Romans 11

CHAPTER XI

The Failure of the Jews Because of Unbelief Leaves a Remnant and Is a Warning for the Gentiles, chapter 11

The Remnant

The righteousness of God, justification by faith alone, explains the tragedy of Israel. Israel as a people answers promise and mercy (chapter 9) and the gospel-word (chapter 10) with unbelief. But a remnant is won to faith.

Romans 11:1

1 I say, then, Did God thrust away from himself his people? Perish the thought! For also I myself am an Israelite, of Abraham’s seed, of Benjamin’s tribe. God did not thrust away from himself his people which he foreknew.

“I say, then,” like “but I say” in 10:18, 19, lends emphasis to the question. In 9:31–33 “Israel” is mentioned as seeking righteousness only by means of the law through works and not by faith. In 10:16 this is qualified: “not all hearkened,” which implies that some did. One might conclude that God was done with his covenant people, ὁλαός is often used in this sense, here αὐτοῦ is even added; that he had by this time “thrust it away from himself” completely, middle voice of ἀπωθέω; that the few who hearkened as is implied in 10:16 did not count as far as God’s original plan regarding his covenant people is concerned. This would be wrong in toto: “Perish the thought!” (see 3:4).

Paul at once mentions himself as proof to the contrary. He is of Abraham’s seed and Benjamin’s tribe (Phil. 3:5), a full-blooded Jew, not only a believer in his own person, but an apostle to the Gentiles in fulfillment of Israel’s covenant mission to the world. Despite all their unbelief God is not done with his people Israel.

Romans 11:2

2 This is formally stated by using the very words and the word order of the question which, with its interrogative particle μή, calls for a negative answer: the verb is placed forward for full emphasis, then “God and his people” are in affectionate juxtaposition. The very designation “his people” bars out the thought that they should be thrust away. Paul is really repeating 1 Sam. 12:22; Ps. 94:14. “His people” has been defined in 9:6, 7: “for not all from Israel, (not all) these are Israel,” i.e., his real people; “nor (is it this way) that they (all those derived from Israel) are Abraham’s seed,” actually God’s people. God was never deceived on that score. “The foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal: The Lord knoweth them that are his,” 2 Tim. 2:19; John 10:14.

The relative clause “which he foreknew” is definitive just as is the pronoun “his.” We may say: “his foreknown people.” From the very start, as far as his physical descendants through Isaac were concerned, Abraham was “father of all those believing” alone (4:11), these and these alone constituted the true Israel, the real seed and children of Abraham. In v. 1 these are called “his people,” namely God’s, and now “his people whom he foreknew.” All his plans centered in them alone, and in 11:6 we saw that his Word regarding them never fell by the way. As far as the rest of the Jews are concerned, 9:22 states how God bore them in longsuffering in the furtherance of his plans which centered in the true Israel.

“Foreknew” has the same sense that it has in 8:29: foreknew cum affectu et effectu. The relative clause is not causal: his people, his “because he foreknew” them. Nor does it put a limitation on “his people” in v. 1; no limitation is needed, for in all Judaism from Abraham onward only believing Israelites were “his people.” “Foreknew” only adds the feature that all of them to the end of time were present before God as they were to Christ, when in John 10:14–16 he spoke of all of them as “my sheep” whom he would unite with his “other sheep which are not of this (Jewish) fold” to form one great fold under one Shepherd. His loving foreknowledge embraced also all those “other sheep” among the Gentiles in all the ages to come. Since they were effectively and affectionately foreknown in an embrace that took in all of them to the end of time, namely “his people” from Judaism, of whom the Benjaminite Paul was one who was to gather in so many others, how could anyone dream that God was done with them, his very own people?

As far as mere number is concerned, the fact that so many men of Jewish blood eliminated themselves from “his foreknown people” must not disturb our thoughts or lead us to wrong conclusions. Or do you not know what the Scripture says in connection with Elijah? how he pleads with God against Israel: Lord, thy prophets they did kill, and thy altars they dig down; and I was left all alone, and they are seeking my life? But what does the divine response say to him? I left back for myself seven thousand men, such as did not bend knee to Baal.

1 Kings 19:10, 14, 18. This piece of history has come to be classic for illustrating the fact that the church still survives during the very worst periods, amid the worst apostasy. Matt. 16:18. The whole organized officialdom may turn apostate, God still has “his people”; the church is permanent.

ἘνἩλίᾳ = “in connection with Elijah.” Some think that the Jews divided the Scriptures into sections to facilitate reference and headed each section with a pertinent title. Ἐπὶτῆςβάτου in Mark 12:26 is thought to be such a caption: “On the Bush”; as is also ἐνταιςἀραῖς in Josephus, “In the Curses.” A few cases are cited from the Talmud, and we are referred to the way in which Homer was divided. So “In Elijah” is thought to refer to the section which had the heading “Elijah.” But the story of Elijah is too long, the evidence for this system of division too weak, “in connection with Elijah” wholly satisfactory as a meaning for ἐν. Ἐντυγχάνει means to happen on someone and thus to converse with him. This may mean to intercede for someone (so the A. V.), but here we have κατά, “against” Israel, thus the expression is almost equal to “to accuse.”

Romans 11:3

3 Paul cites the words which show the condition of the northern kingdom during Elijah’s time under Ahab and Jezebel. He transposes the first two statements by placing prophets first and altars second. Paul wants his readers to understand that the condition was so bad that not only the prophets were killed but the very altars of the Lord were wrecked so as to overthrow even their foundations. The very worship of Jehovah was abolished. The view that Paul reverses the lines so that, when Elijah says that he alone was left, this will not read as though he was the only prophet left but will read that he is the only worshiper left, is not tenable. In 1 Kings 19, Elijah himself intends to say that he is the only worshiper left, for only in this way is the Lord’s answer regarding the 7, 000 being left pertinent.

The fact that as the last worshiper he was also a prophet made Jezebel’s desire to kill him only the keener. Our versions translate, “I am left,” for we should say it thus; the Greek has the aorist, “I was left,” “got to be left,” reaching back to the time when he was first left thus.

Elijah was completely dejected. All his own work and that of the other prophets was apparently utterly in vain. Things were indeed at their lowest ebb, certainly worse than in Paul’s time; for before Paul himself started to persecute the church, conservative estimates place the number of converts in Jerusalem at no less than 25, 000, and at the time of Paul’s writing, his work and that of the other apostles had greatly increased this host. The leaders and the mass were obdurate, but God had in Israel “his people,” who were not to be despised even as to number.

Romans 11:4

4 “But what does the divine response say to him?” intends to lay great stress on God’s answer to Elijah. Χρηματισμός, found only here in the New Testament (the verb appears three times) = the divine response. Paul cites the Hebrew, “I left back for myself,” and not the LXX, “Thou shalt leave back” because it matches “his” (God’s) people” (v. 1, 2). He also has the feminine for “Baal” and not the LXX masculine. Baal is masculine, but the Jews called this abominable idol bosheth, “shame” (a word of feminine gender), and in the Greek αἰσχύνη (again feminine); in 1 Kings 18:25 the LXX translate, “the prophets of the Shame.” L. so translates: die ihr Knie nicht vor dem Scheusal gebeugt haben. Although this word was written “Baal,” it was pronounced “Shame.” Even in the apostate northern kingdom, which was flooded with Baal worship, God had “his people,” 7, 000 men, not counting women and children. This is, of course, a round number, a sacred number at that. The Greek has the aorist, “I left back,” where we should employ, “I have left back.” So many of whom the prophet did not even know had remained true, had not bowed the knee to Baal, and, as the Lord adds, kissed his image in homage.

Romans 11:5

5 It is so now. So then, also in the present period there has come to be a remnant (a leftover) according to an election of grace. But if by grace, no more works, else the grace no more is grace.

Καιρός is not “time” (χρόνος) but a period of time which is in some way marked as such. Here it is the period since Christ came. Again the true Israel, God’s people, has come to consist of only a λεῖμμα (also spelled λίμμα), the word matching κατέλιπον, “a portion left,” but the main bulk gone. Paul calls it “a remnant according to an election of grace,” (in 9:27 τὸὑπόλειμμα, “the leftover”), one that harmonizes with an election or choice made by pure, undeserved grace. The κατά phrase does not modify the verb but describes the remnant. The point is the kind of remnant that was left and not the way in which it came to be a remnant.

Grace (see 3:24) which asks for nothing on the sinner’s part, which gratuitously bestows God’s righteousness through Christ to be accepted by faith (trust) alone, this grace makes an election in accord with its nature by taking for itself all those whom it wins for faith and for the acceptance of this gift of God’s righteousness. This is its ἐκλογή. It operated thus in Paul’s time (as in every other), and we see this “remnant,” Jewish believers all; all the rest of Judaism despised grace and would not let it work faith in them. This remnant was not held with an irresistible grace by the sovereignty of God, a grace that was intended only for them, from which all the rest were barred already in eternity. No such sovereignty and no such grace exist.

Romans 11:6

6 Since the Jews were so certain that they were God’s people because of their works, it is highly pertinent that Paul adds: “But if by means of grace, no more of works.” Here and in the next clause οὐκέτι is logical and not temporal. What Paul states is not an exegetical comment for which he halts in his argument; it is the very point of his argument. The fact that there ever was a people of God was due purely to grace and not to works. The Jewish remnant also shows it, for it was “a remnant according to an election of grace.” As God’s people ever and always are, this remnant, too, was marked by grace, and not by works. Χάριτι is a dative of means while ἐκ denotes source.

This proposition is general, universal. Some commentators complete both the protasis and the apodosis by inserting into each subject, verb, phrase, in fact, the whole of v. 5. That is due to the idea of the grammarians that every statement must have subject and predicate. We have already had instances in Romans in which such insertion alters Paul’s meaning. Here he uses only χάριτι without an article; if anything were to be supplied from v. 5 then, since in v. 5 we have χάριτος, Paul would have written τῇχάριτι in v. 6. His meaning is: Anything that comes “by means of grace” can never at any time or in any way be considered as resulting “from works,” be it the remnant of which he is speaking or anything else.

If God bestows grace, every idea of works on man’s part is automatically barred out. Grace is not one source (as if Paul had written ἐκχάριτος) that bars out the opposite source (ἐξἔργων). Paul says that, if there were anything at all like a human source, God would have used a corresponding means to draw from it; his using pure grace as the only possible means for attaining his end reveals the non-existence of any possible human source, “works” are named only because the unbelieving Jews tried to make them a source.

Now we have the article: “else the grace,” this very grace of which Paul is speaking (v. 5, 6), which God uses as the only possible means, “no more is grace,” γίνεται, “comes to be” and continues to have the quality and the nature of grace. The article is absent in the predicate, which is the usual way of marking the predicate. Here everything centers in the meaning of χάρις: the divine favor and whatever it bestows which is absolutely unmerited by the recipients, they not only merit nothing but merit the opposite of this favor.

Two misconceptions must be guarded against: the idea of an irresistible and thus a limited grace; and the idea of a synergistic grace which expects at least something from man in cooperation, be it ever so slight. Both views seek to explain why grace saves some and not others; both seek their explanation in a misunderstanding of the grace. Grace is universal, equal, sufficient (sufficiens) to save all; and the only question to ask, according to the Scriptures, is why, with this grace available, all are not saved, and the only answer is, “Because, in permanent unbelief so many obdurately refuse this grace (10:21).” The addition of the A. V.: “But if it be of works,” etc., is textually unsound.

Romans 11:7

7 What then? What does all this that has been said thus far amount to? Why to this: What Israel seeks for it did not obtain, but the election did obtain, and the rest were made like stone. Even as it has been written: God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes not to see, and ears not to hear, unto this very day. And David says:

Let their table be a snare and for a hunting net

And for a trap trigger and for a recompense to them:

Let their eyes be made dark not to see,

And their back bow down ever.

What Israel, the nation, is still seeking (present tense), and what it never obtained in the past (aorist), need not again be stated, namely righteousness so as to be God’s people as a nation (v. 1). The accusative τοῦτο seems to be attracted to its antecedent accusative clause from the genitive which is regular after ἐπιτυγχάνω. But the failure of Israel to obtain did not prevent God from having “his people,” for “the election did obtain,” and these continued unbroken the line of “his people” as did the 7, 000 in Elijah’s time in the northern kingdom.

We may translate the aorist passive as a middle, “the rest became like stone,” or as a passive, “were made like stone,” namely by God in judicial, punitive hardening (see 9:18). It is true, the passive leaves the agent unnamed, but in the quotation cited in v. 8 Paul names him. In 9:18 the verb used is σκληρύνω, “to harden” as when a branch is dried out and becomes stiff so as no longer to bend; the verb used here is πωρόω, “to petrify,” to make like Tuffstein, like soft stone. The opposite is living flesh. Petrifaction means loss of all sensation and living reaction; live flesh has such sensation and such reaction. This word is not medical; medics appropriated it as a designation for stone in the bladder, bone callouses, etc.

