Romans 11:16

“ But if the first-fruit be holy, the lump is also holy; and if the root be holy, so are the branches. ”

The Jewish people are consecrated to God by their very origin that is to say, by the call of Abraham, which included theirs (Romans 11:29).

According to Numbers 15:18-21, every time the Israelites ate of the bread of the land which God had given them, they were first of all to set aside a portion of the dough to make a cake intended for the priests. This cake bore the name of ἀπαρχή, first-fruits; it is to this usage the apostle alludes in the first part of our verse. It has sometimes been alleged that he took the figure used here from the custom of offering in the temple, on the 16th Nisan, on the morrow after the Passover, the sacred sheaf gathered in one of the fields of Jerusalem, as first-fruits and as a consecration of the entire harvest. But the subject in question here is a portion of dough (φύραμα), which necessarily leads to the first meaning. This cake offered to God's representative impressed the seal of consecration on the entire mass from which it had been taken. What is it that corresponds to this emblem in the apostle's view? Some answer: the Jews converted in the first times of the church; for they are the pledge of the final conversion of the whole people. But exactly the same thing might be said of the first Gentile converts, as being the pledge of the successive conversion of all the Gentiles. Now, by this figure Paul's very object is to express a characteristic peculiar to the Jews. Some Fathers (Or., Theod.) apply this emblem to Christ, as assuring the conversion of the people from whom He sprang. But this reasoning would apply equally to Gentile humanity, since Jesus is a man, not only a Jew. We must therefore, with the majority of commentators, take these holy first-fruits as the patriarchs, in whose person all their posterity are radically consecrated to the mission of being the salvation-people; comp. Romans 9:5 and Romans 11:28.

But this figure, by which the entire nation was compared to a lump of dough consecrated to God, did not furnish the apostle with the means of distinguishing between Jews and Jews, between those who had faithfully preserved this national character and those who had obliterated it by their personal unbelief. Thus he is obliged to add a second figure, that he may be able to make the distinction which he must here lay down between those two so different portions of the nation. There is therefore no need to seek a different meaning for the second figure from that of the first.

Origen, again, applies the emblem of the root to Christ, inasmuch as by His heavenly origin He is the true author of the Jewish people; but this notion of Christ's pre-existence is foreign to the context.

It follows from these two comparisons, that to obtain salvation the Jewish people had only to remain on the soil where they were naturally rooted, while the salvation of the Gentile demands a complete transplantation. Hence a double warning which Paul feels himself forced to give to the latter. And first the warning against indulging pride.