Why the Decalogue insists on the cross-generational transfer of the consequences of human behavior

In his foray into the topic of the Ten Commandments in history and tradition seen from the vantage point of inner-biblical exegesis, Bernard Levinson zeroes in on the question of moral agency. It is hard to think of a more fundamental topic at the interface of law and theology. Levinson understands Ezekiel 18 to amount to a covert repudiation of the doctrine of cross-generational transfer of the consequences of human behavior as it finds expression in the Decalogue at Exod 20:5-6.¹ A brilliant thesis, one I hope receives a wide hearing.

On this view, faced with his fellow expatriates’ moral blame-game, their acquiescence to a fate they cannot control, Ezekiel throws as it were a Hail Mary (my metaphor, not Levinson’s). As Levinson puts it, Ezekiel counters by insisting that “freedom, moral action, and repentance [are] the sole forces that govern human action” (67).

In the following, I take Levinson’s conclusions in a direction unlike the one he develops. Levinson’s take on the history of moral theory is radically innovative in that, with Ezekiel, Aristotle, Paul, Catholic and Protestant Christianity, and Kant firmly in view, he bypasses the middle terms and draws a direct line between Ezekiel and Kant. My take is more traditional. It goes like this.

Ezekiel is a towering figure in the history of ethics. Next to Aristotle and Paul, it is hard to think of any other individual in antiquity who grappled with the issues more than he.

It is hard to think of a more theocentric theorist than Ezekiel. In this he resembles Paul, not Aristotle. At the same time, it is hard to think of a biblical author who seeks to nurture responsible moral agency more than Ezekiel.

The fact brings to light a paradox, one which both moderns and post-moderns fail to grasp: in the shadow of a strong, overpowering God like that of Ezekiel, strong, almost Promethean human moral agency is nurtured. Conversely, the tragedy of our age, not just of Ezekiel’s forlorn compatriots, is that under an empty sky, moral weakness flourishes. Strong moral agency lacks a leg to stand on.

Under an empty sky, moral agency retreats into a purely imaginary world. It tends to exhaust itself in the expression of ideological preferences. The contrast with, for example, the earth that exists below the strong, overpowering God of Calvin’s heirs is striking. The overarching God of the Huguenots and Puritans – Prussia and Prussia’s Berlin, it might be noted, are creatures of Frederick the Great, and therefore of Calvin’s, not Luther’s Reformation² – creates a space in which moral action is privileged and human initiative exalted. Immense human undertakings like epic voluntary migrations, the theory and practice of capitalism, revolution, and international law (Grotius) take place in this framework under the aegis of God’s blessing and transcendent determination. In this framework, God is the Moral Absolute who underwrites the moral absolutes human beings negotiate.

Conversely, the absent God of Christa Wolf – if there be a lesson in her great novel entitled Cassandra, viewed against the foil of her life – creates a space, within the imagination, for a titanic struggle between things like matriarchy and patriarchy, but within the real world, for nothing more than the usual compromises and contradictions. Excuse me if I use Wolf as an example. She is little-known outside of continental Europe. But she deserves to be better-known.

What if it is true that strong moral agency is best nurtured within a framework which plays up the extent to which actions are judged by a principle of justice the force of which exceeds that of fate by several orders of magnitude? Under an empty sky, in a world in which justice is purely immanent, strong moral agency, except as a throwback based on other paradigms, may not even be possible.

The Decalogue’s insistence on the cross-generational transfer of the consequences of human behavior is, I submit, of a piece with Ezekiel’s denial thereof. The goal in both cases is to nurture strong moral agency. Stress on the transfer in the context of the Decalogue is meant to deter moral slackness. Denial of the transfer in the context of Ezekiel’s moral tirades serves the very same goal.

Sometimes the only way an alcoholic, a gambler, or a womanizer, whose father was probably the same, can reinvent himself is by looking into the face of his daughter, someone he loves more than himself, and not looking back. If the only thing at stake were his own life, he might choose not to choose. For the sake of his daughter, perhaps his granddaughter (a subtheme of The Bucket List²), he does what he otherwise would not do.

