In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge
God promises Israel a day when a well-worn saying will drop out of use. The sour grapes proverb was their way of saying that one generation was paying for another's sins. Was that complaint ever fair, and what does God do about it?
This verse belongs to the first of three closing declarations in Jeremiah 31.
This word of our prophet closes with a threefold declaration from Jehovah about the rich blessing of all His people: first, verses 27-30; second, verses 31-37; third, verses 38-40.
The same saying appears in Ezekiel, where God answers it. One commentator reads that answer as God giving the people just what their complaint asked for.
This deserves careful thought. At the captivity God acts on the murmuring of His people. He ends any further governmental dealings on the ground of Exodus 34:6-7. From now on He would take them on their own terms. They complained of the hardship of suffering for the failures of their fathers, so He would now give them what they themselves deserved. Clearly a sinner must suffer for sin. And if he challenges the justice of paying the penalty for a parent's evil, he cannot deny that he deserves punishment for his own.
The proverb leaned on a real statement of God's, but the people dropped the phrase that limited it.
He has assured us Himself that He "visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation." But then come the words that guard it from being misread: "of those who hate Me." And elsewhere the Lord strongly condemns the proverb that Israel had taken up from just such a misreading: "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." (Ezekiel 18.) He not only says it, He swears it: they will have no reason to use such a proverb.
The same writer points out that the commandment also cuts the other way.
But the commandment says something quite different from that complaint. It gives those who love God and keep His commandments a definite assurance of mercy. So they could not come under a contradictory law of inheriting their father's sins.
A person can inherit real damage from those before him and still answer for what he does with it.
We do inherit both a sinful nature and its consequences, but the nature is not in question here. The popular proverb is speaking about the penalty. We all have a fallen nature — though remember that man is not like an animal, to be bound by his nature or excused by it. A man may argue as he likes about what he has inherited from Adam. Yet about every sin he has committed, he knows in his own soul that he is responsible, and why. He cannot put his sins to Adam's account. They are his own.
The proverb is easy to transfer to any group that has inherited a spoiled situation — including Christians looking at the state of the church.
The question is very simple and of the greatest seriousness. Is the church responsible for the state it is in? Or can it say, like the Jews in Jeremiah 31:29: "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge"? An unbeliever, speaking of himself, may say: If I have inherited the bad condition of Adam, it is no fault of mine; I suffer from it, but I am not responsible for it. God does not judge like that in His government of the world and of His people. He treats man as responsible. He deals with His people as responsible for the state they are in. They have been in the evil themselves; they share in it.
That raises a question: what kind of dying is in view?
This replaces the Jewish principle of government, that the "children should die for their fathers' sins," with the declaration that "each should die for his own." We may know, and do know, from other teachings of the Holy Scriptures, the terrible effect of a man dying in his sins. But that is not directly the subject here.
The second of those three declarations names what replaces the old arrangement.
The second speaks of the new covenant that Jehovah will make with them — not according to law but grace — and of its permanence and theirs.
- Complaint. The proverb was a murmur against God — the claim that one generation's teeth ached for grapes another generation ate.
- Misquotation. The saying used only half a sentence. God visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children "of those who hate Me," and He promises mercy to those who love Him.
- Answer. God takes the complainers at their word. He deals with each on his own account. A man who disputes paying for a parent's evil cannot dispute paying for his own.
- Scope. This is God's government of His people on earth; commentators treat eternal destiny as a subject taught elsewhere.
- Cure. The saying stops not by argument but by a new covenant of grace, which comes next in the chapter.
for every one shall die for his own iniquity; every man that eateth the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.