In its metaphorical meanings it does not imply a hard covering growing over the eyes or over the heart. Only two places have been found in which it refers to eyes, and these are subject to question (Job 17:7 is one, LXX). The idea of the word is that the heart turns into stone, which is something more than growing a callous skin. On the confusion of πωροῦν and πηροῦν see Zahn, Roemer, 618, etc. “Intellectual blindness” and Paul’s pōrōsis are not the same idea.

So the nation as a nation was divided. “The election” is an abstract for the concrete “the elect” and is here used because it supplies a singular that can be placed over against the singular “Israel.” “The election” is the “remnant according to an election of grace” and presupposes this designation used in v. 5 for its understanding. “The election” = “his people” in v. 1, 2. Those who were brought to faith by grace God chose as his own, as “his people” in whom all his plans were to be carried forward. The rest had to be turned over to judgment. On these, however, Paul now elaborates by showing 1) that judgment strikes them; but that 2) even in that judgment God furthers his plans of grace (v. 11, etc.).

Romans 11:8

8 When Paul speaks of this judgment he proceeds exactly as Jesus does in Matt. 13:10–15, and as John does in John 12:37–43; both point to what Isaiah had said 800 years before this time. Paul does not name Isaiah, nor does he intend to quote a specific passage; “as it has been written” is broad and lets the reader recall the passages Paul has in mind. Isa. 29:10 is evidently the one from which “a spirit of stupor” is taken; Deut. 29:4 is another which has the phrase “unto this day,” that is so pertinent in Paul’s time. The eyes and the ears, the not-seeing and the not-hearing recall other passages such as Ezek. 12:2 and Isa. 6:9. To quote thus in a composite statement is to say that the Scriptures speak of the matter in a number of places; their testimony is tersely summarized. Paul is not using the Scriptures as though they were directly foretelling the present obduracy of the Jews; he shows that what Happened long ago is repeating itself.

Jewish obduracy, now come to its final stage, has a long history. That God had not long ago terminated his consideration for the Jews had been due to his great “longsuffering with the vessels of wrath already fitted for destruction” (9:22).

The punitive hardening which follows after self-hardening has fully set in is here described. They that will not shall not! In “a spirit of stupor” the genitive is qualitative: a spirit marked by stupor, hence one that is wholly unresponsive. Κατάνυξις is derived from κατανύσσω, “to strike through” and thus to stun (Acts 2:37); thus the noun has probably come to mean stupor as when one is stunned and rendered unconscious. The genitive infinitives are qualitative like the genitive noun; B.-D. 393, 6 and 400, 2 regards them as expressing result: solche Ohren, dass sie nicht hoeren, etc. Our versions have the infinitive denote purpose: “that they should not see—should not hear.” The German is able to reproduce σήμερον: “bis zu dem heutigen Tag.”

Romans 11:9

9 This general witness is followed by a specific one, two witnesses being necessary according to 2 Cor. 13:1. This is David’s imprecation as found in Ps. 69:27, etc., which was uttered against his Jewish enemies who were Jehovah’s enemies. This is exceedingly strong: 1) David is a type of the Messiah also as to his enemies; 2) his words are not a mere statement of fact as are those in v. 8, they are invective, calling on God to carry out his punitive justice. Paul only bemoans the fate of his obdurate nation (9:1–3), David is more severe, and Paul’s readers must know this. Delitzsch has his doubts as to whether David wrote this psalm and attributes it to Jeremiah although he admits that it typifies Christ. Psalms 69 is quoted in John 2:17; 15:25; Acts 1:20 (“in the Book of Psalms”), and in Rom. 15:3. Only here is David’s name attached to this psalm; but it is unfair to claim that, when Paul writes, “David says,” he was uncritical and just followed the Jewish tradition which placed “A Psalm of David” at the head of this psalm, or that in Paul’s estimation “David” was only a designation for the entire Book of Psalms.

In v. 21 “David says”: “They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink,” which is prophetic of the gall Jesus refused (Matt. 27:34) and of the vinegar he received (John 19:29, 30). Upon this there follows in v. 22: “Let their table become a snare before them; and for their welfare a trap.” This is just retribution. Kittel, one of the latest German commentators, says in his Psalmen that this and other imprecations found in the psalms adopt Babylonian curses, often when they are not fitting. The LXX expands its translation: “a snare and a recompense and a trap trigger.” Paul retains these three terms and adds a fourth but in this order: “snare—hunting net—trap trigger—recompense.” This expansion is interpretative; for the first three terms convey one idea, that of the one Hebrew term “snare,” and the fourth term “recompense” is a literal interpretation of the figure of a “snare.”

Delitzsch relates how a table could become a literal snare: the Bedouin spreads a leather roll on the floor and has his feast set down on that. Others added the details in order to complete the full picture: the roll of leather or a very low table—the men about it crosslegged—sudden alarm—frightened leaping up—legs entangled in the roll or tablecloth like an animal in a net or a trap. This is then advanced so as to take v. 10 into the picture: the excitement blinds so that they do not see, and with quaking legs (Hebrew), with backs bent (LXX, Paul), the frightened guests run like mad. But this is a rather imaginary interpretation.

The table means the rich viands placed upon it. This rich table is figurative for earthly prosperity, and God is to turn this table into a snare, to turn his earthly blessing into a curse for the enemies of David who hate him for God’s sake. Gall and vinegar they gave Christ who quotes v. 4 of this very psalm in his last discourse to the disciples, John 15:25: “They hated me without a cause,” and he did this on the night before gall and vinegar were actually served to him on Golgotha. All the prosperity of the Jews would turn into gall and vinegar, they would no longer be a blessing but a curse.

The figure of the snare is amplified by that of a hunting net (θήρα) and of a trap trigger (σκάνδαλον) in order to bring out fully the idea that “snare” implies the death of the victim. On the third term see 9:33, and M.-M. 576 on the corresponding verb. It is not “stumbling block” (our versions) but “deathtrap,” or still more exactly, the trigger that springs such a trap. The point is important since one does not kill himself by stumbling over a block but is, indeed, killed by this deadly trigger’s springing the trap. All three figurative terms are but one figure; the figures are not mixed by the odd and far weaker one of a stumbling block.

The fourth term, “recompense,” is the literal interpretation which states the point of the figure, namely due retribution. Ἀντί in the verb brings out the just return, and ἀπό the return as being due and obligatory, and -μα is the suffix expressing result (R. 151). What God gives to wicked Israel is for their wickedness, from him as being rightly demanded by their wickedness. The thought of these two quoted lines is very complete. Εἰς merely introduces the predicates (R. 481). We may translate “as a snare,” or imitate the Greek, “for a snare,” or omit it, “a snare” (our versions).

Romans 11:10

10 The third line indicates how the deadly snare, etc., catches and kills: “Let their eyes be darkened not to see,” the genitive infinitive being like those occurring in v. 9. By not seeing what he gets into the victim is killed. Israel thinks its prosperity is God’s blessing; its eyes are blind and do not see that this is delusion, retributive delusion: the thing that looks like a blessing has become a curse. Convinced that God is still blessing them while they have gone into full obduracy, and that God will not forsake them, they are led to go on, obdurate as they are, until the snare suddenly tightens, the net closes, and the trigger springs the deathtrap, the recompense of due justice destroys them.

The fourth line adds the vital thought that the Jews are not simply to be killed and wiped out. One might conclude this from the previous lines, and God’s retribution might, indeed, take that form. It did in the case of the Flood; it did in the case of Sodom and Gomorrah; but it did not in the instance of the destruction of Jerusalem, for 90, 000 Jews were carried away into slavery. The Hebrew has: “Make their loins continually to shake,” which the LXX and Paul render interpretatively: “Their back bow down ever,” for the loins shake when the back is bent down under an excessive load.

The Jews never regained their existence as a nation. For almost 2, 000 years they have been scattered among all other nations but remain distinct, unabsorbed. Endless indignities are heaped upon them. To this day “Jew” is an approbious epithet even in our best countries. Read their long history. The sum of that history is not the fact that the Jews innocently suffered these centuries of woe; it is that they have ever brought these woes upon themselves anew.

Ever they keep acting as an irritant among the nations. Their back is bowed under their own curse (Matt. 27:25). They crucified their own Christ; to this day their hatred of the Crucified stamps them more than anything else as “Jews”; their segregation is of their own choosing. The more they retain the character of “Jews,” the more does this appear; and during the long centuries this their character made them the irritant they have been with the result being as their own David here pictures it and as he called on God to produce it. Διαπαντός does not sound like a future conversion of the Jews which will end their Judaism and its long-standing results.

Romans 11:11

11 We now see for what the last line quoted from David’s psalm prepares. This preparation goes back much farther: to Pharaoh (9:17), whose judgment concerned not merely himself but the world, and to the vessels of wrath (9:22, 23) that were borne by God in longsuffering, not for their own sake, but for God’s far-reaching plans of mercy. So the judgment on the Jews in their hardening in Paul’s time (v. 7) was by no means the end of the matter even for the Jews themselves. God 1) used it to produce a blessed effect on the Gentiles and 2) would use this effect to produce another even on the Jews. Here we have the full elaboration of what is summarized in 9:22, 23. Begin a new paragraph here and not with v. 13 (R. V.).

I say then, Did they strike against (only with the result) that they fell? Is that the whole story? Perish the thought! We have the same formulation as in v. 1: “I say then.” This is used in order to lend emphasis; μή expects a negative answer, and Paul also emphatically states it. But πταίω is rather weakly rendered by “stumble”; it means anprallen (B.-P. 1166), “to crash against something.” The fact that ἵνα cannot here denote purpose but must denote result the English commentators see but the Germans do not. If purpose were intended, it certainly was not God’s.

But result—yes! and the result was a fact, the utter fall (aorist) had already occurred. On ἵνα as expressing result see R. 998; other examples are found in 3:19; 5:20, 21. The sense is: “You do not for one moment suppose (μή) that the only result of the Jews’ running foul of Christ is that they fell and nothing more?” Ἔπταισαν is mistakenly called mild (letting it mean only “to stumble”); together with πέσωσι (both aorists) it = “they were hardened,” cf. v. 7. For this reason Paul emphasizes by writing, “I say.” Although it may seem so, this deadly fall cannot be the end of the story, the end of 9:4, 5, of all that God did for the Israelites, 9:6 after all not being true. Those who think that ἔπταισαν is suggested by σκάνδαλον in v. 9 are mistaken about the force of the latter; “they crashed” means against the stone set in Zion by God (9:33).

On the contrary (ἀλλά), by this their fall—the salvation for the Gentiles so as to make them (the Jews themselves) jealous! This is the real story of the Jews who were hardened in Paul’s time. It has a double sequel which is here stated in a nutshell; one result was the salvation which the Jews scorned and which for this very reason was at once broadcast to the Gentiles; and the second result which at once grew out of the first was that the Jews themselves were made jealous. Those who teach a conversion of the Jews as a nation in the millennium they also teach, or who teach such a conversion near the end of a world, claim that Paul thought of an interval between these two results that now approaches 2, 000 years. The one result tends at once and tends ever to produce the other. Εἰςτό with the infinitive expresses result (see 3:26; 4:11, twice; 4:18); it is often so used, here the more certainly since it follows a result and reports the effect of this first result. Such is the astounding mercy of God that he makes even the hardening and the fatal fall of the Jews serve his saving purpose.

It is incredible until we are properly told so. The τῷαὐτῶνπαραπτώματι refers to the same fatal fall in hardening (v. 7) that was stated in the cognate verb πέσωσι‚ πάρα in the noun adds only the idea of having fallen “by the way.” Αὐτούς are the same as αὐτῶν, the Jews.

The jealousy thus created by the spread of salvation among the Gentiles was predicted already by Moses whom Paul quotes in 10:19. Provoking people to jealousy acts in two ways: it may result in intenser hatred of those of whom one is jealous and in obdurate refusal to join them in the blessing; or it may result in the opposite, in a strong desire also to get the blessing which one sees that others have obtained ahead of him. The jealousy created among the Jews is active in both directions: increased ugly hardening and refusal in the majority of the Jews; yet constantly also the desire to get its share of what the Gentile believers in Christ enjoy in a remnant. By adding, “I (God) will anger you,” Moses restricts the thought to the former, the hateful jealousy; while he has both in mind (v. 25, etc.), Paul dwells especially on the latter (v. 14, etc.).

Romans 11:12

12 We see this when he advances the thought of v. 11 from what the fall of the Jews does to what Jewish conversions do. The statement: “By their fall—the salvation to the Gentiles,” is repeated in the condition of reality: Now if their fall—world riches and their loss—Gentile riches; then the advance beyond v. 11: with the Jews provoked in jealousy also to get their share, by how much more their fulness—world riches, Gentile riches? One man’s loss is another man’s gain; but here this is overtopped: the first man’s loss, turned into fulness, makes the second man’s gain stand out the more. What the Jews lost makes the Gentile world rich; how much more is it world and Gentile riches when believing Jews turn their loss into the fulness of gain? The thought is not that, if the Jewish loss made the world rich, then the Jewish gain will make it even richer. It is this: if the Jewish loss makes the world rich (which it surely does), this fact stands out as such still more when many of these very Jews themselves now embrace this fulness, these riches. First, contrast makes the riches stand out; compared with those who throw away wealth and beggar themselves those who gather it in appear rich indeed; secondly, likeness does the same, the more so when it follows the contrast: those foolish beggars, repenting of their folly and again getting the fulness of that wealth, by this more than ever show that this is wealth indeed.

