The creative mercy of God

Nico Tromp MSC

How characterise the God of Israel? The Book Exodus depicts him as One who is patient, kind and loyal. Nevertheless, he punishes the sins of his people to the third and fourth generation. An incongruity? Or do we begin, here, to understand God’s creative mercy?

We read in Exodus 34:4-7

So Moses cut two slabs of stone like the first. Then he rose early in the morning and went up Mount Sinai as Yahweh had commanded, taking in his hands the two slabs of stone.

And Yahweh came down in a cloud and stood there with him, and Moses called on the name of Yahweh.

Then Yahweh passed in front of him and cried out, “Yahweh, Yahweh is a God full of pity and mercy, slow to anger and abounding in truth and loving-kindness. He shows loving-kindness to the thousandth generation and forgives wickedness, rebellion and sin; yet he does not leave the guilty without punishment, even punishing the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”

Mixed feelings

This is a remarkable text. It occurs in the Old Testament several times and so it belongs seemingly to the fundamental convictions of Israel’s faith. Furthermore, it strikes one as an attempt to paraphrase the content and the emotional value of the name Yahweh and so recalls the words of Exodus 3:14: “I am (for you)”. Finally, the formula resembles a confession of faith that took on the form of a statement and probably originated in the liturgy; mostly Israel expresses its faith by means of narratives about what God has done for his people (see e.g. Deut. 26).

This text goes against the grain with us as well. Initially, it gives us a good feeling: the words sound solemn and gratifying, encouraging the citizen of God’s kingdom. We hear a voice that is familiar and precious to us Christians as well. But as we approach the end of the text a feeling of annoyance takes over: this word is hard; who can listen to it? Is it not unlike revenge of the innocent? “The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the teeth of the children are set on edge?”; thus a popular reproduction of the thought expressed in the second part of our text.

In search of balance

The corrections by the prophets of this proverb show that Israel experienced a development on this point. And it seems that the formulation of Exodus 34 is an early stage of it. In order to remove the understandable annoyance of the reader we quote the more developed formulations first.

1. Exodus 20

The first is found in Exodus 20, where Yahweh is called a “jealous God”, in that he does not allow himself to be walked over: he demands for himself the recognition that is his right and he is not willing to share this with other gods (Isaiah 42:8).

The word ‘jealous’ is deceptive in an essential respect: it means that you begrudge someone what is his; you are spiteful towards the other because he possesses something that you desire for yourself. The word ‘envious’ sounds more innocent but a closer look shows it is no better. Both words suggest something in God that is not there: the Hebrew text says that God will not waive the glory that is his and his alone and that he will guard this ‘jealously’. Exodus 20 says about this passionate God that “he visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me: And showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.”

The added “of them that hate me” takes the sting out of the formula of Exodus 34. In a sense it even weakens its statement, for it is quite logical that a rejection of God has dire consequences. Its force has been removed because in this way the children are no longer punished for the sin of their fathers. Their own sin has now become an essential condition for punishment; the sin of the fathers is reduced to secondary importance, for it is no longer necessary to explain why the sons are being punished.

This reasoning makes it probable that the formulation of Exodus 20 is an edited statement. The wording of it is not perfect, as the speaker had his hands tied. He had to improve on an existing structure and he did not succeed 100 percent. But the intention is clear: God does not make innocent people suffer because of the sins of others; each is responsible for one’s own deeds and must bear the consequences for them.

2. Deuteronomy 7

The third pronouncement, that of Deuteronomy 7:9 ff, accepts the objection against Exodus 20:5 ff: if you look at matters this way, you can do away with the fathers altogether: “(9) So know that Yahweh, your God, is the true and faithful God. He keeps his covenant, and his love reaches to the thousandth generation for those who love him and fulfil his commandments, (10) but he punishes in their own persons those who hate him and he repays them without delay.”

It is perfectly clear: Deuteronomy is in favour of personal responsibility. The only question is whether the equilibrium has now been achieved and whether justice has been done to the true intention of the original formula in Exodus 34.

