_THE SORROWFUL PROBLEM: JEWISH UNBELIEF; DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY_
ROMANS ix. 1-33
We may well think that again there was silence awhile in that
Corinthian chamber, when Tertius had duly inscribed the last words we
have studied. A "silence in heaven" follows, in the Apocalypse
(viii. 1), the vision of the white hosts of the redeemed, gathered at
last, in their eternal jubilation, before the throne and the Lamb. A
silence in the soul is the fittest immediate sequel to such a
revelation of grace and glory as has passed before us here. And did
not the man whose work it was to utter it, and whose personal
experience was as it were the informing soul of the whole argument of
the Epistle from the first, and not least in this last sacred pæan of
faith, keep silence when he had done, hushed and tired by this
"exceeding weight" of grace and glory?
But he has a great deal more to say to the Romans, and in due time the
pen obeys the voice again. What will the next theme be? It will be a
pathetic and significant contrast to the last; a lament, a discussion,
an instruction, and then a prophecy, about not himself and his happy
fellow-saints, but poor self-blinded unbelieving Israel.
The occurrence of that subject exactly here is true to the inmost
nature of the Gospel. The Apostle has just been counting up the wealth
of salvation, and claiming it all, as present and eternal property,
for himself and his brethren in the Lord. Justifying Righteousness,
Liberty from Sin in Christ, the Indwelling Spirit, electing Love,
coming and certain Glory, all have been recounted, and asserted, and
embraced. _Is it selfish_, this great joy of possession and prospect?
Let those say so who see these things only from outside. Make proof of
what they are in their interior, enter into them, learn yourself what
it is to have peace with God, to receive the Spirit, to expect the
eternal glory; and you will find that nothing is so sure to expand the
heart towards other men as the personal reception into it of the Truth
and Life of God in Christ. It is possible to hold a true creed--and to
be spiritually hard and selfish. But is it possible so to be when not
only the creed is held, but the Lord of it, its Heart and Life, is
received with wonder and great joy? The man whose certainties, whose
riches, whose freedom, are all consciously _in Him_, cannot but love
his neighbour, and long that he too should come into "the secret of
the Lord."
So St Paul, just at this point of the Epistle, turns with a peculiar
intensity of grief and yearning towards the Israel which he had once
led, and now had left, because they would not come with him to Christ.
His natural and his spiritual sympathies all alike go out to this
self-afflicting people, so privileged, so divinely loved, and now so
blind. Oh that he could offer any sacrifice that would bring them
reconciled, humbled, happy, to the feet of the true Christ! Oh that
they might see the fallacy of their own way of salvation, and submit
to the way of Christ, taking His yoke, and finding rest to their
souls! Why do they not do it? Why does not the light which convinced
him shine on them? Why should not the whole Sanhedrin say, "Lord, what
wouldst Thou have us to do?" Why does not the fair beauty of the Son
of God make them too "count all things but loss" for Him? Why do not
the voices of the Prophets prove to them, as they do now to Paul,
absolutely convincing of the historical as well as spiritual claims of
the Man of Calvary? Has the promise failed? Has God done with the race
to which He guaranteed such a perpetuity of blessing? No, that cannot
be. He looks again, and he sees in the whole past a long warning that,
while an outer circle of benefits might affect the nation, the inner
circle, the light and life of God indeed, embraced "a remnant" only;
even from the day when Isaac and not Ishmael was made heir of Abraham.
And then he ponders the impenetrable mystery of the relation of the
Infinite Will to human wills; he remembers how, in a way whose full
reasons are unknowable, (but they are good, for they are in God,) the
Infinite Will has to do with our willing; genuine and responsible
though our willing is. And before that opaque veil he rests. He knows
that only righteousness and love is behind it; but he knows that _it
is_ a veil, and that in front of it man's thought must cease and be
silent. Sin is altogether man's fault. But when man turns from sin it
is all God's mercy, free, special, distinguishing. Be silent, and
trust Him, O man whom He has made. Remember, He _has made_ thee. It is
not only that He is greater than thou, or stronger; but He has made
thee. Be reasonably willing to trust, out of sight, the reasons of thy
MAKER.
Then he turns again with new regrets and yearnings to the thought of
that wonderful Gospel which was meant for Israel and for the world,
but which Israel rejected, and now would fain check on its way to the
world. Lastly, he recalls the future, still full of eternal promises
for the chosen race, and through them full of blessing for the world;
till he rises at length from perplexity and anguish, and the wreck of
once eager expectations, into that great Doxology in which he blesses
the Eternal Sovereign for the very mystery of His ways, and adores Him
because He is His own eternal End.
