Romans 5:14

᾿Αλλά : and nevertheless; a strongly emphasized contrast to the idea of non-imputation (Romans 5:13).

The word reign denotes a power firmly established, resting on the immovable foundation of the divine sentence pronounced over the whole race. Death cannot denote more here than the loss of life in the ordinary sense of the word. There is no reference either to spiritual death (sin, Gess), or to the sufferings and infirmities of life (Hodge), but simply to the fact that between Adam and Moses men died though there was no law. This imputation of Adam's sin, as the cause of death to every individual man, would be absolutely incomprehensible and incompatible with the justice of God, if it passed beyond the domain of natural life marked off by the mysterious relation between the individual and the species. The sequel will show that as soon as we rise to the domain of spiritual life, the individual is no longer dependent on this solidarity of the species, but that he holds his eternal destiny in his own hands.

The words: “ also, or (even) over them that had not sinned,” are taken by Meyer as referring to a part only of the men who lived between Adam and Moses, those, namely, who did not enjoy the positive revelations granted during this period, the Noachian commandments, for example, Genesis 9:1-17. Thus understood, Paul reminds us of the fact that the men of that time who were without those precepts were, as well as their contemporaries who enjoyed such light, subjected to death. But the whole passage, on the contrary, implies the absence of all positive law which could have been violated between Adam and Moses; consequently, the phrase: “ even over them who sinned not,” etc., embraces the whole human species from Adam to Moses without distinction; mankind during this interval are contrasted with Adam on the one hand, and with the people of Israel from Moses on the other. All these who were not under conditions of a capitally penal kind (Romans 5:13) died nevertheless.

The words: “ after the resemblance of Adam's transgression,” are certainly not dependent, as the old Greek expositors thought, on the word reigned: “death reigned on the ground of a sin similar to that of Adam.” This sense leaves the words: even over them that sinned not, without any reasonable explanation. We must therefore bring this clause under καὶ ἐπὶ τοὺς μὴ ἁμαρτήσαντας, in this sense: “ even over them that did not sin after the fashion of Adam's sin, ” that is to say, by transgressing as he did, a positive prohibition.

Hofmann insists on the strict meaning of the word which Paul uses, ὁμοίωμα, the object like (differing from ὁμοιότης, the resemblance), and, taking the genitive παραβάσεως as a subjective genitive, he explains: according to the form which was that of...or on the type presented by the transgression of...To render this shade into English, we must translate, not after the resemblance, but after the fashion of Adam's transgression.

From this whole argument it appeared that Adam had been the sole author of the reign of death, and herein precisely was he the counterpart of Him who was to come to be the sole principle of life here below. Thus it is easy to understand why the apostle, after explaining the origin of death, closes with these words, appropriately introducing the statement of the other member of the parallel: who is the type of the Adam that was to come. It is improper, with Bengel, to give to the participle μέλλοντος the neuter sense: of that which was to come (by regarding the masculine ὅς as a case of attraction from τύπος). The word Adam, immediately preceding, more naturally leads us to make μέλλων a masculine. One might more easily, with Hofmann, regard this participle as a masculine substantive: Him who should come, in the sense in which the Messiah is called the ἐρχόμενος, the coming one. The meaning is not essentially different. If the Rabbinical sayings in which the Messiah is designated as the second or the last Adam were older than the seventh century of our era (Targum of the Psalms), or the sixteenth (Nevé schalom), it might be inferred from these passages that the description of the Messiah as the Adam to come was already received in the Jewish schools, and that the phrase of the apostle is a reference to this received notion. But it is quite possible that these sayings themselves were influenced by the texts of the New Testament. So Renan says positively: “In the Talmudic writings Adam ha-rischôn simply denotes the first man, Adam. Paul creates Ha-adam ha-aharôn by antithesis.” We must certainly set aside De Wette's idea, which applies the phrase: the future Adam, to Christ's final advent. The term μέλλων, future, is related to the time of the first Adam, not to the time when the apostle writes.

The word type denotes in Scripture language (1 Corinthians 10:11) an event, or a person realizing a law of the kingdom of God which will be realized afterward in a more complete and striking manner in a corresponding future event or person. Adam is the type of the Messiah, inasmuch as, to quote Ewald, “each of them draws after him all mankind,” so that “from what the one was to humanity we may infer what the other is to it” (Hofmann).

This proposition is a sort of provisional apodosis to the even as of Romans 5:12. It reminds the reader of the comparison which has been begun, and keeps the thought present to his mind till the comparison can be finished and grammatically completed by the true principal clause (Romans 5:18).