Here are the key passages Levinson cites. Exod 20:5-6:

כִּי אָנֹכִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ אֵל קַנָּא פֹּקֵד עֲוֺן אָבֹת עַל־בָּנִים עַל־שִׁלֵּשִׁים וְעַל־רִבֵּעִים לְשֹׂנְאָי וְעֹשֶׂה חֶסֶד לַאֲלָפִים לְאֹהֲבַי וּלְשֹׁמְרֵי מִצְוֺתָי

For I am יהוה your God, a God who brooks no rivals, who visits the guilt of parents on their children to the third and fourth generation - of my despisers; but who deals kindly to the thousandth generation of my friends, of those who adhere to my demands.

Ezek 18:1-4:

וַיְהִי דְבַר־יְהוָה אֵלַי לֵאמֹר׃ מַה־לָּכֶם אַתֶּם מֹשְׁלִים אֶת־הַמָּשָׁל הַזֶּה עַל־אַדְמַת יִשְׂרָאֵל לֵאמֹר אָבוֹת יֹאכְלוּ בֹסֶר וְשִׁנֵּי הַבָּנִים תִּקְהֶינָה׃ חַי־אָנִי נְאֻם אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה אִם־יִהְיֶה לָכֶם עוֹד מְשֹׁל הַמָּשָׁל הַזֶּה בְּיִשְׂרָאֵל׃ הֵן כָּל־הַנְּפָשׁוֹת לִי הֵנָּה כְּנֶפֶשׁ הָאָב וּכְנֶפֶשׁ הַבֵּן לִי־הֵנָּה הַנֶּפֶשׁ הַחֹטֵאת הִיא תָמוּת

The word of יהוה came to me: “What’s with you that you quote this proverb about the land of Israel: ‘Parents eat sour grapes, but it’s their children’s teeth that are blunted’? Cross my heart and hope to die - pronouncement of יהוה - if this proverb continues among you, against Israel! Look: the breath of all souls is mine. The breath of the soul of a father like that of a son. They are mine. The soul that sins, that soul alone shall die.

In effect, as Levinson points out, Ezekiel “devoices” the attribution to God of the doctrine of the cross-generational transfer of the consequences of human behavior per Exod 20:5-6 and “revoices” it as folk wisdom (63).

Bibliography

Bernard M. Levinson, Legal Revision and Religious Renewal in Ancient Israel. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Series on Levinson’s Legal Revision and Religious Renewal in Ancient Israel

Bernard Levinson and the Conflict of Interpretations in the Bible

Point and Counterpoint: The Meaning of Canon

The Ten Commandments: A History of Monotheism in Miniature
 Why the Decalogue insists on the crossgenerational transfer of the consequences of human behavior

A Bibliographic Essay on Inner-biblical Exegesis

For other comment on this volume, and a summary of its subject matter, check out the publisher’s introduction here.

¹ Bernard M. Levinson, Legal Revision and Religious Renewal in Ancient Israel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008) 51-88.

² In 1685, the year Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg issued the Edict of Potsdam, an invitation to Huguenots in France suffering under an illiberal and despotic regime to come and live abroad in peace and safety. Thousands came. At one point, more French Huguenots lived in Berlin than Germans. Modern history is incomprehensible without attention to the mass migrations, not only of Puritans to colonial America, but of Huguenots to Germany and Dutch Calvinists to South Africa.

³ Lines from The Bucket List which covertly handle the issue of transgenerational punishment include Edward Cole (italics mine): “The first time he hit her, she came to me. Wouldn't let me take care of it, said it was her fault, he'd had a rough day and too much to drink. The next time he hit her, she didn't come to me. The ex told me about it. So I wanted to be a good father, so I took care of it. I called a guy who called a guy who called his friends, they didn't kill him, what they did, I don't know, but he never bothered her again, and then she said I was dead to her.” Carter Chambers to Edward Cole: “Virginia said I left a stranger and came back a husband; I owe that to you. There's no way I can repay you for all you've done for me, so rather than try, I'm just going to ask you to do something else for me - find the joy in your life. You once said you're not everyone. Well, that's true-you're certainly not everyone, but everyone is everyone. My pastor always says our lives are streams flowing into the same river towards whatever heaven lies in the mist beyond the falls. Find the joy in your life, Edward. My dear friend, close your eyes and let the waters take you home.” Cole goes on to reconcile with his daughter, and experience himself as grandfather to his grandchildren.