Loving-kindness and truth

Let us go back to Exodus 34. Conspicuous are the words ‘pity and mercy’ opening a series of phrases that cannot easily be discarded. If one asks what are the predominant qualities in Israel’s God, the answer of our text is that he is patient and kind, slow to anger, always ready to show loving-kindness and truth. Yes, first loving-kindness and then truth, because truth springs forth from loving-kindness. It is about truth in love. The idea that God loves us is reinforced by ‘truth’: it is no arbitrary affection, no brittle love but one that can take a blow, it is steadfast love. On the other hand, truth or truthfulness has an aspect of reciprocity; it has a limit. You can’t expect truth any more, when the other party is continuously untrue. Truth asks for truth, truth rightly demands an equal answer. Not so however love. Love surpasses mutuality; it hardly presupposes anything in the other, but wells up from the goodness of one’s own heart. You cannot claim love, you cannot compel love: it goes against its very being. That is precisely the tragedy of a failed marriage: conjugal rights remain, but they cannot guarantee nor restore what love is really about. When a relation of friendship breaks down, one is at least saved the illusion that something can be saved by means of legal action.

Love and mercy

In other words, love is undeserved: it is given for free. It does not come into being because of the lovable-ness of the other; it is the fruit of one’s own interior goodness. It does not presuppose the lovable-ness of the other, but establishes it. Love awakens unsuspected, slumbering possibilities in the other. A human person flourishes when somebody truly loves them and they wither when that is no longer the case. If this applies to human beings, the more so to the creator God and his generosity without limits.

Indeed, the word translated by ‘love’ could as well be rendered as ‘generosity’ to better emphasise that this goodness surpasses what is due. It is commonly translated by ‘mercy’ as well, which brings us back to the two first two words ‘pity and mercy’. For the latter comes down to benevolence, which accords very well with our description of generosity.

The first word, ‘pity,’ is derived from a term that means ‘guts’, ‘womb’. In other words, it concerns an attitude that comes deep down from our interior and that evokes associations with the tenderness pertaining to a mother and the child she carries ‘beneath her heart’. Such are the intimate feelings God has for his people.

Thousands of generations

The favourable feelings of God come first in our text and receive ample treatment. Still, there is more: they push everything else into the background because these feelings reach out to no less than thousands of generations. If you count forty years for each generation, you arrive at a multitude beyond the reach of the eye. In other words, God’s love and truth have no end, they are boundless, without limits and immeasurable. This aspect receives its significance more pronouncedly when we hear next that God’s vengeance is confined to the fourth generation. It was understood that for an Israelite the most a human being can expect is to see the fourth generation, that is to witness his great-grandchildren. According to the sense of justice in the ancient East this was the punishment of a father who had committed a crime: the punishment was visited upon his great-grandchildren. We will come back later to the reason behind this.

So loosely translated our text wants to say: God does not just let evil pass; it is being punished, but in a human way, according to a human standard. This is a comforting thought: what God asks from us is not too much; God takes us seriously and retaliates by applying a normal, human measure. Our reasoning has been different at times: was it not argued in the teachings about redemption that the seriousness of the offence was determined by the dignity of the offended person and that consequently reconciliation with God required a superhuman effort, only possible by Jesus Christ? It seems that such reasoning goes against the meaning of Exodus 43. Over against the human legal system we find God’s divine generosity; over against the third and fourth generation we find thousands of generations. The two measures are simply not comparable. God punishes according to human standard, but he demonstrates his loving kindness on a divine scale. For loving kindness does not respond to a right or merit in the other but to the fullness of their own interior being.

The third and fourth generation

As we said, the culprit is punished by God’s justice in the descendants he himself may live to see. The word ‘revenge’ is to be avoided here because of the connotations attached to that word. ‘Revenge’ summons up images of wild rage, taking the law in one’s own hands and distorting justice, a thought we do not associate with God’s righteousness. The word summons up other ideas as well that are not to the point: revenge counters a wrong by exacting a payment of some kind in order to restore the balance. He who takes something that is not his, needs to give in exchange something that belongs to him. If the evil-doer would be left to enjoy the fruits of his deeds without disturbance, evil would be encouraged and rewarded. So, ill-gotten goods should never prosper. But, this is not the purpose of the punishment God inflicts on people.

