2 Kings 17:41
As their fathers did, so they do.
Apples do not fall far from the tree; they do, however, sometimes roll a ways away. But even then, their stems bear the marks of where they were once attached to the branch.
Exodus 20:5-7
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
Fathers are not merely influential, they are covenantal, What they do, or don't do, affects their children. The way in which they bring them up, or refuse to raise them, affects the path their children take when they grow up. Now this can apply inversely. Take the cases of a drunk who raises a teetotaler, a pacifist who raises a solider, or an abandoned child who is fiercely loyal to his own children; but even then, it is the one's drunkenness, the other's pacifism, and the last's absence that is the key ingredient in the child's rebellious stew. The child's disposition is reactionary, defined by his distance from the source; but nevertheless, it is inextricably tied and bound to that source by definition. In other words, every child either desires to be like their dad or to be nothing like their dad, but the source of reference is always the same. Children are defined by their dads. Success is either defined by closeness to or distance from that mark, but dad is always the reference point.
Ezekiel 18:19-21
Yet say ye, Why? doth not the son bear the iniquity of the father? When the son hath done that which is lawful and right, and hath kept all my statutes, and hath done them, he shall surely live. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.
A father is responsible as the covenant head of his home for all that happens under it. That is not the same thing as being at fault for it. The father is not necessarily at fault for his son's sins, but he is responsible for seeing to them. In like fashion, the son is not necessarily at fault for his father's faults, but he is responsible to honor the man behind them. The soul that sins shall die for the sins that soul committed, not for the sins of someone else. The only soul that ever died for someone else's sins was Jesus.
Deuteronomy 7:9-10
Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations; And repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face.
The strength of covenantal promises are exponentially more potent than those of covenantal curses. God limits curses to three, perhaps four generations; whereas promises permeate for thousands of generations. Consider the weight of that promise. Please it into its historical contest. In this, the year of our Lord 2022, the world has not yet seen a thousand generations of mankind since its inception. We'have certainly seen more generations than Moses, yet even we do not have a thousand generations of ancestors. How much more ought we to imagine and look forward to thousands of generations of faithful descendants? The goodness of God going forward will be observed in the faith of fathers manifested in millions of faithful descendants yet to come.
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