Romans 11:12

The δέ is that of gradation: well then. It is a new and more joyous perspective still which the apostle opens up. If the exclusion of the Jews, by allowing the gospel to be presented to the world freed from every legal form, has opened for it a large entrance among the Gentiles, what will be the result of the restoration of this people, if it shall ever be realized? What blessings of higher excellence for the whole world may not be expected from it! Thus the apostle advances from step to step in the explanation of this mysterious decree of rejection.

Their fall or their false step: this expression, which refers back to the term πταίειν, to stumble, Romans 11:11, denotes Jewish unbelief.

By the riches of the world, Paul understands the state of grace into which the Gentiles are introduced by faith in a free salvation.

The two abstract expressions fall and world are reproduced in a more concrete way in a second proposition parallel to the first; the former in the term ἥττημα, which we translate by diminishing (reduction to a small number); the latter in the plural word the Gentiles. The word ἡττημα comes from the verb ἡττᾶσθαι, the fundamental meaning of which is: to be in a state of inferiority. This inferiority may be one in relation to an enemy; in this case the verb means: to be overcome (2Pe 2:19), and the substantive derived from it signifies defeat (clades). Or the inferiority may refer to a state fixed on as normal, and below which one falls. The substantive in this case denotes a deficit, a fall. Of these two meanings the first is impossible here; for the enemy by whom Israel would be beaten could be no other than God; now in the context this thought is inapplicable. The second and only admissible sense may be applied either qualitatively or numerically. In the former case, the subject in question is a level of spiritual life beneath which Israel has fallen; comp. 1 Corinthians 6:7: “There is utterly an inferiority, ἥττημα (a moral deficit), among you because ye go to law one with another,” and 2 Corinthians 12:13. Applied here, this meaning would lead to the following explanation: “The moral degradation of Israel has become the cause of the enriching of the Gentiles.” But there is something repugnant in this idea, and, besides, we should be obliged by it to take the substantive πλήρωμα, the fulness, which corresponds to it, also in the moral sense: the perfect spiritual state to which the Jews shall one day be restored. Now this meaning is impossible in view of Romans 11:25, where this expression evidently denotes the totality of the Gentile nations. We are therefore led by this antithesis to the numerical meaning of ἥττημα, diminishing to a small number (of believers): “If their diminishing as God's people to a very small number of individuals (those who have received the Messiah) has formed the riches of the world, how much more their restoration to the complete state of a people”...! But it is important to observe the shade of difference between this and the often repeated explanation of Chrysostom, which applies the word ἥττημα to the believing Jews themselves, which would lead to an idea foreign to the context, namely this: that if so small a number of believing Jews have already done so much good to the world by becoming the nucleus of the church, the entire nation once converted will do more still. The pronoun αὐτῶν (their) excludes this sense; for in the three propositions it can only apply to the same subject, the Jewish people in general (Meyer).

Instead of “the riches of the world,” the apostle says the second time “the riches of the Gentiles; ” because now there presents itself to his mind that indefinite series of Gentile nations who, ever as the preaching of the gospel shall reach them, shall enter successively into the church, and thus fill up the void arising from the reduction of Israel to so small a number of believers.

Their fulness: the totality of the then living members of the people of Israel. The term πλήρωμα, used apparently in such different acceptations by the N. T. writers, has but one fundamental signification, of which all the others are only various applications. It always denotes: that with which an empty space is filled (id quo res impletur); comp. Philippi simplifying Fritzsche. In the application of this term to the people of Israel, we must regard the abstract notion of a people as the empty frame to be filled, and the totality of the individuals in whom this notion is realized, as that which fills the frame.

From what we have said above, we must set aside meanings of a qualitative nature, such as: “the fulness of the Messianic salvation,” or “the restoration of Israel to its normal position,” or the state of spiritual perfection to which it is destined (Fritzs., Rück., Hofm.). Neither can the meaning be admitted which Philippi ascribes to the two words ἥττημα and πλήρωμα; he supplies as their understood complement the idea of the kingdom of God, and explains: “the blank produced in the kingdom of God by their rejection,” and “the filling up of this blank by their readmission.” This is to do violence to the meaning of the genitives αὐτῶν, and to introduce into the text an idea (that of the kingdom of God) which is nowhere indicated.