What is a curse?
By God's curse is meant the condemnation of someone or something by God, revealing His Justice, Righteous Judgment.
So, for inciting Eve to commit a crime, God cursed the serpent (Genesis 3:14), for the fall of Adam - the earth (Genesis 3:17), for fratricide - Cain (Genesis 4:11).
Both in its inner content and meaning, and in its outward manifestation, God's curse can be seen as an action opposite to God's blessing.
Actually, people also have the ability to curse. So, Noah pronounced a curse against his grandson - Canaan (Genesis 9:25), and the God-murderers, mad with rage, themselves called for responsibility for the Blood of Christ shed on the Cross on themselves and their children (Matthew 27:25).
Divine curse is fundamentally different from curses initiated by people
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First, the difference is that God's curse is never induced for no particular reason; it is always just, always directed towards good goals and never towards evil; never contradicts the conditions of general and private Providence.
Second, the divine curse is always effective, efficient and effective.
A human curse is quite another matter. Man is a being limited in nature and individual characteristics. In addition, he is limited by certain life circumstances. In principle, he does not have such great power that the curse initiated by him would lead to "fatal" changes in the fate of the damned.
In order for a curse uttered by a person to be realized, it is necessary that it be accompanied by a truly powerful force, much more powerful than the power of human thought or will. This power, depending on the situation, can be either the Lord with His saints, or, on the contrary, dark fallen spirits.
Therefore, a human curse can be effective not in itself (unless we are talking about a serious fear of the cursed, associated with suggestion and self-hypnosis), but only with the assistance of the forces of Good or Evil.
As for the Lord, he realizes the curse pronounced by a person only when this curse corresponds to His plan for the world and specific people. If the curse contradicts His holy, righteous will, then at least it will not come true: “like a sparrow flies up, like a swallow flies away, so an undeserved curse will not come true” (Proverbs 26: 2). But it happens that the curse not only does not come true, but also turns on the head of the author of the curse (Gen. 27:29).
In a number of cases, God allows the curse to be carried out by a person with the help of witchcraft, magic rituals, satanic rituals or by direct appeal of the curse to evil spirits. In the times of the Old Testament, this kind of curse (at least so many noble pagans believed) could direct the sorcerer Balaam.
Thus, the human curse is of three types: sometimes it takes the form of a prophecy about the deprivation of the cursed God's blessings; sometimes it comes down to calling on the damned punishment of God (Jer. 11:20); and sometimes - to the calling of disasters with the help of dark forces (Num. 22: 6).
What is meant by a generic curse?
In addition to cases with curses sent down on individual people, the Holy Scripture also reports on those that were intended for entire families and even entire clans.
Thus, the curse of Canaan was expressed in the fact that the disastrous consequences associated with it affected his distant descendants. Noah, putting a curse on his grandson, warned that his offspring would become slaves of the simites (Genesis 9: 25-27). And so it happened.
The curse of the "wrath and fury" of the two sons of the patriarch Jacob - two brothers, Simeon and Levi - was revealed in the fact that their descendants were divided and scattered among the representatives of the other Israelite tribes (Gen. 49: 5-7).
The Book of Deuteronomy clearly testifies about the transition of the curse from the accursed to his offspring in case of deviation from the conditions of the Sinai Covenant: "Cursed will be the fruit of your womb" (Deut. 28:18), "You will give birth to sons and daughters, but they will not be with you, because they will go into captivity "(Deut. 28:21)," The Lord will smite you and your offspring with extraordinary plagues, great and constant plagues, and evil and constant diseases "(Deut. 28:59).
The verses of the 108th psalm, attributing to Judas the traitor (Acts 1: 15-20), reported several centuries before his birth that his children would be left orphans and begging (Ps. 108: 9-10), that their name would be blotted out in the following way (Psalm 108:13).
Especially noteworthy: the psalmist instructed that the sin of Judas would be reflected not only on his children, but also in some mysterious way - on his ancestors: “let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the Lord, and let his mother’s sin not be blotted out” (Ps. 108: 14). He also gave an intelligible explanation of why what should happen should happen: because “I loved the curse, and it will come to him; if he did not want the blessing, it will also flee from it”(Psalm 107: 17).
