Exode 34:7

keeping mercy and bounty for thousands of generations, absolving and remitting guilt, passing by rebellions, and covering sins; pardoning them who convert unto the law, but holding not guiltless in the great day of judgment those who will not convert; visiting the sins of fathers upon rebellious children upon the third and upon the fourth generation.

נוצר חסד לאלפים, He preserves the accumulated merits of the fathers and will let the children draw on these merits.

נושא עון, premeditated sin.

ופשע, sins intended to challenge G’d.

וחטאה, additional to the taunting sin called פשע. We encounter an illustration of this in Jeremiah 11,15 כי רעתכי אז תעלוזי, “for you exult while performing your evil deeds.” We must remember that the degree of evil committed by different people is never a duplicate, i.e. each one commits evil according to his own agenda; hence G’d’s reaction to such evil varies after taking into consideration all the circumstances. This is why all these attributes have been enumerated separately.

ונקה, even though G’d wipes the slate clean for those penitents motivated by their love for G’d and not by their fear of punishment, לא ינקה, He will not do this for the ones whose only motivation for turning penitent is their fear of G’d’s retribution, or their desire to arrest such retribution. We find confirmation of this in Yuma 86 that i.e. intentional sins of such penitents will be treated as if they had been unintentionally committed sins, a conclusion based on Hoseah 14,2 כי כשלת בעונך, “for you have fallen because of your sin.”

פוקד עון אבות על בנים, He delays punishing the wicked in the land until their measure of sin is such that they deserve to be wiped out. This “measure” is one that in G’d’s opinion, precludes their ever becoming penitents. (compare Sotah 9). Such a situation usually is not reached until several successive generations are steeped in sin.

על שלשים, when the latest generation intensifies the evil perpetrated by their fathers and grandfathers. Jeremiah 7,26 describes such a scenario when he writes: “they would not listen to Me or give ear. They stiffened their necks, they acted worse than their fathers.”

ועל רבעים, when the generations do not become worse than their fathers but commit sins of the same type and seriousness.

נוצר חסד לאלפים, “extending kindness to a thousand generations;” G–d undertakes to extend kindness to the descendants of the good and righteous fathers even of sinners. This concept has been repeated in Deuteronomy 7,9: where a time limit of one thousand generations is the limit. Rash’bam explains the apparent contradiction with our verse where the word לאלפים appears to mean at least two thousand, that we find, grammatically speaking, that a fourth generation, normally described as דור רביעי, is on occasion described as רבעים, with the plural mode ending. The same is true here. (Compare our verse) Therefore אלף or אלפים, can mean the same thing on occasion.

נושא עון, “He forgives iniquity;” when the iniquity was the result of the person having been unable to resist the evil urge, G–d does take that into consideration.

ופשע, “He does so on occasion even when the sin represented an act of rebellion against Him.” (Compare Kings II 3,7) where this term is applied to the King of Moab.

וחטאה, ”as well as unintentionally committed sin;” this has been spelled out in detail, in Leviticus 4,2 as well as the remedial action that has to be taken by the guilty party.

ונקה לא ינקה, “but He will not let the guilty escape scot free;” (unless the guilty party had rehabilitated himself through sincere teshuvah, repentance.) The Talmud, tractate Yuma, folio 86 spells out clearly that anyone (later generations) whose sinful fathers did not repent and had not been punished for their sins as G–d had waited if their offspring would repent, will also have to bear the burden of the sins of their fathers. [The reason why this is not unfair is that if G–d had punished their forefathers they would not even have been born, so what have they lost? Ed.]