Their fruit shalt thou destroy from the earth, and their seed from among the children of men.

Their fruit from earth Thou destroyest, And their seed from the sons of men.

Their fruit shall you destroy from the earth, and their seed from among the children of men.

Their fruit will be cut off from the earth, and their seed from among the children of men.

Thou shalt make them as a fiery furnace in the time of thine anger; The LORD shall swallow them up in His wrath, and the fire shall devour them.

Thou shalt destroy their fruit from the earth. David amplifies the greatness of God's wrath, from the circumstance that it shall extend even to the children of the wicked. It is a doctrine common enough in Scripture, that God not only inflicts punishment upon the first originators of wickedness, but makes it even to overflow into the bosom of their children. And yet when he thus pursues his vengeance to the third and fourth generation, he cannot be said indiscriminately to involve the innocent with the guilty. As the seed of the ungodly, whom he has deprived of his grace, are accursed, and as all are by nature children of wrath, devoted to everlasting destruction, he is no less just in exercising his severity towards the children than towards the fathers. Who can lay any thing to his charge, if he withhold from those who are unworthy of it the grace which he communicates to his own children? In both ways he shows how dear and precious to him is the kingdom of Christ; first, in extending his mercy to the children of the righteous even to a thousand generations; and, secondly, in causing his wrath to rest upon the reprobate, even to the third and fourth generation.

Their fruit - Their offspring; their children; their posterity, for so the parallelism demands. The "fruit" is that which the tree produces; and hence, the word comes to be applied to children as the production of the parent. See this use of the word in Genesis 30:2; Exodus 21:22; Deuteronomy 28:4, Deuteronomy 28:11, Deuteronomy 28:18; Psalm 127:3; Hosea 9:16; Micah 6:7.
Shalt thou destroy from the earth - Thou shalt utterly destroy them. This is in accordance with the statement so often made in the Scriptures, and with what so often occurs in fact, that the consequences of the sins of parents pass over to their posterity, and that they suffer in consequence of those sins. Compare Exodus 20:5; Exodus 34:7; Leviticus 20:5; Leviticus 26:39; compare the notes at Romans 5:12-21.
And their seed - Their posterity.
From among the children of men - From among men, or the human family. That is, they would be entirely cut off from the earth. The truth taught here is, that the wicked will ultimately be destroyed, and that God will obtain a complete triumph over them, or that the kingdom of righteousness shall be at length completely established. A time will come when truth and justice shall be triumphant, when all the wicked shall be removed out of the way; when all that oppose God and his cause shall be destroyed, and when God shall show, by thus removing and punishing the wicked, that he is the Friend of all that is true, and good, and right. The "idea" of the psalmist probably was that this would yet occur on the earth; the "language" is such, also, as may be applied to that ultimate state, in the future world, when all the wicked shall be destroyed, and the righteous shall be no more troubled with them.

Their fruit shalt thou destroy - Even their posterity shall be cut off, and thus their memorial shall perish.

Their fruit shall thou destroy from the earth,.... Meaning the offspring of wicked men; the fruit of the womb, Psalm 127:3; the same with their seed in the next clause:
and their seed from among the children of men; see Psalm 37:28; which must be understood of such of their seed, and offspring as are as they were when born; are never renewed and sanctified, but are like their parents; as the Jews were, their parents were vipers, and they were serpents, the generation of them; and were the children of the devil, and did his works: now these passages had their accomplishment in the Jews, when the day of God's wrath burnt them up, and left them neither root nor branch, Malachi 4:1; and in the Pagan empire, when every mountain and island were moved out of their places, and the Heathen perished out of the land, Revelation 6:14; and will be further accomplished when the Lord shall punish the wicked woman Jezebel, the antichristian harlot, and kill her children with death, Revelation 2:23; see Psalm 104:35.

fruit--children (Psalm 37:25; Hosea 9:16).

Fruit - Their children. God will take away both root and branch, the parents and all that wicked race.