The Sins of the Father
Leviticus 26:39-42
39 Those of you who are left will waste away in the lands of their enemies because of their sins; also because of their fathers’ sins they will waste away.
40 ‘But if they will confess their sins and the sins of their fathers—their treachery against me and their hostility toward me,
41 which made me hostile toward them so that I sent them into the land of their enemies—then when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they pay for their sin,
42 I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.
We see over and over again, that the sins of the father are carried on to the next generation.
2 Kings 21:20-21
20 He did evil in the eyes of the LORD, as his father Manasseh had done.
21 He walked in all the ways of his father; he worshiped the idols his father had worshiped, and bowed down to them.
2 Kings 23:32,37
32 He did evil in the eyes of the LORD, just as his fathers had done.
37 And he did evil in the eyes of the LORD, just as his fathers had done.
2 Kings 24:9
9 He did evil in the eyes of the LORD, just as his father had done.
In some rare cases, righteous fathers were also followed:
2 Kings 15:34
34 He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, just as his father Uzziah had done.
Now God commanded that sons not be put to death for the acts of their fathers:
2 Chronicles 25:4
4 Yet he did not put their sons to death, but acted in accordance with what is written in the Law, in the Book of Moses, where the LORD commanded: “Fathers shall not be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their fathers; each is to die for his own sins.”
But according to Leviticus 26:40, we owe it to God to confess our father's sins to him and repent. I do not believe that this means that by confessing our father's sins, they will be forgiven, but that we will free ourselves from a past that we had no control over. We recognize the shortcomings of our family history and acknowledge the mistakes. We try to eliminate the pride associated with our heritage in order to prevent ourselves from repeating those same mistakes and claim the promises of God's mercy on our lives.
I pray that I will have the wisdom to recognize the sins of my father's, to ask for forgiveness of them and turn from those ways, that I may be a better servant of the LORD.
New Century Version (NCV)
The Holy Bible, New Century Version®. Copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.