^then I don't see how it can come as a surprise that I'm "such an ass" towards you. Either read up or shut up. Blathering on with little factual knowlege (and less willingess to change that) is something I find intellectually quite offensive (and makes you fair game in my book).
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Well, OP never checked back so I guess it's sort of w/e, but since I'm at the library today, I thought I pull out Exodus Commentaries of two of the leading german commentary series. First is HThKAT. Commentator here is Christoph Dohmen, a widely known and highly regarded OT scholar of Germany. His Commentary is the
2nd referenced in the wiki-page on Ex.
Second is ATD. Commentator is
Martin Noth, one of the most influential OT scholars of post-war Germany.
Dohmen translates 20:5 "...for I am JHWH, your God, a jealous God, examining [prüfend] the iniquity of the fathers with the sons ..."
Noth translates "for I am Jahwe, your God, a jealous God, who haunts [heimsucht] the iniquity of fathers in children ..."
Dohmens exegesis of V5-6 take up roughly 6 1/2 pages. Regarding the characterization "jealous" he refers to his discussion of Ex 30,14, noting that insofar as jealous is an adjective from the social sphere (the jealous person - its partner - rival), it characterizes the claim of
monolatry of JHWH towards Israel in an anthropomorph fashion. So my caution to quickly associate the notions of jealousness and divine anger/wrath (as I speculated in #143) proved to be with merit.
Given his translation of "examining", most of the outrage of the verse is basically gone. His following discussion focuses mainly on the more general point of the section, the comandment of aniconism. Pre-breakfast posts tend to miss things, so I didn't draw attention to either this context, nor the following verse, which asserts the graciousness of god not only for 4 but 1000s (of generations). It is essentially a similar point than my third: The "examining/seeking out/rooting out" of the iniquity is
limited - and dwarfed by the contrasting grace for those who love him.
Noth (who gives a much more cursory treatment - not surprisingly as his commentary is from 1960) asserts what has been controversial itt, i.e. that the text doesn't distinguish between individual guilt and "guilt by association", yet also mentions the lopsided relation between "haunting out guilt" for those who "hate" him and grace for those who "love" him. The jealousness is also taken as an anthropomorph picture of the monolatric claim of JHWH regarding the Israelites.
Ok, so either it's not only apologists but the entire guild of exegets who "besmirch" the name of exegesis, or basically all the claims I made seem to be backed up by what the experts say:
- the translation with "punishing" is by no means necessary,
- the intended message is one of
limited retribution, and in that sense dinvine restraint
- the translation by words
other than "punishing" make it easier to see that the text doesn't randomly hold future generations accountable but only insofar as they are themselves exemplifying the "iniquity of the fathers".
- Concepts of "association by tribe" have obv. grown less important and relevant in our culture that sports a fairly extensive individualism, yet it is by no means a concept that is entirly alien to us and that we find across-the-board unjustified.
Last edited by fretelöo; 06-26-2013 at 09:07 AM.