Isaiah 14:20 You shall not be joined with them in burial, because you have destroyed your land, and slain your people… The seed of evil-doers shall never be renowned. We must not insist on a literal fulfillment of these words. It is not intended that there has never been an instance in which the children of wicked parents have attained to celebrity. Here, as elsewhere, the spirit, not the letter, "giveth life." The ill fortune which attends the sons of the guilty may be regarded as - I. A DISTINCT, DIVINELY ORDERED PENALTY. Under the old dispensation it certainly was this. That was a dispensation in which temporal rewards and punishments were almost everything; then the spiritual and the eternal were only faintly felt as motives to action. And one of the most potent considerations which could be brought to bear was the effect of a man's behavior on the fortunes of his children; consequently we continually meet with the prospects of "thy seed," for good or for evil, as a powerful incentive to righteousness, or dissuasion from sin. There can hardly be a stronger force than this; where everything else would fail, this might succeed. There is nothing that reaches us so surely, that moves us so mightily, as an argument in which our children's fortunes are concerned. Whatever "touches them touches the apple of our eye." And here God is saying to those who were showing signs of wandering from his service, "If you fall into great sin and grievous condemnation, you not only do yourselves irreparable wrong, but you involve your children also in misery and shame. The penalty of your guilt will go down to them." II. THE INEVITABLE RESULT OF RIGHTEOUS LAW. It is likely, in a very high degree, that the children of evil-doers will follow in the steps of their parents, and stoop to the shame to which they fall. All things are against them. 1. They are without the incentive which comes from inheriting a good name and the natural desire to perpetuate it. 2. They are weighted with the positive and most serious disadvantage of bearing a name which is dishonored. 3. They are depressed by a positive and disheartening sense of shame, if they have not imbibed the spirit and acquired the habits of their parents. In the latter case (which is by far the worse of the two): 4. They suffer in their character, and therefore in their career, from the degenerating influences to which they are subjected. And without the preserving and directing principles which make life a true success, impelled by the passions, the prejudices, the ambitions which constitute it a lamentable failure, they do not rise to "renown;" they sink down into disregard, into actual disrepute, into open shame. (1) This is not positively inevitable. A determination to pursue a holy course, under the guidance of God, in the service of Jesus Christ, will redeem the unlikeliest life from failure, and lift it up to honor and usefulness. (2) If not for other reasons, then for the sake of our children, let us walk in the ways of godliness; for their present and lasting interests are bound up in the choice we make as to the path we will ourselves pursue. - C. Parallel Verses KJV: Thou shalt not be joined with them in burial, because thou hast destroyed thy land, and slain thy people: the seed of evildoers shall never be renowned. |
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