Exodus 20:5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me,
I would never ask anyone to do something that I myself have not done. My conclusions are mine and mine alone. Only the Word of God can support any meaningful conclusions.
The first thing that I wanted to ponder was the issue of hating God. Why would our iniquities be considered as hating God?
International Standard Bible Encyclopaedia
Iniquity:
in-ik’-wi-ti (‘awon; anomia): In the Old Testament of the 11 words translated “iniquity,” by far the most common and important is ‘awon (about 215 times). Etymologically, it is customary to explain it as meaning literally “crookedness,” “perverseness,” i.e. evil regarded as that which is not straight or upright, moral distortion (from ‘iwwah, “to bend,” “make crooked,” “pervert”). Driver, however (following Lagarde), maintains that two roots, distinct in Arabic, have been confused in Hebrew, one equals “to bend,” “pervert” (as above), and the other equals “to err,” “go astray”; that ‘awon is derived from the latter, and consequently expresses the idea of error, deviation from the right path, rather than that of perversion (Driver, Notes on Sam, 135 note) Whichever etymology is adopted, in actual usage it has three meanings which almost imperceptibly pass into each other:
I consider that this is a biblical interpretation where studied men have made their own conclusions about the meaning of iniquity. All that verse tells me is that God entreats those behaviors as hate crimes against Him. He takes it personally.
The second thing I notice is a generational effect in which the iniquities of the father are passed down by the life lived and what children are taught. We learn first from our parents and if they do not love God, what are the children being taught?
The children are the only ones who can break the gene cycle of unacceptable behaviors in God’s point of view. What we think does not change how God views these issues.
In conclusion, I must admit that a pondering of any one verse to discover a truth cannot be measured alone and must be weighed against all relevant scripture that God has given us to understand His vision for us and how it can possibly improve our understanding of God, His will and how that improves our lives.