The condition is one of reality. Only in such conditions can the verbs be left out, especially the verb of the apodosis. In v. 11b and 12 Paul omits all verbs, and it is not necessary to supply them.

A serious debate is occasioned by this verse when number is introduced into τὸἥττημα and τὸπλήρωμα. Sanday and Headlam state: “The exact meaning of πλήρωμα has still to be ascertained.” Some think that this word means, “the full number of them” (Jews) and argue back from this that ἥττημα must, therefore, also signify number, i.e., “loss of numbers” (of Jews). Some retain “the fulness of them” as referring to number or at least as involving this by saying that “the loss” and “the fulness” do not need to correspond exactly. These differences in interpretation are usually due to millennialism and the idea of a general conversion of the Jews as a nation when the millennium starts, or at least the idea of this conversion before the end of the world.

Now, τὸπλήρωμα does at times refer to number as in v. 25. But τὸἥττημα, like its verb, never does: Minderung der Zahl bedeutet weder das Verb, noch die Substantiva, Zahn. Since number is excluded from the force of this word, this cannot be introduced in the closely correlate and opposite term that follows, “the fulness of them.” One cannot argue that, because the last term may refer to number, the correlate first term must do so although elsewhere it never does. The correct canon is the reverse.

Paul makes τὸἥττημα a synonym of τὸπαράπτωμα and attaches αὐτῶν to all three terms and, to cap all, makes the predicate for all three πλοῦτος, the identical “riches.” “Their fall” = they fell (πέσωσι, v. 11), the genitive is subjective; “their loss” = they lost, again it is subjective; “their fulness” = they have fulness, once more the genitive is subjective. The meaning is: they fell from the salvation (ἀπό), from the σωτηρία just mentioned; they lost this salvation; they again have the fulness of this salvation. Paul does not need to say that the latter applies only to a remnant of the Jews, for he has just said that in v. 5 and 7.

Paul does not say: “If their fall was or is world riches, and their loss was or is Gentile riches, much more will be or shall be their fulness in the future, at the millennium, or before the world ends.” This is obviously untenable. What he writes is that already then and, of course, ever after also the Jewish fall and loss must be considered the world’s, the Gentiles’ riches, then and there and ever after salvation is being broadcast to the whole world, to all Gentiles; and he asks, if this is true, “by how much more” must not the fulness of salvation attained by the Jewish remnant already then and to be attained after likewise be considered the world’s, the Gentiles’ riches, this fulness now being devoid of the least trace of Jewish exclusiveness, this fulness sharing the salvation of the Gentiles? “By how much more” is logical just as it is in v. 24. There is no call to limit this statement to only the alternatives: quantity (numbers) or quality (the loss and the recovery of the Jewish position).

This is one of Paul’s masterly sentences; it is clear as crystal in its terse compactness of phrasing and thought.

13, 14) If v. 11, 12 are understood, one will not begin a paragraph with v. 13. The connection is too close to permit this. What Paul says in v. 11, 12 has the strongest bearing upon him in his own great office and has this in a way that goes beyond the Gentiles for whom Paul was an apostle in a special sense, in a way that extends back to the Jews, Paul’s own flesh and blood, just as he has already at the close of v. 11 (10:19a) and also at the close of v. 12 indicated this retroactive effect upon the Jews because of the extensive Gentile conversions.

And to you, the Gentiles, I say: Inasmuch, indeed, as I on my part (emphatic ἐγώ) am, a Gentiles’ apostle, I am glorifying my ministry if in any way I may provoke to jealousy my flesh and may save some of them.

This is the first time that Paul addresses the Roman Gentile Christians as such, and he addresses them in the capacity of the Gentiles’ apostle. “To you, the Gentiles,” corresponds to “I on my part, a Gentiles’ apostle,” ὑμῖν and ἐγώ being equally emphatic. It is not necessary to place a period after ἔθνεσιν, for what Paul has to say to these Gentile Christians follows at once, indeed follows at length. If Paul intended to say that he is now “speaking” to the Gentile Christians he would use λαλῶ and not λέγω. How the fact that Paul here addresses the Gentile Christians at Rome can indicate that they were in the minority and that the Jewish Christians constituted the majority, is unclear although it is asserted that we have such evidence here.

We have μέν solitarium, which is strengthened by οὖν (R. 1151); here, however, it is neither concessive nor restrictive but confirmatory and = “indeed,” and there is no balancing δέ, and it is not necessary to seek reasons for its absence. Paul says something rather unexpected about his glorifying his office. As all his readers know, he is “a Gentiles’ apostle” (Acts 9:15), and one would expect his glorification of his ministry to lie in what by God’s grace he had accomplished among Gentiles; but no, all his accomplishment among Gentiles looks beyond them, looks to the Jews, “if in some (any) way I may provoke to jealousy my flesh (the Jews)” in the good sense elucidated in v. 11, which is here brought out by adding “and may save some.” The full glory of Paul’s apostolic ministry among Gentiles lies in its repercussion upon Jews. The idea is not that Paul indulges in false hopes that the Jews as a nation can or will be saved. He knows that this hope has vanished; and this is not a conclusion of his own, divine prophecy has long ago revealed that sad fact (9:25–33; 10:16–21) and even the reason for it, which Paul has also set forth at length in chapters 9 and 10. But prophecy has also pointed to the remnant (v. 5 and 8), the Jewish contingent that will, indeed, be saved.

For the third time (10:19; 11:11) Paul uses the significant term “provoke to jealousy.” Since Jewish obduracy caused salvation to be broadcast into the whole world of Gentilism as riches for all the Gentiles (v. 11, 12), Jewish jealousy has become the motive for the recovery of the remnant (as shown in v. 11). The more Gentiles Paul converts, the more of this jealousy he creates, much of it of a favorable nature, which results in conversions of the Jews. And these conversions constitute the real crown of Paul’s ministry among the Gentiles.

A remarkable view, and yet how true it is when it is stated! Yet it is marred by the supposition that Paul is speaking only of conversions of Jews after he has worked in a city long enough to split the synagogue and to take out the believing Jews and to form the nucleus of a Christian congregation with them. The jealousy of which he speaks is not restricted to the later conversions of Jews in a city, it includes all the conversions of Jews in every city. All the Jews in every city to which Paul came knew from the start that the gospel he brought was universal and not for Jews alone. “If I may save some” includes all Jews saved in any field of the apostle’s labor. Remember this “some,” i.e., “a remnant according to an election of grace” (v. 5), “the election” (v. 7), when considering what follows in v. 25, 26.

The forms παραζηλώσω and σώσω may be either future indicative, “if I shall provoke, shall save”; or aorist subjunctive, “if I may provoke, may save.” R. 1017, 1024 are uncertain, and W. P. especially regarding the second verb. In 1017 Robertson cites examples of εἰ with the subjunctive which are equal to ἐάν and denote expectancy. We see no reason for hesitancy in regard to the use of the subjunctive here, the less since εἰ is here scarcely to be distinguished from an indirect question, and since subjunctives lend a deliberative tone, nor does grammar bar the use of subjunctives.

Romans 11:15

15 We at once sense why Paul addresses the Gentile Christians and not simply, as in the previous chapters, the Roman congregation as a whole. The Gentile Christians are not to think that, because Paul is an apostle to Gentiles, the Jews no longer mean anything to him or to them. Paul is warning them lest they exalt themselves to their own injury. He has already written 9:6; the two chapters preceding hinge on what is there said, and in 11:12 we see the conversions of Jews and their constant continuance. Compare the writer on Acts 28:24 and Paul’s success among the Jews of the seven synagogues in Rome a few years after Romans had been written.

We may begin a paragraph at this point. For if the casting away of them—reconciliation of the world, what the receiving but life from the dead?

“For” explains why Paul views the glory of his success among Gentiles from the standpoint of the effect which it has on Jews, for it saves some of them. The condition is one of reality; Paul is speaking of God’s casting away the Jews as a fact. The apodosis is in the form of a question. The verbs are again omitted (see v. 12). It is astounding—God’s casting away the hardened Jewish nation becomes a blessing to the world! It is not as when a tyrant nation is crushed, and the world breathes a sigh of relief. This is the most spiritually favored nation on earth (9:4, 5), and its casting away scatters all its blessings over all the world.

After all that Paul has already said on this subject we scarcely need to say more; in fact, he is here only summarizing for the purpose of his warning to the Gentile Christians. In v. 11 he called the blessing “the salvation for the Gentiles,” in v. 12 he added, “riches of the world—riches of Gentiles.” Here he uses another term: καταλλαγὴκόσμου, “reconciliation of the world.” The word means “making completely other” and is used both objectively (as in 5:10, the verb) and subjectively (as in 5:11, the noun). Here the latter is referred to, God’s placing a man into an entirely different and a most blessed relation to himself by means of faith in Christ. Κόσμου recalls this word which was twice used in v. 12. All three have the same force. The idea is not that every Gentile in the world is personally reconciled to God (just as in v. 11 not every Gentile personally has “the salvation” or in v. 12 has the “riches”), but that the world was opened to a large number of Gentiles without restriction of any kind to be personally reconciled to God by faith in Christ.

Such is the divine rejection of the Jews, such is this nation that even its rejection has, in the mercy and the providence of God, an effect on the world that is so blessed. Was or is there another nation, the rejection of which might have a comparable effect on the world?

“What (then) the receiving?” Αὐτῶν is not repeated, being unnecessary in the Greek, for it would be automatically supplied by the reader. Paul has no fear of mechanical and pedantic misunderstanding so that someone might think that all those who have been cast away are again received. “The reception” pertains to the remnant, to the election (v. 5, 7). It is not necessary to insert “is” in the protasis and “shall be” in the apodosis (our versions, for instance). This opens the door to the opinion that the reception will include the Jewish nation at some future time, in the expected millennium or toward the end of the world. Paul speaks of “the reception” that is occurring when he himself is making Jews jealous and is himself saving some, of “the reception” that continues in the same way after his own labors cease and others spread “salvation” in the world.

This insertion of a future tense also leads to misapplications of Paul’s predicate: “what the receiving (of them) but life from the dead?” When this receiving is transferred from Paul’s own ministry and that of his successors in the churches into the far future, we get such ideas as that “life from the dead” is “a new spiritual life in the church” in the distant age when millions of Jews finally stream into it. Fancy sees a golden era approaching (despite Matt. 26:4–14 and other prophecies); when all those Jews enter it, the church will be spiritually more powerful than ever (Matt. 24:12) and will advance from one missionary triumph to another. There will be “a glorious bloomera of the Church of Jesus Christ.”

In order to avoid this millennialistic fancy others regard the distant reception of the Jewish masses which usher in “life from the dead” as das Leben der Verklaerung, the final resurrection of the dead at the end of the world. After this Jewish influx the work of the church will be completed on earth, the end will come, the final resurrection of the blessed. To say no more, if Paul has this in mind, why does he not say so? The final resurrection is everywhere called ἀνάστασιςἐκνεκρῶν and never ζωὴἐκνεκρῶν. Besides, the Analogy of Scripture (and this includes the Analogy of Faith) knows nothing about the end of the world and the final resurrection being immediately consequent upon Jewish conversions, be they in vast or in lesser numbers.

Logic also plays its part, namely that, if the fall of the Jews means so much, then the reception of the Jews ought to mean more. Now “the world’s reconciliation” is already a maximum, hence these efforts to get something to exceed even this maximum. This logic is faulty, for τίς is not πόσῳμᾶλλον or a logical equivalent of this dative. What Paul asks is: “If the casting away of them (objective genitive) is so much for the world, what (attracted feminine) is the reception of them for themselves?” And he answers: “What but life from the dead?” Every Jew whom Paul converts he regards as “life from the dead” (see 6:13 on this phrase). To be rescued from a nation that is so obdurate, so hardened (v. 7), again to be received by God through the gospel is like “life from the dead” (Ezek. 37:1–10). Nothing ever happened to the Gentiles that was similar to God’s casting them away as being hardened; but this happened to the Jews.

It is in contrast to this that the conversions of Jews in Paul’s day were and in our day still are in the fullest sense of the word “life from the dead.” In a way this is true also of conversions of Gentiles, but eminently more so of those of the Jews. In Eph. 2:5, 6 both are considered together, Jew and Gentile; here only the Jew is considered, and his conversion is set over against the rejection of his nation. To think that from such deadness “life” could still be received ! Great is the marvel that the casting away is reconciliation of the world (i.e., of others); certainly equally great and like life from the dead is the fact that any are still received!

Romans 11:16

16 With this statement which shows how the Gentile Christians should think of Paul’s work among Gentiles in its relation to the Jews he prepares more immediately for his warning. He begins with two axiomatic statements: Now, if the first cake of dough (is) holy, also the lump of dough; and if the root (is) holy, also the branches.

