Jeremiah 31:29

In those days they shall say no more,.... The following proverb or byword; they should have no occasion to use it, nor should they choose to use it; since they would understand themselves, and the

In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge. In those days - after their punishment has been completed, and mercy again visits them.

That is, We are punished for our fathers’ sins; which yet God may justly do; and none questioneth the justice of man in the case, depriving children of their patrimonial estates for their parents’ treasons; nor more than God threateneth in the second commandment, God indeed, , seemeth displeased at their use of this proverb; but the reason is, because they so used it as to acquit themselves, intimating they were guiltless, and suffered only for the sins of their parents, whereas that was false; otherwise the punishment of children for the sins of their parents was no more than God had threatened, 34:7 . But, saith God, your captivity shall, as to you, expiate your parents’ guilt past, and you shall no more say so.

Jeremiah 31:29 In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children’ s teeth are set on edge.Ver. 29. In those days they shall say no more.] There shall be rectius de operibus Dei iudicium, a more correct judgment passed upon God’ s proceedings. See about this byword, Ezekiel 18:2.

(29, 30) The fathers have eaten a sour grape . . .—The proverb was one which, as we find from Ezekiel 18:2-3, had at this time come into common use. Men found in it an explanation of their sufferings which relieved their consciences. They were suffering, they said, for the sins of their fathers, not for their own. They distorted the words which, as asserting the continuity of national life, were attached to the second Commandment (Exodus 20:5), and instead of finding in them a warning restraining them from evil by the fear of transmitting evil to another generation, they found in them a plea for their own recklessness. Both Ezekiel and Jeremiah felt that the time was come when, even at the risk of a seeming contradiction to words clothed with a Divine authority, the other aspect of God’s government had to be asserted in all its fulness: and therefore they lay stress on the truth that each man is responsible for his own acts, and for those alone, and that the law of the inheritance of evil (what we have learnt to call the law of hérédité) leaves untouched the freedom of man’s will. The “eater of the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge,” is, as it were, an emendation of the proverbial saying. The words of the Latin poet, “Delicta majorum immeritus lues,” “Thou, for no guilt of thine, shalt pay the forfeit of thy fathers’ sins” (Hor. Od. iii. 6, 1), show how ready men have been at all times to make a like excuse. How the two truths are to be reconciled, the law of hereditary tendencies, and punishments that fall not on the original offenders, but on their children, and the law of individual responsibility, is a question to which we can give no formal answer. We must be content to accept both laws, and rest in the belief that the Judge of all the earth will assuredly do right.

Verse 29. The fathers have eaten a sour grape] A proverbial expression for, "The children suffer for the offences of their parents." This is explained in the next verse: "Every one shall die for his own iniquity." No child shall suffer Divine punition for the sin of his father; only so far as he acts in the same way can he be said to bear the sins of his parents.

27–30. See introd. summary to the section.

29. They shall say no more, etc. — There is here no incongruity with those passages which describe God as”visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children.” Both are exactly true.