The Hyperlinked Bible
Intertextuality Pair
Quotation
Later text
Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps His covenant of loving devotion for a thousand generations of those who love Him and keep His commandments. But those who hate Him He repays to their faces with destruction; He will not hesitate to repay to his face the one who hates Him.
Earlier text
You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on their children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing loving devotion to a thousand generations of those who love Me and keep My commandments.
Exodus 20:5-6 establishes the foundational statement of divine retribution and loyalty within the second commandment: judgment on those who hate God extending to "the third and fourth generation" but חֶסֶד (chesed, covenant loyalty) to "thousands" who love Him. Deuteronomy 7:9-10 restates this with significant development, adding that God "repays to their face those who hate Him, by destroying them" and specifying "a thousand generations" (לְאֶלֶף דּוֹר, le'elef dor) of faithful love. The Deuteronomic version sharpens the immediacy of judgment ("to their face," not merely to descendants) while expanding the duration of mercy, reinforcing the asymmetry between God's wrath and His steadfast love that pervades biblical theology.