Ἡἀπαρχή might refer to different “first fruits” (the first-born, the first sheaf of grain harvested, the first portion of dough removed from the whole kneaded lump of dough). Here the latter is meant even as only in Num. 15:18–21 ἀπαρχή and φύραμα are found together. From the first dough made of the new grain a portion was separated and baked for the Lord as a heave offering which sanctified the whole lump of dough. The portion separated was not in itself holy, nor could it make the mass of dough holy; the holiness lay in its being set apart for the Lord and in his accepting it; and, being part of the mass of dough and of all dough made from the harvested grain, the whole thus became sanctified and blessed.

What the first figure illustrates by a reference to a feature of the Mosaic ritual, the second emphasizes by an illustration taken from nature; “if the root (is) holy, also (are) the branches” borne by that root. There is no need to make ἁγία mean “clean” because no root is “holy.” “Holy” is added because of the application of these illustrations Paul intends to make.

The application is easy: the first cake of dough and the root denote either Abraham, with whom the covenant was made (chapter 4), or Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob taken together. The lump of dough and the branches denote all the spiritual descendants. After 9:7 and much else that Paul has said this lump and the branches are not the whole Jewish nation; nor is this the case when the following is interpreted. A reference to “theocratic” holiness introduces an idea that is extraneous to the discussion. It is to be noted, too, that Paul does not write “the whole lump,” “all the branches,” which he might have done but avoided doing so as not to shift the emphasis and thus afford an occasion for misunderstanding.

Romans 11:17

17 But if some of the branches were broken off, yet thou, though being of wild olive, wast grafted in among them and didst become joint partaker of the root and of the fatness of the olive tree: glory not over the branches! But if thou gloriest—not thou dost bear the root, but the root thee.

L. is mistaken when he regards Paul as a “city-child” who speaks of a grafting that is unnatural while Jesus is “from the country,” vom Lande, so that his illustrations are true to nature. Jesus was from Nazareth and not “from the country,” a carpenter and not a farmer. Jesus used unthinkable occurrences as illustrations; Matt. 21:33–44 is one—no father ever treated his son in such a manner; Matt. 20:10 is another—no man pays the same amount for a full day’s work and for a few hours’ work. Deissmann, Light, etc., 272, etc., notes that Paul himself calls what he describes “contrary to nature.”

But why not seek the reason for using these illustrations that contravene nature? This reason is the fact that in the whole world of nature and of men nothing exists that is comparable to what God’s love and grace have done and still do. It is for this reason that illustrations have to be invented of acts that never happen among men but, nevertheless, picture the astounding acts of God. These illustrations that contravene nature never deceive, they are never offered as though they were intended to agree with nature; they are always honest, natural impossibilities and unrealities and are presented as such. There is no call, then, to treat them as though they occurred in nature, although exceptionally, as when Ramsay tells of ancients who grafted wild olive grafts onto old good olive trees in order to invigorate the old tree (see R., W. P.).

But Ramsay disregards Paul’s tertium comparationis, for he overlooks the broken off branches which Paul has grafted back into the old tree. And besides, who ever grafted a branch into a tree? Only a tiny tip that has a few leaf buds is capable of being grafted.

The illustration is marred by regarding the tertium as fruit. Paul does not use this word. The tertium is “the fatness” or sap of the good olive tree, of which all its own branches and all its grafts partake. To stress the imagery beyond this confuses the figure. The marvel of divine grace, which the Gentile Christians are to note well, is that they together with the believing Jews are made blessed partakers of all that God originally gave to Abraham and to the great patriarchs of the covenant. The condition is one of reality, εἰ with the indicative (here aorists, historical).

In 3:3, “some,” and again in v. 25, “in part,” is meiosis (lessening), understatement (R. 1205), and it is always intentional; here, however, it is not due to Paul’s “warmhearted patriotism” (L.) which dislikes to admit how many branches were broken out of the olive tree, but is due to Paul’s Gentile Christian readers who occupied only a place beside the Jewish Christians. How many were broken off v. 5 and 7 show. Who broke them off and removed them from the tree is left unsaid by the passive verb and need not be said, for this would only complicate the illustration. It is understood that these were dead branches.

Σύ is very emphatic because of its position; it is the representative singular (R. 678): by addressing one Gentile Christian Paul addresses all. This singular is to be construed with “some” as indicating that Paul does not have comparison of numbers in mind; whether few or many Jews were removed, few or many Gentiles substituted, makes no difference as far as what the Gentile Christians are to note regarding themselves is concerned. Ὤν is concessive, and ἀγριέλαιος is an adjective, “of a wild olive tree”: “thou, though being of a wild olive,” worthless in the first place. The wild olive is not the oleaster (Elægnus hortensis, simply called wild olive) but the true wild olive, Olea Oleaster (Standard Dictionary). It is overstressing grammatical nicety to speak of an irregularity in the phrase ἐναὐτοῖς because, strictly speaking, it refers to the broken off branches; we still construe ad sensum, and people still understand us when we do so.

The astounding miracle of grace is here pictured by an equally astounding figure: such a wild olive branch grafted in among the good living olive branches and thereby made a joint partaker of the root of the good olive tree, of its fatness, its rich sap. Note well this main point of the illustration. It is not something that this wild olive branch furnishes or is to furnish but the fatness which the good root of the good olive furnishes this engrafted wild olive branch.

There is little reason for omitting καί, “of the root and of the fatness” (A. V.), so that we have “of the root of the fatness” (R. V.). Because “and” removes all difficulty is not a reason for questioning its textual authenticity; the more difficult are not always the correct readings. If “and” is to be omitted, it is best to regard the rest as an apposition: “a partaker of the root, (namely) of the fatness of the olive tree”; and not as a qualitative genitive equal to “of the fat root of the olive tree.” The root is the same as that mentioned in v. 16 where also all its living branches are called holy. This includes the branches that are grafted in, but only as a result of being thus grafted in; it excludes the branches that have been removed.

Romans 11:18

18 When the Gentile Christian considers who he originally was and how he came to be found among the believing Jews he should see that he ought not to glory over them as though his being placed among them makes him superior. “But if thou gloriest over (them),” condition of reality, assumed as such—“not thou bearest the root, but the root thee,” just as it bears its native branches. Look at the root, Paul says, not merely at the other branches. See that thou art utterly dependent on the root, and not the root in any way upon thee. Thou art no less dependent on the root than they; they no more than thou. We do not see that Paul refers to glorying over all the Jews, unbelieving as well as believing; for how can his reminder about what the root carries apply to the latter which it no longer carries? Κατακαυχῶ is the present middle imperative, and κατακαυχᾶσαι the present middle indicative with the personal suffix -σαι, “thou,” left uncontracted. It is unnecessary to supply “remember” or “consider” that not thou bearest the root, etc.

Romans 11:19

19 Thou wilt say then, Branches (no article, in the sense of “some of the branches,” v. 17) were broken off in order that I on my part (emphatic ἐγώ) might be grafted in! and certainly thus I have a right to consider myself superior.

Romans 11:20

20 With a touch of irony (R. 1199) Paul admits the allegation: Quite so! καλῶς, but at once denies the implication of superiority. Only after a fashion is the allegation true, only as indicated in v. 11, 12. Those branches were not broken off just to make room for the wild graft; they made room for it, that is all. As to any superiority, the very word “of a wild olive” bars that out as do the designations of the Gentiles in 10:19, 20. As to the actual reason for the removal of those branches: (only) by their unbelief were they broken off and not just in order to make room for someone else (such as 10:19, 20 mentions); and thou, (only) by thy faith dost thou stand among the branches that were not broken off. The two articles are equal to possessive pronouns.

The datives state a cause (R. 532). The original cause (the first dative) should not be confused with the resultant purpose (ἵνα v. 19); they are not identical. Because the Jews compelled God to break them off as branches, he let his purpose follow: at once to graft Gentiles in the place of the Jews; if all of these Jews had believed, he would have made them the means for bringing in Gentiles. The perfect ἕστηκας is always used with the force of a present tense. “Thou dost stand” rather drops the figure and turns to the reality, for “to stand” is the opposite of “to fall” and “the fall,” the noun being used in v. 11, 12. These insertions of terms that bring to mind the reality interpret the figurative language.

When Paul tells this Gentile that he stands only by his faith, he intends to say that he does so by no merit or superiority of his; for faith is only the Nehmehand, and as trust and confidence faith is itself awakened and kindled only by the grace and the gift of God. The mention of unbelief and of faith includes all that Paul has said regarding justification by faith alone. We see that this is the key he uses for opening up the true inwardness of what was in his time transpiring with regard to Jews and what would continue to the end.

Romans 11:21

21 Since everything is focused on faith, the admonition is to the point: Be not high-minded, but fear! For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare thee.

The imperatives are present tenses, durative, and are milder than aorists. Instead of letting thoughts of superiority and pride fill the mind when he looks at the Jews that were cast out (v. 15), this Gentile Christian has every reason to have thoughts of the opposite kind. Those unbelieving Jews were and are still high-minded in pride; it is one of the marks of unbelief, especially also of Jewish unbelief. To find such pride in oneself is itself a cause to be afraid lest it do for one what it helped to do for the Jews. The fear Paul has in mind is wholesome, for it is based on what is certainly beyond question: “If God spared not the natural branches, neither will he spare thee”; if he did not spare the physical descendants of Abraham when they fell into unbelief, he will certainly not spare thee, a Gentile Christian, if thou, too, shouldst fall into unbelief. And if born Jews became unbelievers and were cast out, it is by no means impossible for Christians of Gentile origin to fall in the same way.

Paul is here warning against false security (2 Pet. 1:10). But this does not result in insecurity. The opposite of false security is not insecurity but true security. Paul warns the Gentile Christian not to repeat the Jewish fault. The Jews looked down on all Gentiles and wrongly deemed themselves secure just because they were Jews; so Gentile Christians might look down on at least the unbelieving Jews—Paul is now speaking of these as in v. 18 he spoke of the believing Jews—and wrongly deem themselves secure because they are members of the Christian Church. True subjective security is promoted by seeing where the danger lies: as those Jews did not fall by being members of Judaism so Gentiles do not stand by merely being members of Christianity.

Only unbelief destroyed these, only faith makes those stand. When we see the unbelief of others, let it warn us the more to look well to our own faith. The degree of our personal security is the degree of our personal faith. In conditions of reality the protasis regularly has οὐ as the negation (R. 1011, etc.).

Romans 11:22

22 Paul states how the Gentile Christian ought to view this matter: See, then, God’s beneficence and severity, as they here appear side by side: on those that fell severity but on thee God’s beneficence, if thou definitely remainest in the beneficence; otherwise thou, too, shalt be cut off.

Χρηστότης, “benignity” (2:4) designates the fountain of all the spiritual blessings and gifts that enrich the Gentile believers and thus recalls “riches” used in v. 12. Paul intends to say: “Just look at all this spiritual wealth which God has showered upon thee who wast at one time nothing but a pagan!” The implication is that this beneficence on the part of God should fill the Gentile beneficiary with profoundest gratitude toward God. Such gratitude keeps out. all false pride and glorying, all presumption and false feeling of security. It ever sees in what it has nothing but pure, unmerited divine benefaction. It is obvious that this applies to us to this very day.

Derived from ἀποτέμνω, “to cut off,” ἀποτομία, “the cutting off,” arrives metaphorically at the meaning “sharpness” or “severity” which cuts off. We see how well that meaning fits here: “on those that fell (aorist, fell with finality), severity,” cutting them off as dead branches are cut off without compunction. The fact that these Jews fell, that any persons fall, is due to their own wicked will. Then the voluntas consequens sets in, is compelled to do so, and its severity cuts them off. To place this severity in the voluntas antecedens is Calvinism.

But Paul must add to the clause in regard to the beneficence the statement: “If thou definitely remainest in the beneficence.” This is a condition of expectancy, Paul is vividly conceiving this blessed eventuality and uses an aorist subjunctive, a fixed remaining, and not the durative present, continuance which might eventually cease. We remain in God’s beneficence by faith alone. It is well to note that, when faith is once wrought in us by grace and by the Word, a synergism results: this faith holds fast to God’s grace with all its power and thus also does not let us fall. The condition of expectancy does not exclude the possibility that it may not be fulfilled; it, however, only hints at this possibility. It is thus that the note of warning continues (1 Cor. 10:12).

The absence of the article with “beneficence” and “severity” does not imply that we are to think of the manifestation of these divine attributes rather than of these attributes themselves. Abstract nouns may or may not have the article; in the “if” clause the article is that of previous reference. Still more: in the Scriptures beneficence and severity are never quiescent but always energetic or operative, never without their manifestations or effects. Ἴδε is the verb because of its object accusatives; when ἴδε or ἰδέ serve as an interjection, they are followed by nominatives.

Ἐπεί is the protasis: “since otherwise.” Any Gentile Christian who does not remain in God’s beneficence but falls from that beneficence will also certainly be cut off as a dead branch out of the good olive tree into which he was grafted. The verb is the second future passive and returns to the figure.

