn’t trust God and wanted to kill Moses and go back to Egypt. God said that since they didn’t trust him to give them victory, only their children (the next generation) would enter the promised land (Num 14:26-35). The older generations of Israelites (except Joshua and Caleb) died in the wilderness because of their sin, but God didn’t punish the next generation. Instead, he led the next generation, along with Joshua and Caleb, into the Promised Land. At the end of Numbers 14, God told that generation that they would stay in the wilderness for 40 years and that the punishment would be limited to one generation. So, God never punished them for three to four generations; he just punished one generation and used the next one to do what they failed to do. Therefore, Exodus 34:6-7 is not a universal principle of punishment; it reveals a framework for how sin can affect multiple generations.