Thread by @JoelBaden

#Deuteronomy 24:16

Intergenerational punishment

Parents shall not be put to death for the crimes of their children, and vice versa. What happened to “visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and children’s children up to the third and fourth generation”?

What happened is - get this - different texts had different opinions on this matter. (Some picky asshat is gonna be like “well this one is about death and the other one says punishment so they don’t actually conflict blah blah blah” but shove it. This is a contradiction.)

This is, in fact, one of the ongoing points of “discussion” among the biblical sources, in the Pentateuch and prophets and beyond. (Sometimes they’re actually responding to each other; often it only feels that way as we read the canonical text.)

What’s wild about this one is…both the pro- and anti-intergenerational punishment positions are found within Deuteronomy, the “third and fourth generation” bit being from the Decalogue in Deut 5:9. So what gives?

I’ll admit that for a couple of reasons I suspect that 24:16 might be a later addition. First, it weirdly breaks up the continuity of the discussion of how to deal with the pledges of indebted vulnerable populations, in 24:10-15 and 24:17-18.

Second, the theological-historical logic of the deuteronomistic history (that’s Judges-Kings) is firmly in the pro-intergenerational punishment camp. Manasseh sins wildly and reigns for half a century; Josiah pays the price for it a generation later. Israel suffers for past sins.

By contrast, when Chronicles tells its version of the history there isn’t any intergenerational punishment anymore. Now it’s more in the “everyone gets what they deserve” camp. All of which has to do with how, and when, one tries to explain the course of Israel’s history.

When the deuteronomic historian is writing, it’s in the moment of exile, and the need to explain it - especially to an exiled people who feel they didn’t deserve it - opens the possibility of blaming present calamity on past sins, ones out of our control.

For the Chronicler, writing from the vantage point of a returned Israel with a rebuilt temple, it’s all distant past, so there’s no need to make excuses for anyone. Everything can be more orderly and tidy.

All of that to say, Deut 24:16 looks more like Chr than like Dtr.