This chapter helps us to clear up a puzzle which has tormented the minds of men in all ages whenever they have thought of God, and of whether God meant them well or meant them ill. For all men have been tempted. We are tempted at times to say: "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." That is, we are punished not for what we have done wrong, but for what our fathers did wrong. Men complain of their ill luck and bad chance, as they call it, till they complain of God, and say, as the Jews said in Ezekiel's time: God's ways are unequal, partial, unfair.
I. God does visit the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation but of whom? Of them that hate Him. If a family, or a class, or a whole nation become incorrigibly profligate, foolish, base in three or four generations they will either die out or vanish. Whole nations will sink thus; as the Jews sank in Ezekiel's time, and again in our Lord's time; and be conquered, trampled on, counted for nothing, because they were worth nothing.
II. But suppose that the children, when their fathers' sins are visited on them, are not incorrigible. Suppose they are like the wise son of whom Ezekiel speaks (Ezekiel 18:14), who seeth all his father's sins, and doeth not such like then has not God been merciful and kind to him in visiting his father's sins on him? He has. God is justified therein. His eternal laws of natural retribution, severe as they are, have worked in love and in mercy, if they have taught the young man the ruinousness, the deadliness of sin. Men fall by sin; they rise again by repentance and amendment. They rise they enter into their new life weak and wounded, from their own fault. But they enter in, and from that day things begin to mend the weather begins to clear the soil begins to yield again; punishment gradually ceases when it has done its work, the weight lightens, the wounds heal, the weakness strengthens, and by God's grace they are made men of again and saved.
C. Kingsley, All Saints' Day and Other Sermons,p. 238.