Romans 5:13

f. These two verses are rather obscure, but must be intended (γὰρ) to prove what has been asserted in Romans 5:12. ἄχρι γὰρ νόμου = ἀπὸ Ἀδὰμ μέχρι Μωυσέως, Romans 5:14, the law meant being the Mosaic. The sin which was in the world before the law is not the guilt of Adam's fall imputed to the race as fallen in him, but the actual sin which individuals had committed. Now if law has no existence, sin is not imputed. Cf. Romans 4:15. The natural inference would seem to be that the sins committed during this period could not be punished. But what was the case? The very opposite of this. Death reigned all through this period. This unrestrained tyranny of death (observe the emphatic position of ἐβασίλευσεν) over persons whose sins cannot be imputed to them, seems at variance with the explanation just adopted of πάντες ἥμαρτον. Indeed Meyer and others use it to refute that explanation. The reign of death, apart from imputable individual sin, implies, they argue, a corresponding objective reign of sin, apart from individual acts: in other words, justifies the interpretation of ἐφʼ ᾧ πάντες ἥμαρτον according to which all men sinned in Adam's sin, and so (and only so) became subject to death. But the empirical meaning of ἥμαρτον is decidedly to be preferred, and we must rather fill out the argument thus: “all sinned. For there was sin in the world before Moses; and though sin is not imputed where there is no law, and though therefore no particular penalty death or another could be expected for the sins here in question, yet all that time death reigned, for in the act of Adam sin and death had been inseparably and for ever conjoined.” καὶ ἐπὶ τοὺς μὴ ἁμαρτήσαντας ἐπὶ τῷ ὁμοιώματι κ. τ. λ. even over those who did not sin after the likeness of Adam's transgression. For ἐπὶ, cf. Winer, p. 492. This describes not some, but all of those who lived during the period from Adam to Moses. None of them had like Adam violated an express prohibition sanctioned by the death penalty. Yet they all died, for they all sinned, and in their first father sin and death had been indissolubly united. And this Adam is τύπος τοῦ μέλλοντος sc. Ἀδάμ. In the coming Adam and his relations to the race there will be something on the same pattern as this. 1Co 10:6; 1 Corinthians 10:11; Hebrews 9:14 1 Corinthians 15:22; 1 Corinthians 15:45; 1 Corinthians 15:49. Parallels of this sort between Adam and the Messiah are common in Rabbinical writings: e.g., Schöttgen quotes Neve Schalom, f. 160 2. “Quemadmodum homo primus fuit unus in peccato, sic Messias erit postremus, ad auferendum peccatum penitus;” and 9, 9 has “Adamus postremus est Messias”. Cf. Delitzsch: Brief an die Römer, p. 82 f. The extent to which the thoughts of this passage on sin and death, and on the consequences of Adam's sin to his descendants, can be traced in Jewish writers, is not quite clear. As a rule (see above on Romans 5:12) they admit the dependence of death on sin, though Schöttgen quotes a Rabbi Samuel ben David as saying, “Etiamsi Adamus primus non peccasset, tamen mors fuisset”. On the unity and solidarity of the race in sin and its consequences, they are not perfectly explicit. Weber (Die Lehren des Talmud, p. 217) gives the following summary: “There is an inherited guilt, but not an inherited sin; the fall of Adam has brought death upon the whole race, not however sinfulness in the sense of a necessity to commit sin; sin is the result of each individual's decision; it is, as far as experience goes, universal, yet in itself even after the Fall not absolutely necessary”. This seems to agree very closely with the Apostle's teaching as interpreted above. It is the appeal to experience in Paul (πάντες ἥμαρτον), crossing with a transcendent view of the unity of the race in Adam, which gives rise to all the difficulties of interpretation; but without this appeal to experience (which many like Bengel, Meyer and Gifford reject) the whole passage would hang in the air, unreal. There must be something which involves the individual in Adam's fate; that something comes into view in πάντες ἥμαρτον, and there only; and without it our interest dies. A sin which we commit in Adam (and which never becomes ours otherwise) is a mere fancy to which one has nothing serious to say.