Romans 11:23

23 Moreover (δέ), also (καί) those, if they remain not in their unbelief, shall be grafted in; able is God to graft them back in. For if thou out of a natural wild olive tree wast cut out (of that olive tree) and unnaturally wast grafted into the good olive tree, how much more will these natural (branches) be grafted into their own olive tree?

The Gentile Christian is to remember what Paul has already said repeatedly (in v. 1–11), that Israel is not cut off in toto. The same grace which the Gentile believer has is open to the Jews under the same condition of faith. The clause introduced by ἐάν: “if they remain not (aorist: permanently) in their unbelief,” denotes expectancy: some will not remain thus. Although they belong to the Jewish mass that has fallen away in unbelief, some will be won from this unbelief by grace. Humanly speaking and looking only at these Jews themselves, we might shake our heads and dismiss such an expectation and regard all Jews as being alike hardened; hence Paul says, “able is God to graft them back in.”

Δυνατός has been taken as a reference to God’s omnipotence; Eph. 1:19 has been quoted in support of this view. But faith is never wrought or maintained by God’s omnipotence. The idea of a double omnipotence, one that is absolute, the other that is not absolute and hence still resistible, is a theological theory. The δύναμιςΘεοῦ involved in δυνατός is the gospel (1:16) which is full of the power and the efficacy of grace. The fact that grace and the gospel are “power” and also omnipotence is “power” is not a reason for confusing the two. Because of the wonderful things it does love has been well called the greatest power in the world.

Is it, therefore, omnipotence? Should we confuse the First and the Third Article of the Creed? Such a confusion would be deplorable. Love’s power operates in a field in which omnipotence never operates. To say that love, grace, the gospel can do more than omnipotence is not well-considered language.

Romans 11:24

24 So great is God’s grace that, even after unbelief has set in, grace is still able in many cases at last to overcome such unbelief. This was true regarding the Jews. In fact, their case is not a mere parallel to that of the Gentile. This is the final point drawn from the figure of the olive tree. Now Paul adds the figure of the wild olive tree with a new tertium, the relation of the branches to these trees. Thus, whereas we formerly had only an ἀγριέλαιος (adjective: something belonging to a wild olive tree, one of its shoots) we now have ἡἀγριέλαιος (noun), the good olive tree. And everything now pivots on the phrases κατὰφύσιν (see v. 21), παρὰφύσιν, and again κατὰφύσιν: “according to, contrary to, according to nature,” which are most easily rendered into English by adjectives and an adverb: “natural,” “unnaturally,” and again “natural.”

God’s grace must first cut the Gentile out of his natural wild olive tree and unnaturally graft him into the good olive tree. The Jews, however, never grew as branches of the wild tree; they were only broken out of the good tree, and the natural procedure would be to put them back into their own native tree. This the Gentile Christian ought to remember about himself, about any other Gentile who is converted, and about any Jews who may become converts.

The argument is this: if God is able to perform two acts in saving the Gentile, how much more will he be able to perform the one act which is alone required to save a Jew? Looked at from this angle, we must, indeed, say that it is a tremendous deed to pry a pagan loose from his paganism, to which is then added the task of uniting him with the very covenant (Abraham) from which the Jews fell away. Now a Jew does not need the former operation, for he is already free from paganism; he needs only to be restored to “his own olive tree.” The point, however, is not that it is much easier to save a Jew than a pagan. The same great power of grace is required to save either. The point is that, if God has done a thing that one must consider “contrary to nature,” he certainly demonstrates that he is able also to do a thing which we must consider as “in accord with nature.” As in v. 12, πόσῳμᾶλλον is logical.

The idea that by using the expression “contrary to nature” Paul intends to say that his figure is one which involves an action that never occurs in nature is unwarranted. It is rather late to convey such information to his readers and to do it with such a strange statement that grafting back broken branches into their own tree is “according to nature.” The stressing of the plurals used in these two verses: ἐκεῖνοι and οὗτοι, so as to include the whole unbelieving Jewish nation and its conversion in mass, whether in the millennium or before the world ends, overlooks v. 5, “a remnant,” and v. 7, “the election.” Plurals are regularly used when one speaks of a matter in general even when one has not already specified that the whole mass is not referred to. see v. 26.

Romans 11:25

25 With another γάρ Paul offers the final section of his explanation in regard to the “remnant according to an election of grace” (v. 5) which is also called “the election” (v. 7), of whose being grafted into their own olive tree he has just spoken. For I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of this mystery lest you be wise in your own conceits, that petrifaction in part has come (and thus continues) for Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles shall come in, and thus all Israel will be saved.

The history of the exegesis of this sentence is not edifying. It began well and continued thus until Augustine voiced his opinion that Elijah and Enoch would return and convert the entire Jewish nation. In the Middle Ages the Venerable Bede spread the idea of this general conversion and it became fixed in the Catholic Church. The interpreters of the Reformation period returned to a more Biblical view with the exception of a few who followed Augustine although they avoided “his Jewish comment concerning Elijah.” Since then, especially as an adjunct to millennialism, the final national conversion of the Jews has found a host of exegetical and of other advocates. Of late, however, the German commentators have shown a tendency to return to the original soundness.*

What is so depressing about most of this exegesis, especially also in its more recent manifestations, is the fact that words are not taken in their usual sense. The presentation of other exegetes are ignored as though they do not exist. The context, which in this case covers the vital points in three chapters, is interpreted according to the peculiar point of view of these commentators.

Here are a few samples. Charles Hodge of Princeton answers the exegesis of the Reformation period by quoting Olshausen’s presentation of Luther’s statement against the Jews as Luther found them in his day; Hodge quotes in German and calls it untranslatable: “A Jewish heart is so stock-stone-iron-devil-hard that it is to be in no way moved; they are young devils damned to hell; to convert these devil’s children is impossible though some have drawn such a notion from the Epistle to the Romans.” Why did Hodge not verify this quotation? Olshausen selected a few words from two long paragraphs, Erlangen edition, vol. 32, 276, etc., and omitted the very statement which makes Luther’s words regarding the Jews in this pronouncement much like Paul’s: “but if there is still something that is human in them, for him this writing may be of benefit and profit.” Luther’s “stock-stone-iron-hard” is Paul’s πώρωσις, “petrifaction,” stated in a popular way; Luther’s “if” grants the possibility of individual conversions although he confesses that he has no such hope, judging from the Jews of his day. But does not every scholar know how Luther fluctuated? Look at Erl. ed., vol. 45, 88 and 125, where he even admits that mass conversions may be possible. Hodge’s attempt to prejudice us against the exegesis of Rom. 11:25, 26 as found in the times of the Reformation by a garbled quotation from Luther in order to lead us to think this exegesis was inspired by a blanket hate of all Jews shows that in his approach to Rom. 11 Hodge was not free from bias.

Sanday and Headlam, International Critical Commentary, Romans, 335, define “all Israel” on the basis of 1 Kings 12:1 (error, it Isaiah 1 Sam. 12:1), and by this means get the idea that Paul says that practically the whole Jewish nation shall be saved in the millennium. But this ignores Paul’s own context, for instance, 9:7: “Not all those out of Israel, (not all) these are Israel,” and his other statements to the same effect.

Gifford affords another sample. He not only ignores 11:7 but cancels it in favor of the future: Paul foretells “a conversion of the Jews so universal that the separation into an ‘elect remnant’ and ‘the rest who were hardened’ shall disappear”; and The Expositor’s Greek Testament (Denny) promulgates Gifford’s view.

Let us add Meyer as a last sample. The conversion of the Gentiles progresses successively; but when die Heiden saemtlich, “the totality of the heathen” (Meyer himself italicizes), alle Personen, welche sie ausmachen, “all persons who constitute them” (i.e., the nations; “persons” italicized by Meyer), when not a heathen person is left: then all Israel, die Totalitaet des Volkes, die Saemtlichen, alle Israeliten, welche bis dahin noch unbekehrt sein werden, absolutely every Jew living then when absolutely every heathen is converted will also be converted! “Probably in rapid development,” Meyer adds and this “before the Parousia.” When Christ comes to judgment, he will not find a single unconverted person, Gentile or Jew! Christ was, then, mistaken when he asked: “When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” Luke 18:8. see also Matt. 24:11–14. According to Meyer he will find nothing but faith. A few advance beyond Meyer. Does not “all Israel” include also all the dead hardened Jews? So they, too, will be converted, being raised up for this very purpose when that final universal Jewish conversion takes place.

“I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren,” marks the importance of the following and calls for close attention. While “brethren” might be addressed to all the Romans, the attached clause that they should not be wise in their own conceits points to the Gentile Christians to whom Paul has been speaking since v. 13. There is a mystery connected with all that he has been saying about the Jews from chapter 9 onward, a mystery that especially the Gentile Christians must know in order that they may not by their own thinking arrive at wrong conclusions or entertain unwarranted opinions of their own, which may prove productive of a wrong attitude on their part, of a self-exaltation that would be harmful to themselves.

Φρόνιμοι is not our good word “wise” but the German klug, which is somewhat equivalent to being wiseacres. The word “mystery” is used frequently, but in the Scriptures it does not mean something that is altogether incomprehensible to the human mind, or something to be kept under cover and seal lest it become generally known, but something that we could not get to know by our own efforts, that requires our being told, and that we ought to know, and that God reveals to us. Unbelief ignores such revelation, faith is enlightened thereby. Among the mysteries thus revealed are future facts, and one of these is here presented.

Where did Paul get this mystery? Some think it was a conclusion which he drew from Old Testament prophecies. Not a few commentators think that the Old Testament prophets kept foretelling a final general Jewish conversion, and so their supposition is natural that Paul discovered this in the Old Testament. Then again Paul is thought to have learned of this mystery from one or from more of the New Testament prophets, and the statement is made that Paul himself did not possess the charisma of prophecy. What confusion already in regard to this one word “mystery”! He who received so many direct revelations from God received also this one, and what its contents are we shall let Paul himself tell us.

In v. 1–12 Paul speaks of the situation as it existed in his own day: “So, then, (as in Elijah’s time) in the present period there has come to be a remnant,” etc. (v. 5). In v. 7, “the election did obtain, the rest were made like stone” (two historical aorists). Thus it was in Paul’s day. In v. 13–15 Paul states how this fact affects his own ministry, his aim in his work among Gentiles being to save “some of them” (Jews). Then he admonishes the Gentile Christians (v. 16–24), and not until near the end of this admonition does he refer to the future (v. 23, 24): “those, if they remain not in unbelief, shall be grafted in—how much more will these natural (branches) be grafted into their own olive tree.”

What the future will show to the very end of time is the mystery regarding which Paul offers the revelation he has received. The Jews will not disappear as one might think. Other nations have disappeared; the ten tribes of the Jews themselves have left no trace. Not so the two tribes that constituted Judaism in Paul’s time. They will endure until the last Gentile is brought into the kingdom and the Lord returns for the great judgment. Yea, they will endure—strange to say!—to the very end just as Paul and the Romans saw them at their time, petrified in unbelief, but ever only in part and never as a whole, and so, with this situation prevailing, with a part ever being reached by God’s grace despite the petrifaction of the rest, all God’s true Israel, all of it that really deserves the name, will be saved. The world has never known a phenomenon comparable to this.

We should read in one breath: “that petrifaction in part has come for Israel until the fulness of the Gentiles shall come in,” for the meaning is that this partial petrifaction shall last that long, Οὕτω in v. 26 refers to the entire preceding statement that is introduced by ὄτι, and the debate is unnecessary as to whether it refers only to the subordinate ἄχριοὖ clause or to the main clause. This also is true with regard to the debate about the emphasis. The main emphasis is on the temporal clause, and a minor emphasis falls on the phrase “in part”; a partial petrifaction FOR SO LONG. To put all the emphasis on “in part” is unwarranted. This is also true with regard to the view that ἀπὸμέρους should be construed with γέγονεν and not with πώρωσις. It belongs where Paul placed it; “petrifaction in part”; he even separates it from the verb by means of the dative “for Israel.” Why ignore so simple a rule of grammar as that a phrase is to be construed with the word nearest which it is placed and naturally read; and what is gained by this procedure?

Enough has been said regarding πώρωσις in v. 8 where we have the verb. This is the same judicial, punitive, final petrifaction, the result of self-hardening, which is effected by the divine voluntas consequens. On the synonym compare 9:18. We have this petrifaction before our eyes in the case of so many Jews today. Von Hofmann says that ἀπὸμέρους means zeitweilig, “temporary.” “In part” is also not to be understood as marking degree, as if the petrifaction had only started and would not progress beyond this start to full fatality until the fulness of the Gentiles had come in. “Were petrified,” says Paul of “the rest” living at his time; we must repeat it with regard to so many Jews of our day. “In part” refers to numbers; it is the same meiosis as that used in v. 17: “some” of the branches were broken off, and it purposely avoids saying how great the part is. Paul could easily have said, “In great or in greater part”; he wants no Gentile Christian to draw a wrong conclusion as to the proportion involved. “For Israel” names the nation as in 9:7. The perfect tense γέγονεν has its common present connotation: “has come” and thus continues and for how long a time is at once added, namely “until the fulness of the Gentiles shall come in.”