Psalm 99:8 says clearly what it is all about: “O Lord our God, you responded to them; you were a forgiving God for them, but you punished their wrongs.” How can this go together: forgiveness and punishment? Only in the supposition that vengeance is a form of forgiveness and punishment a way towards reconciliation! The God of Israel does not play down sin. He is definitely a forgiving God, but this does not mean that he does not take sin very seriously. No, sin is not without its vengeance. The internal mechanism of an evil deed dragging along its own bad consequences is not turned off. It only receives a certain meaning: letting the sinner feel to his cost that he is on the wrong track and that he had better turn back from his fatal course. “They admit their guilt and come back to me, for in their anguish they will earnestly seek me,” says Yahweh (Hosea 5:15) “I know what my plans for you are, plans to save you and not to harm you, plans to give you a future and to give you hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). In other words, punishment is a blessing in disguise, an expression of God’s mercy. Seen in this light, the third and fourth generations do not fall outside God’s generous love either.

Once again: our resistance

We have seen how the radical formulation of Exodus 34 has been shaded and refined in the course of time. So, our unease is not without reason and we are not the first to protest against the undiluted principle of vengeance. Still, one’s reaction can be one-sided: notably in polemics people go easily to extremes. And indeed Jeremiah and Ezekiel show that the golden mean is not a matter of course. Both show that popular speech in the seventh century poked fun at the collective approach of the vengeance issue; that mockery was deposited in a kind of proverb: “The parents have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge!”(Jeremiah 31:29; Ezekiel 18:2). In name of Yahweh Ezekiel answers: “As I live, word of Yahweh, this proverb will no longer be quoted in Israel. All life is in my hands, the life of the parent and the life of the child are mine. The lives of both are in my hands, so the one who sins will die.” The two prophets then elaborate the vengeance issue in such an individualistic way, that nearly nothing is left of the fate connectedness between people: one stands all by oneself; what you do is solely your responsibility; nobody suffers from the guilt of somebody else and vice versa. The poet of Psalm 51 knows better. We are caught in a net of sin and we cannot free ourselves from that trap: “For I have been guilt-ridden from birth;

a sinner from my mother’s womb”.

The dignity of the human person

A second thought: perhaps the pronouncement of Exodus 34 goes against the grain with us, because we do not take sin as seriously as happens there. The reason is rather obvious: the social sciences have made clearer than ever before how limited our freedom of choice is. It may seduce us to unload our guilt on hidden mechanisms that determine us from within. But this weapon may easily turn against us: declaring oneself innocent comes down to the denial of all responsibility, including the responsibility for our good deeds. No guilt, no merit. If sin is no more than ill-luck, then a good deed is no more than good luck. In the process the dignity of the human person has been fully eradicated.

No, God takes sin seriously because he takes us, humans, seriously. And by doing so, the largesse of his conciliatory disposition becomes clear; it is not his punishing justice that is remarkable but his willingness to forgive. “I long for the Lord, for he is full of love and his salvation has no bounds.”

Different starting point

Finally, the statement of Exodus 34 leaves us with the feeling that many innocent people suffer because of the sin of one individual. Indeed, in our thinking this is a glaring injustice; but in fact the retribution starts from a different principle and is right and logical in that light. The supposition is that the (extended) family is owned by the father, a view reflected also in the commandment about the Sabbath day and about not desiring what belongs to somebody else. The father is the only legal personality in this system: he alone is responsible, he alone is punishable. But he will be punished according to his social position and in what is most dear to him: his male offspring. In terms of that particular thinking it is as much an individual punishment as imprisonment or a fine is in our way of thinking. This type of vengeance becomes injustice only if the punishment is maintained while the view about responsibility has changed in favour of more individual accountability. In as much as it took a labourious process to find the equilibrium, it will be equally difficult to maintain the balance and keep it such in practice.

Conclusion

The New Testament shows how faithful Jesus has been to this (reconciliation) tradition of Israel: right on the cross he asks forgiveness for those responsible for his death. Moreover, this idea receives a central place in Christian living by the fact that God’s willingness to forgive us depends on our willingness to forgive one another. Also this idea was already expressed in the Old Testament; a late text says: “He who demands revenge will suffer the vengeance of the Lord who keeps a strict account of his sins. Forgive the mistakes of your neighbour and you may ask that your sins be forgiven”. To be sure, it is conspicuous that the second sentence has been repeated time and again in the New Testament, but the first never.

The situation presupposed in Exodus 34 is that of a broken covenant. God himself takes the initiative to restore it by revealing himself to Moses as a God of inexhaustible forgiveness. Moses then dares to ask God to receive the people back in favour. The answer says: “I shall make a covenant with you...” Thanks to God’s creative mercy the history of God and humans continues.