Comments

[terri]

I have often scratched my head when reading Ezekiel asking why the people of Israel use this proverb, thinking to myself,"Well....because Moses says that's what God said!"

Yet.....I always liked Ezekiel's version much better.

[JohnFH]

Ezekiel's rhetorical stance is more congenial to the modern individualistic mindset. But it fails as a description of reality, and even of justice.

[Jason A. Staples]

I like where you're going with this, John.

I've always found it striking that the Decalogue avoids discussion of the second generation, only addressing the "third and fourth generations." A major Rabbinic interpretation of this was of course that the second generation always had a choice whether to continue the pattern of their forebears or not.

It's also important to note the language of trans-generational consequences—the language not of punishment, but visitation. I think that is often forgotten in modern readings of the Decalogue.

There can be no doubt that Ezekiel is riffing off the Decalogue in his statements, but I'm not sure he's fundamentally disagreeing with the statement. Rather, it seems he's putting the emphasis on the present generation as the responsible agents for what happens in the future.

[terri]

"But it fails as a description of reality, and even of justice."

How so?

I see where one could say that is an incomplete description of reality and justice.....but how do you get from there to failure?

[JohnFH]

Hi Terri,

By "fails as a description" I meant an incomplete, and ultimately misleading description.

On the one hand, I believe Ezekiel was a master rhetorician, and I would not wish that a word of what he said, here and elsewhere, be changed.

On the other hand, I believe the teaching of the Ten Commandments to be primary. To this day, fathers and mothers will refrain from all kinds of evil for the sake of their children, precisely because they know, like it or not, that the evil they contemplate doing, or the selfishness they think about indulging in, would be visited on their children.

I hope that helps.

[Alan Lenzi]

I just lectured on Ezek and chapter 18's contribution to our modern understanding of justice, making the connection back to the Decalogue. I don't think Levinson's thesis is new, unless I'm missing something. It seems like Fishbane developed similar ideas or maybe Zimmerli. I don't recall. But I'm sure I've heard the idea before.

[JohnFH]

It's Fishbane - and maybe also Zimmerli. Plus, Tigay and Milgrom, in their commentaries on the Deuteronomy and Numbers in the JPSTC, cover the same topic in excursuses of great interest. Greenberg in his AB commentary takes another tack.

[terri]

John,

Isn't there room for both versions of responsibility and consequences? In fact, don't we need both versions?

I ask because it seems to me that Jesus very much individualizes one's relationship to God.....completing the arc from communal consequences and responsibility to individual consequences and responsibility.

I'm thinking particularly of his commands to "hate" our mothers and fathers, to let the dead bury their dead, his emphasis on eternal life or punishment for specific individuals with no mention of the consequences for their family members.

Help me out....I can't think of any examples of Jesus referring to communal punishment or reward. Are there any?

As far as parents and selfishness....I wish that what you said was true. As it is, I can speak from my own experiences and those of many people I know whose parents had little regard for the fallout of their own bad choices. Most people who think about the consequences of their actions and make better choices because of them for their children's sake are usually the same kind of people who have multiple reasons to make better choices.

I can assert the truth of consequences reaching the 3rd and 4th generation as a sort of natural truth, not necessarily an edict set in stone and mandated as punishment from God.....so I don't really deny that.

However, I don't think Ezekiel got this wrong.

[JohnFH]

Terri,

I think we need both versions.

The New Testament does not differ from the Old Testament on these things. The cross-generational transfer of the consequences of human behavior comes out in any number of passages, in positive and negative. Within a single generation, positive and negative consequences are shared. Here are some examples:

Luke 1:47-55; Matthew 12:38-42; Mark 6:7-13; Acts 2:38-39; Luke 19:43-44.

But the Gospel in all this is clear: Luke 1:47-55; Acts 2:38-39. Repentance reverses things *before God* for the one who repents, but does not render the repenter immune from the consequences of the destructive actions of others.

[Michael]

John,

I'm wondering whether a too-literal reading of Ex 20:5-6 simply deconstructs itself. For example: what happens when a wicked man's great-grandson fears God? Does God "visit the inquity of the father" on him, or does God "show lovingkindness" to him?