“The fulness of the Gentiles” is their full number. On this expression, too, debate is needlessly centered. Only an exegete would surmise that the totality of Gentile nations is referred to, and then think that the Jewish nation would come in as the last and final nation. Nor does “fulness” mean all the Gentiles in the world. The fulness of the Gentiles = the number of Gentile believers, all the sheep “not of this fold,” which Jesus will also bring (John 10:16). Here the word refers to number.

The verb “come in” is used absolutely, it is constantly employed as a designation for entering the church or the kingdom as a true believer. Those who think that a totality of nations shall come in would in this manner gain time for the Jewish nation to come in as the last nation. They refer ἔθνη, not to Gentiles or pagans, non-Jews, but to “nations.” They think that after the church is planted in all the heathen nations, its work in all these nations will continue for a long time and gather in more and more persons from each nation. Seeing this work in all the nations, the Jewish nation will at last become jealous (10:19; 11:11) and will come in like the rest, the petrifaction finally softening and melting. But 11:14 shows that Paul was engendering this jealousy already by his work, and that its result was to save “some,” not the Jews as a nation.

The contention is especially sharp regarding the temporal conjunction ἄχριοὗ, “until.” Now it does at times mean that something lasts “until” a certain time and then ceases to last, but it is also used with reference to a terminus merely, and nothing is implied as to what follows that terminus. Here it makes no difference as to which of these two meanings we prefer. For the Jewish petrifaction will most certainly cease forever when the fulness of the Gentiles has come in: the last judgment will then arrive (Matt. 24:14), there will be no more Jews on earth, no more gospel against which to set hearts of stone, no more salvation to reject with adamant opposition. The idea that “until” means that the petrifaction will be converted into softness is untenable. When judicial hardening sets in, it is final. It could not be judicial if it were not final. see 9:18. The πώρωσις is doom.

What Stephen said in Acts 7:51 will continue to the end. And note well, when the sons repeat the hardening of their fathers they are doubly guilty; they allow the deeds of their fathers, second and approve them, and thus assume them as their own in addition to their own deeds. This shows us what each new generation of adamant Jews really is. Now the divine judgment visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children who sanction the iniquity of their fathers only to the third and the fourth generation (Exod. 20:5), and the severity of the cumulative judgment sweeps them completely from the face of the earth. But here there is a miraculous exception; here there are generations after generations of these unbelieving Jews continuing on and on. This was a mystery which had been revealed to Paul in advance by God.

“Petrifaction in part,” although “in part” plainly has the emphasis, some say implies as its correlative the cessation of this petrifaction. Petrifaction “in part” implies the other part, the remnant, the election (v. 5, 7), over against “the rest” who are petrified (v. 7). What Paul says is that these two types of Jews continue to the end of time. He has just spoken of the latter (v. 23, 24): “if they shall not remain (permanently, aorist) in their unbelief, they shall be grafted in,” and, “how much more shall these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?” All Jews are unbelieving, for each new generation is reared in the old unbelief. But the petrifaction is ever only “in part” and not total. Ever, as was the case in Paul’s ministry, “some” may be saved, some do not remain in their unbelief, some are grafted back into their own olive tree.

No Gentile Christian ought to be ignorant of this, ought to shape his thoughts about them and about himself otherwise. Paul made his mission work among Gentiles look toward these Jews in order to save them (v. 14); the church of all time must do the same.

That exegesis is one-sided which centers only on the petrified part, makes that the subject of the mystery, and makes the mystery itself what shall be done with this part. But this exegesis does not deal with this petrified part. Paul says that petrifaction “has come.” It started prior to his day and will continue to the end and thus include all hardened Jews from before Paul’s time of writing until the end of time. And these millennialists and these conversionists who claim to deal with the petrified part deal only with the last generation or a few generations of this petrified mass, for only a few extremists claim that all the petrified Jews who have died will be raised up and also be converted.

All Jews who remain in the πώρωσις are damned forever. An apokatastasis even for the Jews is unwarranted. Judicial hardening means doom. This has never been a mystery to any believer. The wonder regarding the Jews is the fact that God did not abolish Judaism in toto, most promptly, when he, for instance, destroyed Jerusalem in 70 A. D., that he allows Judaism to remain until the end of time as we see it during all these past centuries since Paul wrote.

He certainly does not do it for the sake of this petrified, doomed mass. Paul has instanced Pharaoh in 9:17, who was also not raised to rulership for his own sake; he has said more in 9:22, 23 regarding the vessels of wrath who are fitted for destruction and are yet borne in great longsuffering by God, not at all for their own sakes, but for his purpose toward the vessels of mercy. This is also true with regard to Judaism which is allowed to continue through the centuries to the end. The stony mass is borne solely for the sake of the other part, which, although it is also unbelieving, does not go over into self-hardening and then judicial hardening and doom; it does not remain in its unbelief (v. 23) but is grafted back into the olive tree (v. 23, 24).

Paul’s interest lies in this part of Judaism alone, in these “some” whom he can save (v. 14), whom others who work after him until the end can save. His interest in the petrified, doomed mass, and that means all of it until the end of time, is only incidental because by race and blood it is connected with these “some,” God thus letting this doomed mass continue solely in order to separate from it and year by year to save the other part.

Romans 11:26

26 It is not necessary to place a period before this verse (A. V.), a comma will do. Some put a period here in order to make v. 26 stand out the more fully as a separate sentence. “That petrifaction in part” has come, etc., (v. 25) is only the preliminary statement, the incidental feature of the mystery, to which the main content of the mystery is attached: “and thus all Israel will be saved.” “Thus,” οὕτω, “in this way,” with petrifaction in part coming to and continuing to remain with Israel until the end of time, “thus all Israel will be saved,” all of it from the patriarchs onward until time ends and the work of saving Israel is concluded.

Paul was doing what he could to save Israel; the other apostles likewise. This saving brings “the salvation” mentioned in v. 11, brings it as Paul states regarding his own ministry in v. 14: “and may save some of them,” and as he further states in v. 23, 24. Heaven is included in this idea of salvation, but the future tense σωθήσεται need not be dated in the far future even as the subject “all Israel” cannot denote “all future Israel”: all Jews in the future millennium; or, discarding the millennium, the Jewish nation (with or without individual exceptions) prior to the Parousia.

Some ascribe a temporal sense to οὔτω. They declare that it means “then”; then, after the fulness of the Gentiles shall have come in, all Israel shall be saved. Some are less frank; they regard the adverb as meaning “then” but avoid saying so and interpret as though “then” were the meaning. Some use other expressions: unter dieser Voraussetzung, “with this presupposition,” erst nachdem dies geschehen ist, “not until this has occurred,” “under the impression produced on the Jews by the sight of the Gentiles in their fulness peopling the kingdom.” Some of the last group support their alteration of “thus” into “then” by an appeal to other passages.

Like οὗτος and its forms, also the adverb οὕτω is regularly used to refer back to something just stated, “thus,” “in this way.” This reference back is regarded as meaning back in the point of time so that in the new statement “thus” is stressed to mean mere priority of time. The following example has often been used to refute this error. To say: ἔτυψαναὐτὸνκαὶοὕτωἀπέκτειναν, “they struck him and thus killed (him)” = in this manner they killed him. But to say: ἔτυψαναότὸνκαὶἔπειταἀπέκτειναν, “they struck him and then killed (him),” is different. This latter sentence does not say in what manner they killed the man; in fact, this striking did not kill him. Because “thus” refers back, “thus” and “then” are confused in Paul’s statement, are still confused although this view has been so adequately refuted.

We need scarcely take up the passages that have been used to lend color to the claim that οὕτω means “then.” John 4:6: “thus,” wearied as he was, Jesus sat on the well. Acts 17:33: “thus,” with the two groups speaking as they did, Paul left them. Acts 20:11: “thus,” in this way, as a man who had talked so long, Paul left. Acts 27:14: “thus” were they driven, with the ship being rigged as stated. Rom. 9:20 states, “Why hast thou made me thus?”—thus as I now am. The other passages in which the meaning “then” instead of “thus” is found are: Acts 7:8; 27:44; 28:14; 1 Cor. 5:12; 11:28; 14:25; 1 Thess. 7:14; Heb. 6:15—a review of which nets only the question why scores of other passages were not referred to.

Sometimes, when “thus” is regarded as equivalent to “then,” the passage makes sense (as in the example about killing), but always a far different sense; some such substitutions fail even to make sense. We treat οὕτω at length only because chiliasts make it their strong point and others are often impressed; otherwise such elaborateness would not be necessary.

Can “all Israel” refer to the complete physical Israel? Even the millennialists do not assert this, save those who think that all hardened and damned Israelites will be raised up for or during the millennium for the purpose of conversion. By referring οὕτω, translated as “then,” and “shall be saved” to the millennial future, they reduce the physical Israel to “all” then living. The fact that Paul was saving many Israelites, that during these hundreds of years this saving has gone on, that it is still going on, at times saving great numbers, is brushed aside. We are told that Paul “did not overlook” them (v. 1–5) but is here not thinking of them. All else that he so emphatically says of them in distinction from “the rest” who “were petrified” (v. 7) is ignored. see v. 13–16; see all that he says about these petrified ones as cut off branches while the wild olive branch was grafted in “among them” (the saved, believing Israelites v. 17). see also v. 23, 24, where savable Israelites are most clearly described as regards all future time.

All that is said in v. 1–24 about the saved Israelites means so little to the conversionists that they let Paul overlook it and then drop it from his mind; but in Paul’s case the very reverse is true. This progressive saving of Israelites is Paul’s chief subject and it continues as such through to v. 32, and in v. 33–36 is then crowned with Paul’s glorification of God for this very saving.

That “all Israel” here means one thing, and only one, namely totus coetus electorum ex Israele (ἡἐκλογή in v. 7 furnishing this designation) is demonstrated. The real reasons for the denial are not linguistic or exegetical; they are human reasonings.

In v. 25 “Israel” is the physical nation; hence it is claimed that in v. 26 “all Israel” must have the same meaning. But in 9:7 we read: “all those of Israel (the physical nation), not these are Israel (the spiritual Israel).” In that same brief sentence “Israel” is used in different senses. In fact, this is not an analogous example, it is the same truth that is now stated in v. 25, 26, but is now positively stated with regard to the entire future.

Again, “in part” (v. 25) and “all” in v. 26 are directly opposed; hence it is claimed that, if the former refers to the nation, then the latter must also do so. The two are opposed in a real opposition as in 9:7, as in 11:7: the petrification “in part” is only physical Israel, the “all” who will be saved the spiritual Israel, which alone God regards as Israel.

Finally, “the fulness of the Gentiles” is taken to mean all Gentiles; hence it is claimed that “all Israel” must mean all Jews. Neither is true in a physical sense during the centuries or at the end of time; both are true spiritually during the centuries and at the end of time. “The fulness of the Gentiles” = the full number of the saved Gentiles, all of them; “all Israel” = the fulness of Jews, the full number of non-petrified, i.e., of saved Jews.

There are also Gamaliels among the exegetes and theologians, counsellors of indecision, who say: “Wait and see: If—if!” See Gamaliel’s “ifs” in Acts 5:38, 39. R., W. P., is one of these. Their contention is: Paul’s words “may” or “might” be understood in either way. Is Paul ambiguous in his language by revealing a mystery but leaving it in unclearness? Let the question suffice.

But good, orthodox men have believed in a final conversion of the Jewish nation. Yes, they had other misconceptions also. They are a warning and not a shield and not a cause for hesitation. When we note the best straying on any point, let us watch and pray the more lest we be found straying or far off on more than one.

Some of the Gamaliels prefer the one view or think this or that. In the writer’s opinion it is better to be silent under such circumstances. Luke 1:4.

It has been said that the final national conversion of the Jews is taught in the Old Testament prophets, in Matt. 23:39, and elsewhere. Perhaps the fact that some find it in Rom. 11:25, 26, has influenced their interpretation of other passages. The moment it is seen that Romans 11 does not teach such a conversion, other passages will not be adduced in support of it; for if this teaching is found in the Scriptures, Romans 11 is the place in which we feel it ought to appear.

Even as it has been written is the usual general formula of citation which does not name one specific source:

There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer;

He shall turn ungodliness away from Jacob:

And this for them the covenant from me

When I shall take away their sins.

These four lines are taken from Isa. 59:20, 21 and Isa. 27:9, and are quoted so as to bring out the substance of the point Paul is presenting. Some think that the quoted lines are to show by Scripture language only how “all Israel will be saved,” namely by God’s great Goël and what he will do as Israel’s Goël. But “even as,” here as everywhere when introducing Scripture quotations, in one way or in another substantiates whatever has just been stated.

Here, however, the substantiation is not that the prophets revealed “the mystery” and that Paul is now showing that they did, and that this mystery is not a new revelation. Why did he then speak of a mystery? When we examine the quoted lines we also find that they contain nothing about a judicial petrifaction that will continue to the end of time; we find only the saving of all Israel, of which Paul has just written. This is what is directly substantiated by the quotation.

