Children suffering for the fathers.
The idea finding poetical expression here is, that the judgments of God necessarily fall on the last members—the children-of a corrupt and wicked dynasty. It is in the public and open administrations of providence, it is in the events and circumstances and history of this world, and not in the secret dealings of God with each individual soul, that the law of this text applies. For the sake of moral influence upon the whole race, children are seen to suffer for their parents' wrongdoing. But no children can bear, before God, the burden of their parents' guilt. The law of the children suffering, generation after generation, belongs to the solidarity of the race. But that is a purely material conception. Souls are individual, and every soul must bear entirely its own burden. It may share, it can share, no one else's. "So, then, each one of us must give account of himself to God." This truth may be fully illustrated along the following line.
I. CHILDREN SUFFERING FOR THE FATHERS IS A PHYSICAL LAW. Much has recently been discovered concerning the law of heredity, but only the fringe of a great subject has yet been touched. No greater calamity rests on men than the bodily bias and tendency given by diseased or degraded parentage. The familiar illustration is drunkenness; the fact equally applies to other sins.
II. CHILDREN SUFFERING FOR THE FATHERS IS A MORAL CONDITION. That is, as an established and recognized fact it is designed to be a moral power on parents. It is a persuasion to righteousness for the children's sake. No higher moral force on affectionate natures can be provided than this consideration, "You physically injure those whom you love best, if you are self-indulgent."
III. CHILDREN SUFFERING FOR THE FATHERS IS A DIVINE JUDGMENT. Striking men in one of their tenderest places. Men would bear an extreme of suffering, if they might bear it all themselves; but it is terrible to think that they drag their children under, and the weight will crush them. Only let us see quite clearly, that it is the disability and the suffering of sin, but not the guilt of it, which thus passes from generation to generation.—R.T.