Romans 2:24

And this is only what Scripture bids us expect. The Scripture quoted is Isaiah 52:5, LXX. The LXX interpret the Hebrew by inserting διʼ ὑμᾶς and ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν. Both insertions are in the line of the original meaning. It was owing to the misery and helplessness of the people of God, in exile among the nations, that the heathen scoffed at the Divine name. “The God of Israel is not able to deliver His people: He is no God.” Paul here gives the words quite another turn. God, he says, is now blasphemed among the nations because of the inconsistency between the pretensions of the Jews and their behaviour. As if the heathen were saying: “Like God, like people; what a Divinity the patron of this odious race must be”. It is surely not right to argue (with Sanday and Headlam) that the throwing of the formula of quotation to the end shows that Paul is conscious of quoting freely: “it is almost as if it were an after-thought that the language he has just used is a quotation at all”. The quotation is as relevant as most that the Apostle uses. He never cares for the context or the original application. When he can express himself in Scripture language he feels that he has the Word of God on his side, and all through this epistle he nails his arguments so, and insists on the confirmation they thus obtain. What the closing of the sentence with καθὼς γέγραπται suggests is not that it occurred to Paul after he had finished that he had almost unconsciously been using Scripture: it is rather that there is a challenge in the words, as if he had said, Let him impugn this who dare contest the Word of God.

In Romans 2:25-29 another Jewish plea for preferential treatment in the judgment is considered. The μὲν in Romans 2:25 (περιτομὴ μὲν γὰρ ὠφελεῖ) implies that this plea has no doubt something in it, but it suggests that there are considerations on the other side which in point of fact make it inapplicable or invalid here. It is these considerations which the Apostle proceeds to explain, with a view to clenching the argument that the wrath of God revealed from heaven impends over Jew and Gentile alike.