Not that I agree with faithful servant (I don't), but I saw something a couple years ago about a complex that much of Germany has developed due to all of the education regarding the Holocaust. I was very saddened to hear about it, but I suppose when your grandparents and greatgrandparents were part of something like that, and there is much education about it, there's little one can do to escape some mental anguish. Maybe that is what is meant by the verse: "keeping mercy unto the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin; and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and unto the fourth generation."
Perhaps the iniquity visited upon the children and children's children, is the guilt and grief and pain caused by the actions of direct ancestors, while the good of more ancient ancestors, the mercy for a thousand generations, are things that persevere, that we remember and make holidays for so that we might also do good. The pain fades in a few generations, if we let it, but we can still remember the heroes of old.
Dauer
