ספר שמות

Exodus 20,5. “Who, while remembering the guilt of the ‎fathers to the children if the children continue to hate Him, ‎while at the same time showering thousands of generations ‎of those who have loved Him with His loving kindness.” ‎The essence of these words is that on the one hand, by exacting ‎retribution for sins G’d minimizes the impact of these sins, i.e. the ‎residue of the guilt.‎The word ‎פקד‎, in the sense of diminishing, is familiar to us ‎already from Samuel I 20,25 when on the occasion of the festive ‎meal on the New Moon David’s chair was vacant, and the King ‎remarked on this as something lacking. The opposite is the case ‎when people are rewarded for meritorious deeds by G’d. Paying ‎them a reward does not detract from the good deeds they had ‎performed, so that they should consider themselves as having ‎been “paid off,” but, on the contrary, is a stimulus to such people ‎adding more meritorious deeds in the future. This idea is expressed ‎by the words ‎עשוה חסד‎, i.e. G’d does not only “repay” the just and ‎the pious, but He adds a “bonus.,” known as ‎חסד‎.‎