St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans: A Practical Exposition. Vol. II

5

Vol. i. pp. 114 f.

6

Exod. iv. 23; Hos. xi. 1.

7

Exod. xvi. 10.

8

Or 'pray' (marg.) literally 'I was praying.'

9

Cf. Eph. v. 8-14.

10

Cf. Col. iii. 9.

11

Exod. xxxii. 32.

12

2 Esdr. viii. 15-16, x. 21-23. The latter passage is not spoken to God, but by one Jew to another.

13

2 Cor. iii. 8.

14

See 1 Cor. x. 1-13.

15

Heb. x. 29.

16

1 Thess. i. 10; Rom. viii. 3.

17

Acts xx. 28.

18

Phil. ii. 6-11.

19

Without the article which makes it a proper name of the Father.

20

R. V. margin2. It does further violence to the Greek to translate as R. V. margin1, 'He who is God over all is (be) blessed for ever.' I have nothing to add on the matter to S. and H. in loc., especially p. 236.

21

Tit. ii. 13. This is probably the right rendering.

22

St. Matt. iii. 9.

23

Great stress was laid by the prophets on the absence of any original merit or power in Israel, which caused the divine election; see Ezek. xvi, Deut. xxvi. 5.

24

See especially Amos ix. 7-10: 'Are ye not as the children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel? saith the Lord. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir? Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth; saving that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the Lord. For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all the nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth. All the sinners of my people shall die by the sword, which say, The evil shall not overtake nor prevent us.'

25

Gen. xii. 3; Isa. lxvi. 18; Zech. viii. 23, &c.

26

Matt. viii. 11, 12.

27

In Weber's Jüdische Theologie (Leipzig, 1897, formerly called System der Altsynagog. Palästin. Theol. or Die Lehre des Talmud), pp. 51 ff, there are striking illustrations from the Talmud of this fixed tendency of thought among the Jews. Thus 'there exists no clearer proof of the Talmudic conviction of the absolutely holy character of Israel than that in all the places of Scripture in which Israel is reproved and has evil attributed to it, the expression, "the haters of Israel," is substituted for Israel.' 'We read: Isaiah was punished, because he called Israel a people of unclean lips,' &c. Cf. S. and H., p. 249, and my Ephesians, p. 261.

28

1 Pet. iv. 6. 'The gospel was preached to' these 'dead men that they might be judged according to men in the flesh,' i.e. by perishing in the flood, 'but live according to God in the spirit,' i.e. through our Lord's preaching in Hades. There is, I think, so far, no ambiguity about this passage.

29

Not, however, without regard to man's will to respond to the divine offer, see later, p. 82 ff.

30

Mal. i. 2, 3. 'Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the Lord: yet I loved Jacob; but Esau I hated, and made his mountains a desolation, and gave his heritage to the jackals of the wilderness. Whereas Edom saith, We are beaten down, but we will return,' &c. This passage (1) plainly refers to Esau as meaning Edom, the people; (2) describes not the original lot of Esau, which was secondary indeed, but highly blessed (Gen. xxvii. 39, 40); but the ultimate lot of Esau when he had misused his original endowment in violence and cruelty.

31

Isa. xxix. 16, xlv. 9, lxiv. 8; Jer. xviii. 6; Ecclus. xxxiii. 13.

32

xv. 7.

33

1 Cor. xii. 22-5; 2 Tim. ii. 20.

34

Jer. xviii. 4. The passage continues with a strong assertion of God's freedom to govern the destinies of nations on moral principles.

35

When Moses asked to see God's glory (Exod. xxxiii. 18), what was revealed to him was His goodness and free mercy, and what St. Paul here means by God's glory is His mercy especially.

36

In the original the words run, 'For this cause have I made thee to stand,' i.e. probably, 'I have preserved thy life under the plague of boils, and other plagues, in order to make thee an example of a more conspicuous judgement.' But St. Paul, departing from the Greek Bible, uses a word 'raised thee up,' which in Pharaoh's case, or in that of Cyrus, means to bring upon the stage of history. Isa. xli. 2; cf. Jer. 1. [xxvii in the Greek] 41; Hab. i. 6.

37

See Matt. xiii. 14, 15; Mark iv. 12; John xii. 40.

38

Cf. vol. i. p. 75.

39

On the meaning of divine foreknowledge in St. Paul see vol. i. p. 317.

40

See Joseph. Antiq. xiii. 5, 9; xviii. 1, 3; Bell. Jud. ii. 8, 14. Cf. Schürer, Jewish People (English trans.), Div. ii. vol. ii. pp.14 ff.; James and Ryle, Ps. of Solomon, p. 96. The Essenes, Josephus says, believed in fate, and not in free-will; the Sadducees in free-will and not in fate; but the Pharisees in both. No doubt Josephus is importing Greek philosophical views into his account of Jewish parties, but substantially his account is probably true.

41

e. g. Isa. xix. 24; Ezek. xvi. 55. (The exaltation into the fellowship of the chosen people of Egypt, Assyria, Sodom, and Samaria.)

42

Isa. vi. 13.

43

I have endeavoured sometimes in this analysis to expand what St. Paul means by 'pursuing righteousness,' by 'works' and by 'faith,' in accordance with the meaning already assigned to these words; see vol. i. pp. 7-24.

44

Isa. viii. 14; xxviii. 16. Cf. Matt. xi. 6.

45

See above, vol. i. p. 17.

46

Levit. xviii. 5.

47

Deut. xxx. 11-14. I have italicized the words substantially reproduced by St. Paul, but I have quoted the whole passage because its whole meaning is in his mind.

48

Isa. xxviii. 16.

49

Joel ii. 32.

50

Isa. lii. 7.

51

Isa. liii. 1.

52

Ps. xix. 4.

53

Deut. xxxii. 21.

54

Isa. lxv. 1, 2.

55

See vol. i. pp. 7 ff., 165 f., 250 ff.

56

Godet in loc.

57

Cf. 1 Cor. xii. 3. The lordship of Jesus, we see in this passage, means that He can have applied to Him the sayings of the Old Testament about the Lord Jehovah; and can be 'called upon' as such in prayer (Joel ii. 32).

58

Cf. 1 Cor. xv. 1-3.

59

Clem, ad Cor. 42, 44.

60

See S. and H. in loc.

61

Three times – 1 Sam. xii. 22, Ps. xciv. 14, xcv. 3 (in the Greek) – the promise occurs 'The Lord will not cast away His people.'

62

The vocation and election which made Israel the chosen people were absolutely of God. What distinguished the faithful remnant from the bulk of the nation was simply that they had not altogether failed in faith, so that the unchanging election was not in their cases practically suspended, but God 'reserved them for Himself.'

63

St. Paul refers chiefly to Isa. xxix. 10 – the description of a besotted people whose prophets are eyes that cannot see, and their seers ears that cannot hear; so that the word of God has become as a sealed book; cf. also Isa. vi. 9. But there is a similar passage in Deut. xxix. 4, which partly moulds his language, and supplies the words 'unto this day.'

64

Rather, as margin, in Elijah, i.e. the passage of Scripture about Elijah.

65

This – to recognize or mark out beforehand – is the meaning of divine 'foreknowing' in St. Paul. See vol. i. pp. 317 f.

66

Both in this passage and in Acts i. 20.

67

I follow, by preference, the paragraphs of the R.V., unless there is very strong reason to the contrary.

68

Cf. 2 Cor. v. 19, 'God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.'