Perhaps the function of the statement is simply to affirm, in hyperbolic manner, that God both punishes and shows mercy, but is predisposed to showing mercy ("3-4 generations" vs. "thousands"?! Clearly non-proportional.).

And what about the difference between Exod 34:6-7 and 20:5-6? Does the (longer) form in 20:5-6 attempt to solve the problem of a too-literal reading by glossing the first group as "those who hate me" and the second as "those who love me and keep my commands"?

The same technique occurs in the Targum on Lev 26:39; children are only punished "when they sin in the same way."

Thoughts?

[JohnFH]

Michael,

Excellent comments and questions. I trust your teaching and writing is going well.

My sense is that Ex 20:5-6 was not designed to answer the question of what happens when a wicked man's great-grandson fears God. Even less was it designed to answer the question of what happens when someone has an abusive father but a rock-solid grandmother, how does that work out in the wash. It is not worded with those questions in mind, though the glosses you mention are possibly an attempt to take such questions into consideration.

The scope of the passage is restricted to an emphasis on the principle of God as the guarantor of cross-generational consequences, with the positive consequences of faithfulness by someone in the family tree potentially outweighing the negative consequences of dysfunctional parents or great grandparents. Taken as a whole, the passage nurtures hope but is also meant to dissuade an ill-intentioned person from acting to the disadvantage of his own posterity.

But within the Bible itself, in the Targumim, and beyond, the passage in question appears to have been read as if it were a mathematical axiom of some sort. At the point, as you also suggest, a sort of reductio ad absurdum comes into play. So rewrites with qualifications to the original statement are attested. None of the rewrites are really satisfactory.

Ezekiel's formulation, on the other hand, has its own integrity. Now we have two formulations, neither of which is designed to be a logical syllogism. Taken together, however, both cover an awful lot of bases - but not in syllogistic form.

[Alan Lenzi]

Despite all of our (good) emphasis on individual responsibility in our society today, there are certainly inter-generational and therefore now collective aspects of, e.g., social justice, that we must think about. Unfortunately, our individualism makes it hard for us to see these as justice issues. For example, I had a discussion recently with a guy about how he as a white male has benefited in many ways he can't even be aware of due to his status as a white male whereas many black women, e.g., have suffered exclusion or professional obstacles simply for being part of that fraction of our society. I told him certain labor laws (e.g. affirmative action) exist in some places that in essence try to "level the playing field." These may make some white males feel they are personally discriminated against. But the laws are intended to redress a historical collective problem that created prejudice for whole groups for generations. There's a tension, I told him, that needs to be addressed. It just so happens that the tension is getting attention while he and I are part of society. It's good, I think. But he still felt like it wasn't fair for him because "he didn't do anything" to deserve "reverse discrimination."

I know this is a very complex issue and charged with political heat. I just intend it to be an example of how there still is an inter-generational, collective vs. individual responsibility tension in our society despite our emphasis on individual responsibility.

[JohnFH]

Was it Justice O'Connor who suggested that "reverse-discrimination" needs to be in effect for 30 more years?

With respect to college and grad school admissions, it can be a matter of academic life and death, how the calculus works out, with inter-generational and collective consequences, positive and negative (e.g., legacy; residency; affirmative action) all playing a sometimes determinative role.

[Alan Lenzi]

I have felt the affects. A diversity officer at a university looked across her desk at a campus interview once and asked me, "so how can you contribute to the diversity of this campus?" Me, a hetero white male under the age of 50. I actually gave a really good answer, I think, about teaching experience in a variety of institutional settings, my journey across the religious spectrum, the diversity of the kinds of students I'd taught, and the varieties of places I've lived. But none of that is quantifiable in terms of the diversity they were interested in. I didn't get the job.

[Matt]

Thanks for addressing this topic, as it is another OT theme that needs more "air time," not least because of the almost superstitious manner it is applied in North American pop theology.

[JohnFH]

Yes, Matt, and then there are those who like to pretend that their selfish choices will have no serious negative effects on their children.

It's hard to get these things right. We are at the very heart of the contradictions that shape human lives and human destinies.