“Keeping mercy 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, unto the third and to the fourth generation.”
Maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation. Love maintained to thousands, three categories of sin forgiven, yet the guilty not left unpunished. The asymmetry between love to thousands and punishment to three or four generations is the covenant's measure of God's disposition: mercy vastly outweighs judgment, but neither is cancelled by the other. Hebrews 10:17 says God remembers sins and lawless acts no more — what the new covenant promises is the permanent fulfillment of the forgiveness that the Sinai self-disclosure announces.
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