Romans 11:8

Holy Scripture had already either witnessed to an operation of God in this direction in certain cases, or had raised the foreboding of it in regard to the Jews. So when Moses said to the people after their exodus from Egypt, Deuteronomy 29:4: “The Lord hath not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day.” And yet (Romans 11:2) “they had seen all that the Lord did before their eyes.” All the wonders wrought in the wilderness they had seen in a sort without seeing them; they had heard the daily admonitions of Moses without hearing them, because they were under the weight of a spirit of insensibility; and this judgment which had weighed on them during the forty years of their rejection in the wilderness continued still at the time when Moses spoke to them in the plains of Moab, when they were preparing to enter Canaan: until this day. In quoting this remarkable saying, Paul modifies it slightly; for the first words: “ God hath not given you a heart to perceive,” he substitutes a somewhat different expression, which he borrows from Isaiah 29:10: “The Lord hath poured upon you the spirit of deep sleep.” The negative form of which Moses had made use (“God hath not given you”...) perfectly suited the epoch when this long judgment was about to close: “God hath not yet bestowed on you this gracious gift to this day; but He is about to grant it at length!” While, when the apostle wrote, the affirmative form used by Isaiah to express the same idea was much more appropriate: “God hath poured out on you”...The state of Israel indeed resembled in all respects that of the people when in Isaiah's time they ran blindfold into the punishment of captivity. Hence it is that Paul prefers for those first words the form of Isaiah to that of Moses.

There is something paradoxical in the expression: a spirit of torpor; for usually the spirit rouses and awakens, instead of rendering insensible. But God can also put in operation a paralyzing force. It is so when He wills for a time to give over a man who perseveres in resisting Him to a blindness such that he punishes himself as it were with his own hand; see the example of Pharaoh (Romans 9:17) and that of Saul (1Sa 18:10).

The term κατάνυξις, which is ordinarily translated by stupefaction, and which we prefer to render by the word torpor, may be explained etymologically in two ways: Either it is derived from νύσσω, the act of piercing, rending, striking, whence there would result, when the blow is violent, a state of stupor and momentary insensibility; or it is taken to be from νύω, νύζω, νυστάζω, to bend the head in order to sleep, whence: to fall asleep. It is perhaps in this second sense that the LXX. have taken it, who use it pretty frequently, as in our passage, to translate the Hebrew term mardema, deep sleep. This second derivation is learnedly combated by Fritzsche; but it has again quite recently been defended by Volkmar. If we bring into close connection, as St. Paul does here, the saying of Isaiah with that of Deuteronomy, we must prefer the notion of torpor or stupor to that of sleep; for the subject in question in the context is not a man who is sleeping, but one who, while having his eyes open and seeing, sees not.

The works of God have two aspects, the one external, the material fact; the other internal, the divine thought contained in the fact. And thus it comes about, that when the eye of the soul is paralyzed, one may see those works without seeing them; comp. Isaiah 6:10; Matthew 13:14-15; John 12:40, etc.

The apostle adds in the following verses a second quotation, taken from Psalms 69:22-23.