Chapter S 9 11. With the eighth chapter Paul concludes the positive exposition of his gospel. Starting with the theme of Romans 1:16 f., he showed in Romans 1:18 to Romans 3:20 the universal sinfulness of men Gentile and Jew; in Romans 3:21 to Romans 5:21 he explained, illustrated and glorified the... [ Continue Reading ]
λέγω οὖν : the οὖν intimates that it is with the conclusion reached in chap. 10 before his mind that Paul puts the following question: the unbelief of Israel naturally suggested it. μὴ ἀπώσατο ὁ θεὸς τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ; For the words, _cf._ Psalms 94:14 (93 LXX), 1 Samuel 12:22. In both places the promi... [ Continue Reading ]
f. οὐκ ἀπώσατο : formal denial of what the heart has indignantly protested against in Romans 11:1. ὃν προέγνω must contain a reason which makes the rejection incredible or impossible. This excludes the interpretation of Weiss, who thinks that Paul means to say that God _knew_ what Israel was _before... [ Continue Reading ]
ὁ χρηματισμός : the word is related to χρηματίζω (Matthew 2:12; Matthew 2:22; Acts 10:22; Hebrews 8:5) as χρησμὸς to χράω : it means the oracle, or answer of God. Here only in N.T., but see Malachi 2:4; Malachi 2:4; 2Ma 11:17. The quotation is from 1 Kings 19:18 with ἐμαυτῷ added, by which Paul sugg... [ Continue Reading ]
Application of the principle of Romans 11:4 to the present. ὁ νῦν καιρὸς is the present regarded not merely as a date, but as in some sense a crisis. λεῖμμα γέγονεν : a remnant has come to be this is the fact which has emerged from the general unbelief of Israel. κατʼ ἐκλογὴν χάριτος : on these word... [ Continue Reading ]
Expansion of χάριτος in Romans 11:5 : grace and works are mutually exclusive. Nothing a man can do gives him a claim as of right against God to be included in the remnant. ἐπεὶ : otherwise. _Cf._ Romans 11:22; Romans 3:6. _Gratia nisi gratis sit gratia non est_. Aug [4] The fact that there is a remn... [ Continue Reading ]
τί οὖν; What then? How are we to describe the present situation, if not in the painful language of Romans 11:1 ? Thus: ὃ ἐπιζητεῖ Ἰσραὴλ κ. τ. λ. What Israel is in quest of is δικαιοσύνη : the present conveys more sympathetically than the impft. of some MSS. the Apostle's sense of the seaseless and... [ Continue Reading ]
ff. This hardening (at the present day Romans 11:5) agrees with God's action toward Israel in the past, as exhibited in Scripture. The words from the O.T. can hardly be called a quotation; Deuteronomy 29:4; Isaiah 29:10; Isaiah 6:9-10, all contributed something to them. The πνεῦμα κατανύξεως is from... [ Continue Reading ]
λέγω οὖν : I say then, taking up the problem again. μὴ ἔπταισαν ἵνα πέσωσιν; surely they did not stumble so as to fall? The subject is the mass of the Jewish nation, all but the elect remnant. The contrast here between stumbling and falling shows that the latter is meant of an irremediable fall, fro... [ Continue Reading ]
Both ἥττημα and πλήρωμα are difficult words, but it is not necessary to suppose that they answer mathematically to one another, though Wetstein explains them by - and +. ἥττημα may mean (as in Isaiah 31:8) defeat, or (as in 1 Corinthians 6:7) loss; it can hardly mean _diminutio eorum_, or _paucitas... [ Continue Reading ]
f. ὑμῖν δὲ λέγω τοῖς ἔθνεσιν. Paul does not here address a new class of readers. He has been speaking all along to a Gentile church, and speaking to it in that character (see above, pp. 561 ff.); and he feels it necessary to show the relevance, in such circumstances, of bestowing so much attention o... [ Continue Reading ]
f. From the personal explanation of Romans 11:13 f., which interrupts the argument, Paul reverts to the ideas of Romans 11:12. To save _any_ Jew was a great object, even with an apostle of the Gentiles: εἰ γὰρ ἡ ἀποβολὴ αὐτῶν κ. τ. λ. Their ἀποβολὴ is their rejection by God on the ground of unbelief... [ Continue Reading ]
A Gentile Christian might feel that the very fact that Jews were rejected and Gentiles accepted qualified the assurance with which Paul had just spoken of the future of Israel. It is the disposition to think so, and to presume on one's own favoured position, which the Apostle rebukes in μὴ κατακαυχῶ... [ Continue Reading ]
In these verses, which in a sense are a long parenthesis, Paul anticipates an objection which Gentile readers might take to his use of the last figure, the root and the branches; and he draws from it two special lessons one, of humility, for the objectors; the other, of hope, for Israel.... [ Continue Reading ]
μὴ κατακαυχῶ τῶν κλάδων : for the genitive see Buttm., 185. Between “if thou boastest,” and “thou bearest not the root,” there is no formal connection: for such breviloquence, which requires us to supply “consider” or “remember,” see Winer, p. 773. The sense is, You owe all you are proud of to an (a... [ Continue Reading ]
ἐρεῖς οὖν : the presumptuous Gentile persists. “It is not to the root I compare myself, but branches were broken off that I might be engrafted: that surely involves some superiority in me.”... [ Continue Reading ]
