keeping loving kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and disobedience and sin; and who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, and on the children’s children, on the third and on the fourth generation.”
ExplanationCommentary
Verse 7. Keepest. So the Targum of Jerusalem reads. Hebrew and Septuagint have, “keepeth.”—No man, and so forth All have sinned. Romans 3:23. Hebrew “who will not clear the guilty,” which is followed by the Chal. and Septuagint God is a just judge, who will assuredly punish the impenitent. Yet even in justice, he will remember mercy, and will stop at the third and fourth generation, ( Calmet.) when the influence of the progenitors’ example can have but small influence upon their descendants. If, however, they prove guilty, they must expect chastisement. Exodus 20:5.