Exodus 20:5 Meaning and Explanation
“Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;”
King James Version (KJV)
This study note uses an AI-assisted editorial workflow with source, duplication, and quality checks. See how verse explanations are prepared.
Read this verse in context with translation switching:
Read Full Chapter →Few words in the commandments unsettle readers more than jealous, and few phrases raise harder questions than iniquity visited on children. Both sit in a single sentence about worship. Reading them together, inside the covenant language that surrounds them, shows what kind of God is speaking and what kind of loyalty he is asking for.
Israel is forbidden to worship or serve carved images because the LORD's covenant love is exclusive. His warning reaches through the generations of households that persist in hating him, naming consequence rather than caprice.
The Context of Exodus 20:5
God himself speaks these words from Sinai to the people he has just brought out of Egypt, as verses 1 and 2 announce. Verse 3 forbids other gods; verse 4 forbids the making of carved images and likenesses of anything in heaven, earth, or sea. Verse 5 supplies the reason and the sanction, and its 'them' reaches back to the images of verse 4. Verse 6 completes the sentence with mercy toward thousands. Verses 18 through 21 later describe the thunder and smoke on the mountain while these words were being given, and the fear that drove the people back.
What Does Exodus 20:5 Mean?
Two verbs carry the prohibition: 'bow down thyself' and 'serve.' The first is bodily posture, the second is ongoing devotion, and together they cover the whole life of worship a person might offer an image. The reason follows immediately, and it is personal: 'for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God.' The word describes the fierce protectiveness of a covenant partner who will share his people with nobody. Then comes the sanction, 'visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation,' with a qualifier attached at the end that governs the whole clause: 'of them that hate me.' The sentence describes households continuing in a settled hostility.
Three and four generations describe the reach of a single living household in the ancient world, where great-grandparents, parents, and children often shared one courtyard. Idolatry practiced in such a house shapes everyone under its roof, and the commandment says so plainly. Scripture elsewhere guards against reading this as inherited guilt. Deuteronomy 24:16 forbids executing children for the sins of fathers, and Ezekiel 18:20 states that the soul that sins shall die while the son does not carry the father's iniquity. Held together, these texts describe consequence flowing downstream through families who keep choosing the same hatred, with each generation answerable for its own response.
The jealousy named here reappears whenever Scripture pictures the covenant as a marriage. Hosea hears the LORD woo an unfaithful wife back into the wilderness, and Paul tells the Corinthians he is jealous over them with a godly jealousy, having espoused them to one husband. That language belongs to love that refuses to be casual about betrayal. In the Gospels Jesus takes up the same exclusivity when he says no one can serve two masters, and when he answers the tempter by quoting the command to worship and serve God only. The prohibition at Sinai and the call of Christ ask for the same undivided heart.
Exodus 20:5 in the Original Language
qanna (קַנָּא), 'jealous' -- an adjective used in Scripture only of God, describing a zeal that will tolerate no rival within the covenant. English 'jealous' can suggest petty suspicion; the Hebrew word carries the protective ardor of one who has bound himself to a people and holds them dear.
Bible Verses Related to Exodus 20:5
“Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me,”
- Deuteronomy 5:9
“Keeping mercy for thousands, 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 to the fourth generation.”
- Exodus 34:7
“The soul that sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.”
- Ezekiel 18:20
“The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.”
- Deuteronomy 24:16
Where Exodus 20:5 Echoes in Scripture
Exodus 34:14 repeats the claim and sharpens it by making jealousy a name rather than a mood. When the covenant is renewed after the golden calf, Israel is told again to worship no other god, on the ground that the LORD's very name is Jealous. Coming immediately after the nation had bowed to a molten image, the restatement shows that the warning of Sinai was neither theoretical nor withdrawn. The same word that grounds the prohibition also grounds the pardon Israel receives in that chapter.
How to Apply Exodus 20:5 Today
Carved images are rare in most homes now, though the two verbs still find plenty of work. We bow to whatever we arrange our week around, and we serve whatever we would sacrifice sleep, money, and relationships to keep. A quiet audit helps: what would be hardest to give up if God asked for it this month? The generational clause suggests a second question, since children absorb the loyalties they watch more than the ones they hear described. What our households see us organize life around tends to become what they trust. Both questions are worth asking slowly, with more honesty than speed.
Reflection & Prayer
Where has a pattern we inherited quietly shaped what we treat as ultimate, and what would it take to name it out loud? A prayer to borrow: Jealous God, you have claimed me and I am glad to be claimed. Show me the loyalties I have never examined, break whatever hold they have, and let the house I live in learn its worship from you.