καλῶς : “a form of partial and often ironical assent” (Gifford). Paul does not think it worth while to dispute the assertion of Romans 11:19, though as it stands it is by no means indisputable; he prefers to point out what it overlooks the moral conditions of being broken off and of standing secure... [ Continue Reading ]
As far as comparisons can be made at all in such things, the Jews had been more securely invested in the kingdom than the Gentiles. They were, in the language of the figure, not artificially grafted, but native branches, on the tree of God's people; yet even that did not prevent Him from cutting off... [ Continue Reading ]
Behold then God's goodness and severity, _sc._, in the case of the Gentiles and Jews as now before us. ἀποτομία : here only in N.T. The moral idea is that of peremptoriness, inexorableness; in Greek writers it is contrasted with ἡμερότης, τὸ ἐπιεικές, πρᾳότης. _Cf._ 2 Corinthians 13:10. ἐὰν ἐπιμένῃς... [ Continue Reading ]
κἀκεῖνοι δέ : and they too, they on the other hand, _viz._, the un-believing Jews. ἐὰν μὴ κ. τ. λ., unless they remain on in their unbelief. It is assumed that they need not do this. The hardening spoken of in Romans 11:7-10, though it is a judgment upon sin, and may seem from the nature of the case... [ Continue Reading ]
God's power to engraft the Jews again into the stock of His people proved a _fortiori_ by comparison with what He has done for the Gentiles. To restore His own is more natural, conceivable, and one may even say easy, than to call those who are not His own. The Gentile Christian (1) was cut ἐκ τῆς κα... [ Continue Reading ]
οὐ γὰρ θέλω ὑμᾶς ἀγνοεῖν : _cf._ Romans 1:13; 1 Corinthians 10:1; 1Co 12:1, 2 Corinthians 1:8, but especially 1 Thessalonians 4:13, where as here it is used to introduce a revelation. An often-repeated phrase tends to be formal, but the thing of which Paul would not have his readers ignorant is usua... [ Continue Reading ]
In this concluding section Paul abandons the ground of argument for that of revelation. He has discussed the problems arising out of the rejection of Israel and the calling of the Gentiles, when taken in connection with the promises of God to His people; and he has tried to make it clear that in all... [ Continue Reading ]
καὶ οὕτως = and thus; not merely temporal, but = under the influence of the jealousy so excited under the impression produced on the Jews by the sight of the Gentiles in their fulness peopling the kingdom all Israel shall be saved. This is an independent sentence. For πᾶς Ἰσραὴλ see 1 Kings 12:1; 2... [ Continue Reading ]
καὶ αὕτη κ. τ. λ. This is My covenant with them = this is the constitution which I give them to live under. Weiss interprets this by what follows, making the αὕτη prospective, but this is somewhat forced. The διαθήκη is not equivalent to the removal of sins, though it is based upon it: it covers the... [ Continue Reading ]
κατὰ μὲν τὸ εὐαγγέλιον. In both clauses κατὰ defines the rule by which God's relation to Israel is determined. When He looks at the Gospel, which they have rejected, they are ἐχθροὶ, objects of His hostility, and that διʼ ὑμᾶς, for the sake of the Gentiles, to whom the Gospel in this way comes; when... [ Continue Reading ]
Proof that the Israelites, in virtue of their relation to the fathers, are objects of God's love. ἀμεταμέλητα _cf._ 2 Corinthians 7:10 : it may mean either what is not or what cannot be repented of: here the latter. God's gifts of grace, and His calling, are things upon which there is no going back.... [ Continue Reading ]
There is the less need, too, that they should be withdrawn, because God makes the very misuse of them contribute to the working out of His universal purpose of redemption. The past unbelief of the Gentiles and the mercy they presently enjoy, the present unbelief of the Jews and the mercy they are de... [ Continue Reading ]
ὢ βάθος πλούτου κ. τ. λ. In Romans 11:32 the content of the chapter is no doubt condensed, but it is more natural to regard the doxology as prompted by the view of God's Providence which pervades the whole discussion than by the one sentence in which it is summed up. βάθος : a universal figure for w... [ Continue Reading ]
Proof from Scripture of the unsearchableness of God's ways: He has had no confidant. Isaiah 40:13; 1 Corinthians 2:16. It is mere pedantry to refer half the verse to σοφία and the other half to γνῶσις.... [ Continue Reading ]
ἢ τίς προέδωκεν αὐτῷ, καὶ ἀνταποδοθήσεται αὐτῷ; see Job 41:11 (A.V.). The translation of Job 41:3, Hebrew, is perhaps Paul's own, as the LXX is entirely different and wrong. The point of the quotation has been variously explained. If it continues the proof of Romans 11:33, the underlying assumption... [ Continue Reading ]
ὅτι ἐξ αὐτοῦ κ. τ. λ. Strictly speaking, the ὅτι confirms the last truth man's absolute dependence on God by making it part of a wider generalisation. ἐξ αὐτοῦ : from Him, as their source; διʼ αὐτοῦ : through Him, as the power by whose continuous energy the world is sustained and ruled; εἰς αὐτὸν :... [ Continue Reading ]