Passage

Exodus 20.5

"You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me," (Exodus 20:5, NASB95)

Exodus 20:5 sits inside the second commandment (the prohibition of image-worship) and packs two of the most-attacked phrases in atheist-objection literature: divine jealousy ("a jealous God") and intergenerational visitation ("the iniquity of the fathers on the children"). The verse anchors the Equivocation-defeater pattern recurring across the codex's atheist-objection cluster: the objector reads "jealous" through the petty-envy modern sense rather than the covenant-faithfulness biblical sense, and reads "visiting iniquity" as legal punishment of innocents rather than the natural consequence-pattern of covenant-breaking. Both readings collapse on closer exegesis, and the verse functions instead as a statement of God's exclusive covenant-claim and the propagating moral fallout of idolatry.

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV (ASV)

"3. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 4. Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:"

"5. thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them; for I Jehovah thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them that hate me,"

"6. and showing lovingkindness unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. 7. Thou shalt not take the name of Jehovah thy God in vain; for Jehovah will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." (Exodus 20:3-7, ASV)

WEB (WEB)

"3. "You shall have no other gods before me. 4. "You shall not make for yourselves an idol, nor any image of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:"

"5. you shall not bow yourself down to them, nor serve them, for I, Yahweh your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and on the fourth generation of those who hate me,"

"6. and showing loving kindness to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. 7. "You shall not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain, for Yahweh will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain." (Exodus 20:3-7, WEB)

KJV (KJV)

"3. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 4. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:"

"5. 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;"

"6. And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. 7. Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." (Exodus 20:3-7, KJV)

YLT (YLT)

"3. 'Thou hast no other Gods before Me. 4. 'Thou dost not make to thyself a graven image, or any likeness which [is] in the heavens above, or which [is] in the earth beneath, or which [is] in the waters under the earth."

"5. Thou dost not bow thyself to them, nor serve them: for I, Jehovah thy God, [am] a zealous God, charging iniquity of fathers on sons, on the third [generation], and on the fourth, of those hating Me,"

"6. and doing kindness to thousands, of those loving Me and keeping My commands. 7. 'Thou dost not take up the name of Jehovah thy God for a vain thing, for Jehovah acquitteth not him who taketh up His name for a vain thing." (Exodus 20:3-7, YLT)

Setting

Speaker: Yahweh, mediated through Moses to the assembled congregation; direct divine speech at Sinai
Audience: the Israelite congregation at Sinai, three months after the Exodus
Location: Mount Sinai (the Decalogue's giving)
Time period: events c. 1446-1445 BC (early-date Exodus); composition c. 1446-1406 BC

Theological reading

The first equivocation concerns the Hebrew qannāʾ (jealous): the same root H7065 - qana / H7068 - qinah that the secular reader hears as petty-envy is in covenant context the zeal of exclusive faithfulness. The relevant analogue is marital, not professional rivalry. A spouse rightly objects when their partner gives their conjugal devotion to another. The objection is not pettiness but the proper protection of an exclusive relationship. Yahweh's covenant with Israel is a marriage-analog (Hosea 1-3; Isaiah 54; Ezekiel 16; Ephesians 5), and the prohibition of idolatry is the prohibition of covenant-adultery. The "jealous God" is the faithful-covenant-Husband who refuses to share His bride's devotion with idols. The atheist objection that the verse depicts a petty deity equivocates on two senses of jealousy: this is the Equivocation-fallacy pattern recurring across the codex's defeater cluster. See Divine Jealousy Is Covenantal Zeal (Defeater) for the full treatment.

The second equivocation concerns "visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generation." The atheist reads this as legal punishment of innocent descendants for ancestral sin. But the Pentateuch itself explicitly forbids this: Deut 24:16, "Fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers; each one shall be put to death for his own sin." Ezekiel 18:20 reiterates: "The person who sins will die. The son will not bear the punishment for the father's iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son's iniquity." So Exodus 20:5 cannot be teaching legal intergenerational liability without contradicting these texts.

What the verse describes instead is the natural propagation of covenant-breaking through families: idolatry's effects ripple. The children of idolaters typically learn idolatry; the grandchildren typically embed it; the great-grandchildren typically institutionalize it. The "visiting" is a sociological-spiritual observation about the way sin's consequences propagate, not a courtroom imputation of guilt. The asymmetry with verse 6 is decisive: iniquity propagates to three or four generations (a typical lifespan-overlap), but covenant-loyalty (ḥesed) propagates to thousands of generations, the asymmetry tilts heavily toward grace, not toward punishment. The verse therefore functions, properly read, not as evidence against God's justice but as a moral-realism warning about idolatry's downstream toxicity and a doxology of His preferential mercy.

The verse anchors the codex's Inherited Guilt and Visiting Iniquity defeater page, pairs with Exodus 34.6-7 (the verse's nearest theological echo, including the merciful-but-just balance), and feeds into the broader Equivocation / atheist-objection-defeater methodology.

Key words

H3068 - YHWH, YHWH, the covenant name (the "I" of the verse)
H0410 - el, ʾēl, "God" (the appellative used here in ʾēl qannāʾ)
H7065 - qana, qānāʾ, the verbal root of jealousy / zeal
H7068 - qinah, qinʾāh, the noun ardor / zeal / jealousy
H5771 - avon, ʿāwōn, "iniquity" (the propagating wrong, not merely the guilt-imputation)
H1121 - ben, bēn, "son / child" (the next-generation referent)

Theological themes

Divine jealousy as covenant-faithfulness (marital, not envious)
Natural propagation of sin's consequences (sociological-spiritual, not forensic)
Asymmetry of mercy over judgment (three or four generations of iniquity-effect vs. thousands of generations of ḥesed)
Equivocation-defeater pattern, atheist objection collapses on disambiguation of key terms
Anti-idolatry as covenant-protection, the second commandment's positive content

Cross-references

Exodus 34.6-7, the merciful-but-just nearest theological parallel
Deuteronomy 24.16, no death-penalty intergenerational liability
Ezekiel 18.20, individual moral responsibility
Exodus 20.1-17, the Decalogue containing this verse
Numbers 14.18, the same formula reprised

Quoted in

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.