Romans 10:1,2

“ Brethren, my heart's good pleasure and the prayer I address to God for them are for their salvation.For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. ”

The emotion with which the apostle's heart is filled betrays itself in the asyndeton between Romans 9:33 and Romans 10:1. By the word brethren, he joins his readers with him in that outburst of feeling to which he is about to give utterance.

The word εύδοκία, good pleasure, complacency of heart, has been taken by many in the sense of wish; thus to make the term run parallel with the following: my prayer. But it is not necessary to give it this meaning, of which no example can be quoted. The apostle means that it is to this thought of Israel's salvation the regard of his heart rises with constant complacency; that therein, as it were, is found the ideal of his heart. To this idea there attaches quite naturally that of the prayer by which he asks the realization of the ideal. The three variants presented by the T. R. (indicated in the note) should be set aside. The two last arise no doubt from the circumstance that with this passage there began a public lesson, which made it necessary to complete the proposition.

The regimen ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν, for them, might depend on the verb is, or rather are, understood: my good pleasure and my prayer are in their interest; and this idea of interest, contained in the prep. ὑπέρ, would be afterward determined by the apposition εἰς σωτηρίαν : “are in their interest, that is to say, for their salvation.” But why add this explanation, which seems superfluous? Is it not better to make the regimen for them, as well as the preceding one to God, dependent on the word prayer, which has an active and verbal meaning, and to make εἰς σωτηρίαν, to salvation, the regimen of the whole proposition: “My good pleasure...and my prayer for them (on their account) tend to their salvation”? It was a matter of course that Paul prayed on account of Israel; but did he pray for their chastisement or their salvation? That was the question which might have been asked.

Bengel here observes, “that Paul would not have prayed for the Jews if they had been absolutely reprobate.” And this remark is quoted by some with approbation. I do not think it accurate, for an absolute reprobation might indeed overtake unbelieving individuals of Paul's time, without its being possible to conclude therefrom to the eternal objection of the people. Even in this case, therefore, Paul could pray for their future conversion.