It would be unwarranted to think that Paul substantiates only a part of what he has said, what we, perhaps, might regard as only the minor part that scarcely needs substantiation. After “the mystery” has been revealed, we fully understand the promise that stands out so gloriously in the Old Testament with regard to “Jacob” whom God renamed “Israel” and from whom the true Israel obtained this its name. Everything the prophets said about the great Goël for Jacob and about what he would do for Jacob agrees with what Paul says about “all Israel” being saved.

And so we see the other truth of this quotation, namely that these glorious prophetic utterances agree perfectly with what Paul says of “all Israel being saved” and support his presentation of the mystery. The prophets did not have the mystery, but what they had substantiates it now that it is revealed by Paul.

Hence the broad nature of the quotation which selects material from more than one passage. A millennial national conversion of petrified Israel is thus excluded as far as the Old Testament is concerned.

The quotation is well chosen in every point. “The Deliverer,” the Goʾel (Hebrew, the Vindicator who takes Jacob’s part) is the Redeemer (see Job 19:25, Eisenach Old Testament Selections by the author), Christ Jesus, God, as some think, but God incarnate, the God-man. He shall come “out of Zion,” Paul says. The LXX has ἕνεκεν, “for the sake of Zion,” and the Hebrew has, “to Zion” (le). So it is thought that Paul quoted on the basis of a faulty memory, that he had forgotten both the Hebrew and the LXX and thus wrote “out of.” But this phrase is vital for Paul’s meaning. For if this Goël comes “out of Zion,” as Paul says, he will not come “out of heaven,” as the millennialists think. “Out of Zion” refers to Christ’s first advent.

This phrase is vital for the three prophetic lines that follow. When he comes in his first advent “he shall turn ungodliness away from Jacob,” namely, the different forms of unbelief away from those Jews who, by being freed from this their unbelief, will be grafted into their olive tree (v. 23, 24) and constitute a part of “all Israel,” the true spiritual Israel. This is what Paul has just said in his own words: “All Israel shall be saved,” i.e., by this Goël or Savior.

To refer to Philippi as an authority is not fair. He, indeed, wrote that “out of Zion” means only that Zion, i.e., the Jews, have a right to the salvation of the Goël; but in the third edition of his Commentar he retracted his former view, gave up the idea of a final conversion of the Jews, and presented what Paul taught. This commentator and notable dogmatician was himself a converted Jew; the church historian Neander, another converted Jew, helped to bring about his conversion. The fact that Philippi should give up the belief in a final grand conversion of the Jews is thus the more significant. Contrast with this The Expositor’s Greek Testament: “It is impossible to say that ἥξει refers to the first or the second advent: the distinction is not present to Paul’s mind as he writes; all he is concerned with is the fact that in prophetic Scripture, language is used which implies that Israel as a people is to inherit the Messianic salvation.” Italics are our own.

Paul purposely wrote “out of Zion,” which lies back of the Hebrew, “to Zion” and the LXX, “for the sake of Zion,” and is one of the constant prophecies from Moses onward: Deut. 18:15, 18: “from the midst of thee, of thy brethren”; Ps. 14:7; 53:6; 110:2; Isa. 2:3, all have the phrase “out of Zion”; we add only Micah 5:2, “out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel.”

Romans 11:27

27 Two additional lines amplify the meaning of the prophecy: “And this for them the covenant from me,” which covenant is then stated: “When I shall take away their sins.” “This” often points forward, and it is unwarranted to assert that it must always point backward. The covenant is never a mutual but always a one-sided one: from God to or with Abraham, Israel, etc. God makes the covenant, Abraham, etc., only receive it. It is never called Abraham’s or Israel’s covenant.

Objection is voiced to having the last line state the contents of the covenant on the score that it begins with ὅταν, “when” or “whenever”; so “this” is referred back to the preceding line or lines. Yet the line containing “when” is taken from a new passage, from Isa. 27:9, and thus may be freely added irrespective of its beginning with “when.” In 1 John 2:3 and 5:2 John writes ἐντούτῳ—ἐάν, and ἐντούτῳ—ὅταν, and no one objects. Paul is even more in order, for the LXX has the very “this” which the “when” clause presents: “and this is his thanksgiving: when I take away his sin” (Paul: “sins”). The heart of the covenant which God made with Jacob (Israel) is this taking away of sins. Whenever this occurs (ὅταν, indefinite) in the case of any Israelite, then, and not until then, does he have this covenant.

Ἀφέλωμαι is the second aorist subjunctive middle of ἀφαιρέω. “To take away” sins (see Ps. 103:12) is what really constitutes the forgiveness of sins according to the Scriptures; compare the synonymous ἀφίημι, “to send away sins,” in Matt. 6:12; or Mark 2:5; or Luke 5:20; or Rom. 4:7. This taking away of the sins of Jacob is justification by faith, the central doctrine of Romans, and this doctrine is here being applied to the Jews as solving the entire problem they present to the Christian. The aorist tense of the verb denotes actuality and completeness: “shall take away completely.” Justification would be expressed by this and not by a durative or progressive tense; it is always complete the instant it occurs. Ὅταν agrees well with the progression of this taking away of Israel’s sins from one generation to another, “whenever” Jews no longer “remain in their unbelief” (v. 23). We may remark incidentally that Augustine found his Elijah and his Enoch in “the Deliverer” here prophesied.

Romans 11:28

28 According to the gospel—enemies for your sake; but according to the election—beloved for the father’s sake. Who are those that according to one norm (κατά) are “enemies” and according to another norm “beloved”? all the Jews? all the Jews living at a certain future period? or “all Israel,” the “Jacob” whose sins are removed, the believing Jews throughout the centuries, Paul thinking especially of those of his own time? Undoubtedly the latter. Considering the gospel (1:1, 16), these Jews are at first unbelieving, are “enemies,” are personally hostile toward this gospel; all Jews are reared thus. “Enemies,” Paul writes and not as he does regarding “the rest” in v. 7: “they were (or are) petrified,” for after judicial hardening sets in, conversion has become impossible, and this very judgment of God marks that fact.

The two διά phrases match. When the Gentile Christians look at the Jews in their unbelief and hostility to the gospel, Paul wants them to distinguish those whose enmity has not advanced to petrification and then wants these Gentile Christians to remember that Jewish unbelief caused the gospel to come to the Gentiles so that they, the Gentile Christians, now have all its riches. “For your sakes” thus tersely sums up in this one phrase what Paul has set forth fully in v. 11, 12.

But those who are at first such unbelieving enemies, when they are regarded “according to the election,” constitute the “remnant according to an election of grace” (v. 5), yea, are called “the election” (v. 7), for grace wins them so that they “do not remain in their unbelief” (v. 23) and thus are “beloved,” ἀγαπητοί, the very term Paul uses in 1:7 to designate all the Roman Christians, “beloved” of God in Christ Jesus. While they are thinking of the Jews of their day the Romans are to extend their vision of the Jews to the end of time, namely to the real “Jacob” among them, to the whole spiritual Israel among them, to those who “will be saved,” whom God foreknows and who are thus already “beloved” in his sight. God, of course, knows who they are individually even among unborn generations (John 10:16, Christ’s “other sheep”); we know only that there are and ever will be such.

And now, in a most striking way, Paul adds his second διά phrase: “for the fathers’ sake.” “For your sake” looks at the present and the future, “for the fathers’ sake” at the distant past, at the three great patriarchs with whom the original covenant was made. “The fathers” and “the covenant from me” (v. 27) belong together. Paul does not say “their fathers,” for 4:11, 12 has set forth fully how God made Abraham the spiritual father of the Gentile believers just as he made him the father of the Jewish believers. Yet in the present connection “fathers” brings to mind the truth that these converted Jews were also physical descendants of the patriarchs, “the natural branches” as distinguished from those “from a natural wild olive tree” (v. 24). “Fathers,” however, stresses this descent only in a secondary way. The force of the term and of the phrase lies in the fact that these “beloved” Jews are not only natural but at the same time spiritual sons of these spiritual fathers, sons restored to this their blessed spiritual connection. The phrase would not befit Gentile Christians, for they had never had a connection with the patriarchs before their spiritual connection was established by faith in Christ.

Those who interpret this section with reference to the whole Jewish nation advocate the teaching that, because this nation is physically descended from the patriarchs with whom he made his covenant, God will still love it. His judgment of hardening the self-hardened mass is overlooked. The judgment of hardening is suspended, suspended only for that final era. Why only for that last era? Why is “beloved” and this peculiar consideration of the fathers absent today, and why was it absent during all the past centuries? And where is “beloved” used with reference to any persons but believers?

No; the hardened mass is not “Israel”; although it is “seed,” it is yet not “the children of God,” not “the children of the promise” made to the fathers, not those who are reckoned as the real “seed” by God (9:7, 8). Paul does not contradict his own clear statements. God does not contradict himself by treating the hardened mass in its last generation as “beloved” after having treated the previous hardened mass of many generations as accursed.

Romans 11:29

29 Paul explains how Jews who are at first enemies of the gospel are yet allowed eventually to become beloved of God. For unregretted (are) the gracious gifts and the calling of God. For just as you (Gentile Christians) on your part were once disobedient to God yet now were given mercy by means of the disobedience of these (Jews), so also these have now become disobedient in order that by your mercy (that shown to you) they, too, may be given mercy. For God locked them all up together to disobedience in order that he might give them all mercy.

The proposition is purposely made general and thus surely includes this case of the Jews. When God bestows his gracious gifts (see the list in 9:4, 5) and his call or calling by which men are saved he never regrets such gifts and such calling as men do who later either change their minds or find they have made a mistake and ought to change their minds. God is not subject to such changes of mind, he is constant, he makes no mistakes. What is here expressed in a general form is stated specifically with reference to God’s people in v. 1 and in another way in 9:6, namely from the angle of God’s Word as promise. The Old Testament anthropopathic expressions about God regretting certain things need not be explained here since they are in no way contradictory to Paul’s “unregretted” (or “unregrettable”).

Romans 11:30

30 Paul himself explains (γάρ) how his general statement applies to the Jews. He merely restates in a striking way what he has already made so plain. He is closing his entire presentation (chapters 9 to 11). “Why,” Paul says, “this about these Jews is the same as your own Gentile case: as you profited by their disobedience, they are now to profit by the mercy you received through their disobedience.” “Your mercy” has the possessive adjective in the sense of an objective genitive pronoun: mercy to you (R. 685). All that is said about “mercy” and “to mercy” (transitive in the Greek) is to recall what is stated on this subject in 9:14–17. It also restates 11:11–14. Moreover, in Paul’s typical way he now draws the different lines of thought to a unit point so that the whole discussion comes to its close in a natural way.

The fact that God does not regret is not due to determinism or compulsion which brook no obstacle but simply force his mercy through. All this regarding his mercy has been explained in 9:15, etc. Paul once more asks his Gentile readers to consider their own case, how they on their part (ὑμεῖς, emphatic) were disobedient to God when they were pagans, and how God made the very disobedience of the Jews work out so as to extend his previous gospel mercy to them, the Gentiles, even as they now have it. Think of that, Paul says.

He carefully writes “disobeyed” and “disobedience” and not “disbelieved” and “unbelief.” The latter would not be fitting as the pivot or unit point of the comparison: “just as—so also”; the former brings this out most exactly. It does more, it confines the comparison to such Gentiles and such Jews as come from disobedience to obedience and keeps the comparison clear of all other Gentiles who either do not get to hear the gospel or hear and reject it; and clear also of all other Jews, the mass that has passed and in future generations passes into petrification. All that needs to be said about the latter has been said. Paul narrows down and is coming to his focus.

Romans 11:31

31 Now, Paul goes on to say to the Gentile Christians, it is just so with these Jews: they have now become disobedient as you once were. The Greek uses the aorist to indicate acts that have just happened (R. 842, etc.) whereas we use the perfect. We should not say, “now were or now became disobedient”; the aorist is ingressive. Paul is not speaking of the petrified Jews; they were far more than disobedient; he is speaking of “these” (οὗτοι) who will yet be saved by God’s mercy (v. 26). What part the petrified Jews played in causing the gospel to be brought to the Gentiles in general is omitted here as no longer being needed for Paul’s point. These still disobedient Jews, Paul says, are in the position you believing Gentiles once occupied with your disobedience: as their disobedience brought you mercy, the mercy you have is to bring them to the same mercy from their disobedience.

The aorist ἐλεηθῶσι implies that it will do so. So God made no mistake, has nothing to regret in regard to the gracious gifts and the call he extended to the patriarchs and to the Jews. All is working out according to his wonderful plans.

It is true, the believing Gentiles were once in pagan disobedience, and these still disobedient Jews are in the disobedience that is not pagan but Jewish rejection of the gospel. This is the very reason that the term “obedience” is used; it is the term that covers both conditions. It would be unwarranted to state that Paul’s comparison is inexact, and that the correct comparison should be: as Jewish disobedience brought mercy to the Gentiles, so this mercy brings disobedience to the Jews. Paul’s comparison rises from this common formula to the superior one: so this your mercy helps to bring them mercy. The phrase “by your mercy” is placed before ἵνα in order to secure the fullest emphasis. This is a common replacing of terms when a certain part of the purpose clause is to be emphasized.

