Romans 11:7-8

“ What then? Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for, while the election hath obtained it; but the rest were hardened. According as it is written, God hath given them a spirit of torpor, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear, unto this day. ”

By the question: What then? Paul means: If Israel are not really rejected, what then? What has happened? As he has elucidated this question in chap. 10, he confines himself to summing up in a word all that he has explained above regarding the foolish conduct of Israel. The object of their search, the justification to be obtained from God, having been pursued by them in a chimerical way (by means of human works), they have not attained the end which the elect have reached without trouble by faith. The present ἐπιζητεῖ, seeketh, for which there must not be substituted, with the oldest translations (see the critical note), the imperf. sought, indicates what Israel has done and is still doing at the very moment when the apostle is writing.

The elect then being once excepted, it is quite true that all the rest, οἱ λοιποί, have been rejected, and that in the severest way: a judgment of hardening with which God has visited them. The term πωροῦν, to harden, signifies in the strict sense: to deprive an organ of its natural sensibility; morally: to take away from the heart the faculty of being touched by what is good or divine, from the understanding, the faculty of discerning between the true and the false, the good and the bad. The sequel will explain how it is possible for such an effect to be ascribed to divine operation.