BREAKING THE GENERATIONAL CURSE: INIQUITY

 

There’s something unsettling about realizing that a battle you’re fighting today may have started long before you were born. It’s like waking up in the middle of a war with bruises you didn’t earn and scars you can’t explain. For many of us, this war is spiritual, emotional, and generational—wounds passed down like heirlooms, not of silver or gold, but of dysfunction, addiction, anger, fear, bitterness, lust, deception, religious bondage, poverty, and pride. Some call them generational curses. But the Scriptures use a much older and weightier term: iniquity.

You can smell it in some family lines like mildew in an old cellar—persistent, unpleasant, and hard to scrub out. But there’s good news in this: just because you inherited something doesn’t mean you’re doomed to keep it. The inheritance of the flesh can be broken by the covenant of the Spirit. The bloodline of Adam is not stronger than the blood of Christ. But to break the curse, you must understand it. And that takes us back to the very beginning.

The Hebrew word for iniquity is avon, which means twistedness, perversity, and moral distortion. It implies something bent out of its original shape. Think of a branch that grew twisted because of constant wind, or a child walking with a limp because his father’s wound changed how he was carried. In older concordances, avon is linked with “perverseness,” “distortion,” and the inward guilt that warps decision-making. It’s not just what you do—it’s a crookedness in your nature that influences how you think, feel, choose, and lead others. It’s what David spoke of when he said, “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” He wasn’t pointing fingers at his mother—he was acknowledging that from the very womb, something in him had already gone crooked.

Iniquity is deeper than transgression. The Hebrew for transgression is pesha, meaning rebellion or an act of revolt—breaking away violently from authority. Sin is chatta’ah, which means to miss the mark, like an archer whose arrow falls short. But iniquity, avon, is that inward bend that keeps making you miss the mark and leads you into rebellion. Like a wagon wheel warped over time, it won’t roll straight no matter how hard you push it forward. And the tragedy is—it’s passed down.

When the Lord thundered from Sinai, He said, “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.” Again He said it later when describing Himself: “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.” This wasn’t divine spite. It was the announcement of a spiritual law—how moral and spiritual choices ripple outward across generations like stones tossed into a still river.

It’s not genetic, but it sure acts like it. Iniquity continues when it is not repented of. It becomes a generational curse when children walk in the same crooked paths, not merely because they were taught to sin, but because something in their inward being was shaped by the unaddressed sins of their fathers. Like Proverbs says, “The curse causeless shall not come.” A curse doesn’t just fall out of the sky. It’s rooted in something. And the root is usually iniquity.

Consider the house of Eli, the priest. He judged Israel for forty years but failed to judge his own household. His sons, Hophni and Phinehas, served in the tabernacle but treated it like a stage for their wickedness. They stole from the offerings. They seduced the women. Eli warned them—but he didn’t stop them. And the Lord sent a prophet who said, “Wherefore kick ye at my sacrifice and at mine offering… and honourest thy sons above me?” Then came the crushing sentence: “I will judge his house forever for the iniquity which he knoweth… because his sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not.” That word—“which he knew”—is the hinge. Eli didn’t commit the same outward acts as his sons. But he allowed the crookedness to stay. And God said that no offering could purge that iniquity.

It wasn’t just a moment of sin. It was a pattern of compromise. Iniquity passed through the priesthood like rot through the walls of a temple.

Then we have David. A man after God’s own heart. And yet even he wasn’t spared the consequence of iniquity. When he committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband killed, the prophet Nathan brought the hammer: “Now therefore the sword shall never depart from thine house.” The judgment didn’t mean David was unloved. It meant that the ripple had begun. Absalom rebelled. Amnon violated his sister. The baby died. The family line bore the crookedness. Even Solomon, born of Bathsheba, though wise, took on hundreds of pagan wives and eventually turned his heart from God. Iniquity is like yeast—it only takes a little to leaven the whole loaf.

But what breaks it?

The answer is found in the cross. Isaiah declared, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” That word—avon—again. It wasn’t just sin that was laid on Jesus. It was the twist. The perversity. The inward bend that made us prone to wander. Jesus didn’t just take your guilt—He took the root. He didn’t just die for what you did. He died for what was done in your bloodline before you were even born.

Later in that same chapter, Isaiah says, “He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied… for He shall bear their iniquities.” That phrase “bear” means to lift up and carry away like a beast of burden. It’s the picture of the scapegoat in Leviticus, where the priest lays hands on its head and confesses the sins and iniquities of the people, then sends it out into the wilderness—away from the camp, away from the people, carrying their distortion with it. Jesus became that goat. He walked your iniquity out of the camp. He took it so you wouldn’t have to pass it down.

But there’s a condition. It must be repented of. The Hebrew word for repentance is shub, meaning to turn back, to return, to retrace your steps. Not just say you’re sorry, but to go back to the crooked place and straighten it with God’s help. It’s not just guilt—it’s reversal.

That’s what Daniel did. That’s what Nehemiah did. They stood in the gap for the sins of their people and said, “We have sinned.” Not because they themselves were guilty of each act, but because they were the priestly hinge on which restoration could swing. And when you do this in your own family line, you become that hinge too.

Repentance is the shovel that uproots iniquity. Prayer is the hammer that smashes it. The blood of Jesus is the flood that washes it away. And the Word is the plumbline that sets you straight. When you confess not just your sins, but the crookedness behind them—the patterns, the pride, the fear, the lust, the manipulation—you bring it into the light. And the light burns what it touches.

But you must be aggressive. This isn’t passive Christianity. You are not a victim—you are a warrior. When you come to Christ, your authority in Him gives you legal right to say, “This curse stops here.” You renounce it. You break agreement with it. You speak the name of Jesus into your bloodline like a firebrand, and you call forth the blessing that was always meant to be there.

When Joel writes, “I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten,” he wasn’t just talking about your years. God can restore years you never lived—the ones devoured before you were born. The ones stolen from your parents, your grandparents. Because the blood of Jesus flows both forward and backward in time.

And that’s the truth, Anna. You are not just breaking a curse. You are planting a legacy. The crooked line ends with you. And a straight path begins—for your children, your grandchildren, your spiritual sons and daughters, and those yet unborn.

Because the King is coming. And He’s coming for a people without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. And that people is you.

And those behind you who will walk in the light you lit.

 

© 2020 Anna Hazen

image by chatgpt as per my instructions