The Book of the Wisdom of Solomon, telling about the curse of the wicked, directly says that their very seed (σπέρμα) is cursed: “For their seed (σπέρμα) was cursed from the beginning” (Wis. 12:11).
The definition of God addressed to the high priest Elijah can be considered a kind of curse. This curse extended not only to the culprit, but also to his house: "Behold, the days are coming when I will cut your arm and the arm of your father's house, so that there will be no old man in your house [never]" (1 Sam. 2:31).
Finally, Christ also spoke about the fact that the consequences of the sinfulness of the fathers extend through the family line to children: “May all the righteous blood shed on earth come on you, from the blood of Abel the righteous to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Barachin, whom you killed between the temple and an altar. Truly I tell you that everything will come to this generation”(Matthew 23: 35-36).
Does the ancestral curse take the form of a fatal, irresistible reality?
The curse of God that manifests itself on the descendants of a cursed sinner cannot be interpreted in the meaning of a legally imputed punishment that irresistibly affects them regardless of personal guilt. God is Righteous and Just, besides - Merciful. Can He punish without guilt?
Warning his fellow tribesmen from a false understanding of the meaning and significance of God's punishment, from the thought of the inevitable distribution of the responsibility of sinful fathers to children, the Spirit-inspired prophet said well: “Why do you use … a proverb, saying:“Fathers ate sour grapes, and children have a sore teeth "? … a sinning soul, that one will die … If someone is righteous … he will certainly live" (Ezek. 18: 2-9).
What is meant by generic sin?
The method of transmitting and spreading the ancestral curse is associated, among other things, with the transmission and spread of sinfulness from ancestors to descendants in the form of spiritual heredity, a kind of moral corruption. This inheritance is transmitted to man through conception in the form of certain sinful inclinations.
Thus, Scripture, reporting on the origin of Seth, testifies that Adam gave birth to him in his own image and likeness (Gen. 5: 3). Proceeding from the fact that the image and likeness of God in a person primarily refers not to the body, but to the soul, we understand that the image and likeness of parents, reflected in children, correlate not only with the body, but also with the soul.
Therefore, the child's likeness to mother and father is necessarily manifested in the state of his soul.
In this sense, arguing about the method of origin of human souls, some church writers compared a person with a grain of wheat: as a seed grain, they wrote, transfers a set of qualities and properties to a new grain, so parents pass on to their children a set of qualities and properties associated with both bodily, and with a spiritual beginning.
This means that there is not only physical, but also spiritual similarity between parents and children, that both positive and negative traits of parental souls are displayed in children.
The Book of Job indicates the hereditary continuity of moral impurity in the form of sinful inclinations: “Who will be born clean of an unclean thing? Not one”(Job 14: 4).
To this day, the words of the king and the prophet David sound in the same tone: “Behold, I was conceived in iniquity, and my mother gave birth to me in sin” (Ps. 50: 7).
The Lord Jesus Christ drew the attention of the disciples to the fact that bad fruit is born from bad, as well as good fruit from good, but not vice versa.
Here are His words: “There is no good tree that bears bad fruit; and there is no bad tree that bears good fruit, for every tree is known by its fruit, because they do not pick figs from the thorns and do not take grapes from the bushes”(Luke 6: 43-44).
Remember! By itself, sinful inheritance does not imply personal responsibility of its owner before the Creator. Another thing is that it can influence the propensity of the heir to sin, which in turn can contribute to the formation of sinful habits and habits, sinful passions and vices in him, for which he will have to bear individual responsibility and the corresponding reward.
What is the difference between generic sin and original sin?
- Original sin binds all people in general with sinful bonds (Rom. 5:12), and generic sin binds only representatives of the clan (Matthew 23: 35-36).
- Original sin affects the corruption of human nature (Rom. 5:14), and generic sin affects the individual characteristics of the representatives of the genus.
- Original sin extends to all generations, and the inherited manifestation of generic sin is weakened from generation to generation. At the same time, a representative of each subsequent generation influences the genealogical chain in its own way, modifying, weakening or strengthening hereditary moral damage.
Based on the biblical testimony that the punishment of God for the sins of fathers extends to children and children of their children up to the third and fourth kind (Exodus 34: 7), there is reason to think that a more or less effective manifestation of ancestral sin continues until the third or fourth generation. generations.
- Due to generic sin, the inclination to evil, conditioned by original sin, manifests itself in every person separately.