Romans 2:19

f. πέποιθάς τε κ. τ. λ. The τε indicates that this confidence is the immediate and natural result of what precedes: it is not right, in view of all the N.T. examples, to say that πέποιθας suggests an unjustifiable confidence, though in some cases, as in the present, it is so. Cf. 2 Corinthians 10:7; Luke 18:9. The blind, those in darkness, the foolish, the babes, are all names for the heathen: the Jew is confident that the Gentiles must come to school to him. παιδευτὴς has reference to moral as well as intellectual discipline: and ἄφρονες are, as in the O.T. (Psalms 13:1, LXX), persons without moral intelligence. For the other figures in this verse, cf. Matthew 15:14; Isaiah 49:6; Isaiah 49:9; Isaiah 42:6. The confidence of the Jew is based on the fact that he possesses in the law “the outline of knowledge and truth”. Lipsius puts a strong sense upon μόρφωσιν die leibhaftige Verkörperung: as if the Jew conceived that in the Mosaic law the knowledge and the truth of God were incorporated bodily. Possibly he did, and in a sense it was so, for the Mosaic law was a true revelation of God and His will: but the only other instance of μόρφωσις in the N.T. (2 Timothy 3:5 ἔχοντες μόρφωσιν εὐσεβείας) rather suggests the same disparaging note which here belongs to πέποιθας. The μόρφωσις τῆς γνώσεως is in point of fact only a form: valuable as the outline or definition of truth was, which the Jew possessed in the law, it was in reality ineffective, so far as the practical authority of the law in the Jew's conduct was concerned.