Romans 11:32

32 Now comes the final statement and explanation, the unit that ties everything together and thus leaves nothing further to be added. God has placed all the Jews and the Gentiles of whom Paul is here speaking on the same level in order to save all of them by the same means, namely his mercy. And this is the mercy in Christ Jesus which saves all of them alike by justification through faith alone.

Τοὺςπάντας = “them all,” every individual among those of whom Paul is speaking, those Gentiles and those Jews who in this equal disobedience are brought to faith and salvation by God’s equal mercy. This is not a final grand generality which states that all Gentiles and all Jews are disobedient sinners, and that God sent his mercy for all. “Them all” is not die juedische Volksgemeinde als solche, “the Jewish commonwealth as such,” which has been saved from absorption among the nations for a great destiny as a nation toward the end of the world. And having mercy on “them all” is not the end of the apokatastasis that is added at the end.

The verb συνέκλεισε is not perfective (R. 627), “shut up on all sides” (σύν) without an outlet. It plainly means, as R. himself states in W. P.: shut up together, namely these Gentiles and these Jews together with each other. Both were in disobedience (v. 31), and so all were shut up together. And why stress the effective force of “locked up together” over against the permissive idea? “Were disobedient,” all these were that, and God had no trouble in regard to shutting them up in this their disobedience. That locking all of them up together for disobedience left all of them with nothing whatever but this their disobedience.

The Jew was not a whit better off than the Gentile; all his rights, prerogatives, claims, and boasts, were gone, he lay in the same prison of “disobedience” with the Gentiles. The Gentile could not be high-minded (v. 21) and look down on the Jew as being one that had fallen so terribly, for his pagan disobedience was the same fearful prison called “disobedience.”

God shut them up together to disobedience means that, locked in thus, all hope and all self-help had disappeared. Disobedience, disobedience was all they had and all they could bring forth. Only one door permits one to leave this prison and it is inscribed: “God’s Mercy.” That is why all else was taken from them: “in order that he (God) might mercy them” (aorist, actually, fully), bestow his mercy on them, turn them from their ungodliness (in contrition) and take away their sins (in justification), v. 26, 27.

In Rome, Jewish and Gentile Christians were found together in one church, in the one good olive tree (v. 24), under this one blessed mercy. Paul is writing them that they came out of the same awful disobedience. Instead of being supercilious toward others, they had only one thing to do: embrace each other and sing thanksgiving to the one mercy that brought them together in this, God’s own wonderful way. And then they would understand what God and this his mercy were doing for others like them, yea, would continue to do until the end of time.

Romans 11:33

33 The rapturous praise with which Paul concludes this section of his letter (chapters 9 to 11) will appear in its full clarity when it is placed beside the heartbroken introduction to this section (9:1, etc.). The range of Paul’s emotions is so wide as to reach from this pain for lost Israel to this rapturous adoration of God and of his ways in saving so many Jews and so many Gentiles. Placed at the end of the last of the four fundamental sections of the epistle, we may take it that this conclusion is intended as a conclusion to the four.

Oh, depth of riches both of God’s wisdom and knowledge! How unsearchable his decisions, and untraceable his ways! For who did know the Lord’s mind? or who became his counsellor? or who first gave to him, and it shall duly be paid back to him? because of him and through him and unto him—all the things (that exist)! To him the glory for the eons! Amen.

Ὧ is an interjection and is exclamatory; it is best translated, “Oh!” although “O!” may be used. It is not to be construed with βάθος and the following nouns as: “O depth of wisdom and knowledge!” for these nouns are not addressed (R. 463); Paul exclaims regarding them. They rise before his soul in their immensity, and he cries: “Oh!” None of these four nouns has an article; but the final genitive Θεοῦ makes the nouns to which it belongs specific just as the genitive in “depth of riches”—it is the specifying case, R. 493.

The question is debated as to whether “depth” has three coordinate genitives following it: “depth of riches and of wisdom and of knowledge,” or only one: “depth of riches both of wisdom and of knowledge” (our versions). We decide for the latter because “wisdom” and “knowledge” denote such distinct and definite attributes that “riches” cannot be placed into the same group with them. This is intensified by the significance which “riches” is thought to have when it is thus made coordinate as “an independent concept.” Some say “riches” = grace and mercy or “wealth of love”; others are content with a formal definition: the extensive means at God’s disposal for accomplishing his purposes. These definitions state that “riches” is not an independent concept but needs something to tell us what riches are referred to.

We never associate “depth” with “riches” but we do speak of profound wisdom and knowledge. “Depth” refers to these two. Paul cries out because of the profundity of the rich wisdom and knowledge of God. So the genitives “of wisdom and knowledge” specify “riches.” Who can get to the bottom of this vast depth of infinite riches of wisdom and of knowledge? The greatest creature mind is able only to fall down and to adore. Wisdom and knowledge are a pair (Col. 2:3). The greater is named first: wisdom, the ability in the adequate way to use knowledge for the highest purpose.

The lesser is named second: knowledge, the ability to provide the means wisdom needs. God knows all, nothing is ever hid from him. Paul glorifies all God’s wisdom and knowledge. From what is revealed in God’s saving plans and works among men Paul judges as to its infinitude also in all other domains.

This is the attitude our generation needs. Who among those who are so wise in their own conceits exclaims because of the unfathomable wisdom and knowledge of God? God lets them discover some of his secrets in nature, but when they do discover them they fail even to see God. What God does in his kingdom is to them also a sealed volume, and his hand in individual lives is ignored. So many also in their wisdom dictate what God’s wisdom should do or should have done. What profundity to God! What folly in men!

“Depth” is explained by “unsearchable” and “untraceable.” The former means that all our efforts at searching out are vain, the latter that even where God has gone and has done things we cannot discover the tracks and track his course; they leave us in a labyrinthian maze. The κρίματα are God’s “decisions.” We may say “judgments” but must not restrict this term to adverse judgments or condemnations. God’s “ways” are not his manners or his habits but the courses he has taken and still takes. The idea, too, is not that they are always righteous and just but that they are wise and full of perfect knowledge that is beyond all human understanding. With this we must combine his grace and his mercy manifested in all his judgments and his actions. The incomprehensibleness of this angle of God’s actions is vaster still. Paul is generalizing, for all that he has specified about God’s decisions and his course of action regarding Jews and Gentiles is only an outstanding example.

One must note the parallelism, it is like lines of Hebrew poetry and has the same simplicity as these and also a high exaltation which in v. 36 reaches an almost incomparable climax.

Romans 11:34

34 Automatically, as one who lives, moves, and has his being in the Old Testament, Paul expresses himself in Old Testament language. This is not a quotation but an adaption of Isa. 40:13 and Job 41:11 (41:3 in the Hebrew) to Paul’s own thought. “Who did know the Lord’s mind?” (Κυρίου, Yahweh’s) in order thus to comprehend his decisions, for no less than such knowledge of his “mind” (in the Hebrew, ruach, “spirit”), of the inwardness of what his mind or spirit contains would be required.

“Or who became his counsellor?” Did God take some one of us and make him his confident, talk over with him in advance his decisions and his ways, and ask his advice so that this person can search out and trace for us the infinite mysteries of the wisdom and knowledge employed? That would, indeed, be a wonderful person!

Romans 11:35

35 In his third question Paul disregards the wrong translation of the LXX: “or who shall resist me and remain?” and translates the Hebrew of Job 41:3 (our 11) independently: “or who first gave to him” and thus put God under obligation, “and it shall be duly (ἀπό) paid back (ἀντί) to him?” God meeting the obligation by explaining his decisions and his ways to this person. While the first question in v. 34 reverts to God’s decisions, and the second to God’s ways, this third reverts to both his decisions and his ways. Paul is again unifying, bringing the thought to a focus (as we saw him doing in v. 32).

Romans 11:36

36 The three questions expect the answer: No one. But Paul would not end either this great paragraph or this great section of the epistle with a negative. He ends with a mighty affirmative, the all-comprehensive and overwhelming reason for the implied negative answers, which is also the completest reason that God’s wisdom and knowledge and his decisions and his ways are unsearchably profound: “because of him and through him and to him—all things!” As the infinite God, who is infinite not only in wisdom and knowledge but in all his attributes, he is at once the origin (ἐκ), the medium of existence (διά), and the final goal (εἰς) of the universe, τὰπάντα, das All, “the sum of things, the All” (R. 773). Πάντα would be, “all things in general” and improper here; but τὰπάντα is specific, “all things that exist.”

The ancients and many since their time have found the Trinity in these three phrases; and others hesitate and are not certain. The antecedent is Κύριος, the Greek for Yahweh, in the words taken from Isaiah. The three prepositions focus in him as the covenant God. Moreover, εἰς is not ἐν and cannot be referred to the Holy Spirit. In 1 Cor. 8:6 εἰς is used with regard to the Father, in Col. 1:16, ἐν with regard to the Son. In 1 Cor. 8:6 ἐκ and εἰς are together used with regard to the Father, and διά is twice used with reference to the Son, while in Heb. 2:10 διʼ ὅν and διʼ οὖ are used with reference to the Father. These various uses show that it is improbable that we have a reference to the Trinity in this verse.

Paul’s “formula,” as it has been called, is said to be derived from Stoic pantheism which, after its adoption by Hellenistic mysticism, entered Judaism and is said to look to “the cosmic deliverance,” whatever that may be (L.). The International Critical Commentary refers to a few Jewish apocalyptic quotations in Latin which are regarded as “resemblances, not only in thought, but in expression.” We still believe that Paul was “moved by the Holy Spirit” and find our faith duly confirmed by an examination of these sources of his thought and his expressions.

Paul ends with the brief doxology: “To him the glory for the eons! Amen.” “The glory” with its article has the force of “all the glory” there is. Not the attribute is referred to but the acknowledgment, honor, and worship due to God from men, which Paul for his part by this very doxology gives to God. On the phrase “to the eons” which = “forever,” see 1:25, where “amen” also occurs.

L. Handbuch zum Neuen Testament Dritter Band. Die Briefe des Apostels Paulus. 1. An die Roemer. D. Hans Lietzmann. 2. Auflage.

B.-D Friedrich Blass’ Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch, vierte, voellig neu-gearbeitete Aufiage besorgt von Albert Debrunner.

M.-M. The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, Illustrated from the Papyri and other Non-Literary Sources, by James Hope Moulton and George Milligan.

R. A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, by A. T. Robertson, fourth edition.

B.-P. Griechisch-Deutsches Woerterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments, etc., von D. Walter Bauer, zweite, etc., Auflage zu Erwin Preuschens Vollstaendigem Griechisch-Deutschen Handwoerterbuch, etc.

The author is indebted to B. M. Christensen for the following translation from Hallesby, Den Kristelige Troeslaere, Vol. I, 658, etc.: “We understand the Apostle’s argument as follows: For the Gentle Christians in the early church it appeared as if the chosen people in its totality were rejected by God. And this inevitably called forth many questions. To these the Apostle answers in Romans 9 to 11 by showing that that which now has happened to Israel is exactly in harmony with God’s promise and with his previous treatment of this people.

The promises in all ages have referred to the spiritual Israel, not to the Israel of the flesh. Therefore God has repeatedly punished the rebellious people by hardening their hearts and has succeeded in saving only a small remnant which nevertheless constituted at all times the true Israel, the true people of God. And now the Apostle imparts to the Gentile Christians this secret concerning the people of Israel: 1) The heart-hardening in Israel now as before only partial. There is always a number of individual Israelites who allow themselves to be saved. 2) This partial hardening will continue throughout the time of the Gentiles, i. e., until Christ’s return. 3) But nevertheless in this way, καὶοὖτως, ‘all Israel’ are saved. By this, however, is not meant, as Calvin supposed, God’s spiritual Israel, consisting of believing Jews and Gentiles, for the Apostle is speaking here in chapters 9 to 11 about Israel’s position and future destiny in distinction from that of the Gentiles. The suggestive expression ‘Israel’ is rather used here in the same sense as ‘the Israel of God’ in Gal. 6:16.”

Christensen adds that in this Hallesby, “the outstanding conservative systematic theologian in Norway at the present time,” follows almost exactly S. Odland, “the New Testament exegete who has written the most recognized interpretation of Romans from the conservative viewpoint: Paulus Brev til Romerne.”

For America we add the Norwegian E. Hove, Christian Doctrine, as the view of one widely known.

The author is indebted to S. G. Youngert for the statement: “The Church of Sweden does not accept the theory of a millennium before the coming of Christ to final judgment, unless it be in the sense that the whole of the New Testament times from Christ to the end be such a millennium. In this respect as in others there is close adherence to the declarations in the Augustana Confessio.” In Sweden, S. L. Bring and O. Myhrberg present “a future time of gospel glory coming in after much suffering and before the final judgment.”