Romans 10:19

ἀλλὰ λέγω : another attempt to introduce a plea on behalf of Israel. You cannot say, “they did not hear”; surely you do not mean to say, then, Israel did not understand? At first sight there seems an unnatural emphasis here on Israel, but this is not the case. The generality of the argument must be abandoned now, for the passages next to be quoted, which are already present to Paul's mind, contrast Israel with the Gentiles, and so bring it into prominence; and it is in the case of Israel, of all nations, that the plea of not understanding is most out of place. Above all nations Israel ought to have understood a message from God: Israel, and inability to understand God's Word, ought to be incompatible ideas. πρῶτος Μωυσῆς λέγει, Deuteronomy 32:21. πρῶτος suggests the beginning of a line of witnesses to this effect: virtually it means, even Moses, at the very beginning of their history. The point of the citation is not very clear. Like the passages quoted in Romans 9:25-26, it might have been adduced by Paul as a proof that the Gentiles were to be called into God's kingdom, and called in order to rouse the Jews to jealousy; but to be in place here, there must be also the latent idea that if peoples beyond the covenant (who were not peoples at all), and unintelligent peoples (i.e., idol worshippers) could understand the Gospel, a privileged and religiously gifted people like the Jews was surely inexcusable if it failed to understand it. The same idea seems to be enforced again in Romans 10:20. Ἡσαίας δὲ ἀποτολμᾷ : “breaks out boldly” (Gifford). It was an act of great daring to speak thus to a nation with the exclusive temper of Israel, and Paul who needed the same courage in carrying the Gospel to the Gentiles was the man to see this. οἱ ἐμὲ μὴ ἐπερωτῶντες means those who put no question to me, sc., about the way of salvation. In Isaiah 65:1 the clauses occur in reverse order. What the prophet has in view is God's spontaneous unmerited goodness, which takes the initiative, unsolicited, in showing mercy to faithless Jews who made no appeal to Him and never sought Him; the Apostle applies this, like the similar passages in Romans 9:25 f., to the reception of the Gospel by the Gentiles. [2] If God was found and recognised in His character and purposes, where all the conditions seemed so much against it, surely Israel must be inexcusable if it has missed the meaning of the Gospel. The very calling of the Gentiles, predicted and interpreted as it is in the passages quoted, should itself have been a message to the Jews, which they could not misunderstand; it should have opened their eyes as with a lightning flash to the position in which they stood that of men who had forfeited their place among the people of God and provoked them, out of jealousy, to vie with these outsiders in welcoming the righteousness of faith.

[2] The part of Isaiah 65:1 which is not quoted here (I said, Behold Me, behold Me, unto a nation that was not called by My name) is meant, as usually pointed, to refer to the Gentiles, and this tradition of its application Paul may have learned from Gamaliel (Cheyne); but the pointing is wrong: see Cheyne.