[Sidenote: Ver. 1.] =Truth I speak in Christ,= speaking as the member
of the All-Truthful; =I do not lie, my conscience, in the Holy Ghost,=
informed and governed by Him, =bearing me concurrent witness=--the
soul within affirming to itself the word spoken without to
others--[Sidenote: Ver. 2.] =that I have great grief, and my heart has
incessant pain,= yes, the heart in which (v. 5) the Spirit has "poured
out" God's love and joy; there is room for both experiences in its
human depths. [Sidenote: Ver. 3.] =For I was wishing, I myself, to be
anathema from Christ,= to be devoted to eternal separation from Him;
awful dream of uttermost sacrifice, made impossible only because it
would mean self-robbery from the Lord who had bought him; a spiritual
suicide by sin--=for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen flesh-wise.=
[Sidenote: Ver. 4.] =For they are (οἵτινές εἰσιν) Israelites,=
bearers of the glorious theocratic name, sons of the "Prince with God"
(Gen. xxxii. 28); =theirs is the adoption,= the call to be Jehovah's
own filial race, "His son, His firstborn" (Exod. iv. 22) of the
peoples; =and the glory,= the Shechinah of the Eternal Presence,
sacramentally seen in Tabernacle and Temple, spiritually spread over
the race; =and the Covenants,= with Abraham, and Isaac, and Levi, and
Moses, and Aaron, and Phinehas, and David; =and the Legislation,= the
holy Moral Code, =and the Ritual,= with its divinely ordered
symbolism, that vast Parable of Christ, =and the Promises,= of "the
pleasant land," and the perpetual favour, and the coming Lord;
[Sidenote: Ver. 5.] =theirs are the Fathers,= patriarchs, and priests,
and kings; =and out of them, as to what is flesh-wise, is the
Christ,--He who is over all things, God, blessed to all eternity.
Amen.[152]=
It is indeed a splendid roll of honours, recited over this race
"separate among the nations," a race which to-day as much as ever
remains the enigma of history, to be solved only by Revelation. "_The
Jews, your Majesty_," was the reply of Frederick the Great's old
believing courtier, when asked with a smile for the credentials of the
Bible; the short answer silenced the Encyclopædist King. It is indeed
a riddle, made of indissoluble facts, this people everywhere
dispersed, yet everywhere individual; scribes of a Book which has
profoundly influenced mankind, and which is recognized by the most
various races as an august and lawful claimant to be divine, yet
themselves, in so many aspects, provincial to the heart; historians of
their own glories, but at least equally of their own unworthiness and
disgrace; transmitters of predictions which may be slighted, but can
never, as a whole, be explained away, yet obstinate deniers of the
majestic fulfilment in the Lord of Christendom; human in every fault
and imperfection, yet so concerned in bringing to man the message of
the Divine that Jesus Himself said of them (John iv. 22), "Salvation
comes from the Jews." On this wonderful race this its most illustrious
member (after his Lord) here fixes his eyes, full of tears. He sees
their glories pass before him--and then realizes the spiritual squalor
and misery of their rejection of the Christ of God. He groans, and in
real agony asks how it can be. One thing only cannot be; the promises
have not failed; there has been no failure in the Promiser. What may
seem such is rather man's misreading of the promise.
[Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =But it is not as though the word of God has been
thrown out (ἐκπέπτωκε),= that "word" whose divine honour was dearer
to him than even that of his people. =For not all who come from Israel
constitute Israel;= [Sidenote: Ver. 7.] =nor, because they are seed of
Abraham, are they all= his =children,= in the sense of family life and
rights; =but "In Isaac shall a seed be called thee"= (Gen. xxi. 12);
Isaac, and not any son of thy body begotten, is father of those whom
thou shalt claim as thy covenant-race. [Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =That is to
say, not the children of his (τῆς) flesh are the children of his
(τοῦ) God; no, the children of the promise,= indicated and limited
by its developed terms, =are reckoned as seed.= [Sidenote: Ver. 9.]
=For of the promise this was the word= (Gen. xviii. 10, 14),
="According to this time I will come, and Sarah,= she and not _any_
spouse of thine; no Hagar, no Keturah, but Sarah, =shall have a son."=
And the law of limitations did not stop there, but contracted yet
again the stream of even physical filiation: [Sidenote: Ver. 10.] =Nor
only so, but Rebecca too--being with child,= with twin children, =of
one husband=--no problem of complex parentage, as with Abraham,
occurring here--=even of Isaac our father,= just named as the selected
heir--[Sidenote: Ver. 11.] =(for= it was =while they were not yet
born, while they had not yet shewn any conduct (πραξάντων τι) good
or bad, that the choice-wise purpose of God might remain,= sole and
sovereign, [Sidenote: Ver. 12.] =not based on works, but= wholly =on
the Caller)--it was said to her= (Gen. xxv. 23), ="The greater shall
be bondman to the less." As it stands written,= in the prophet's
message a millennium later, ="Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated,"[153]=
I repudiated him as heir.
So the limit has run always along with the promise. Ishmael is
Abraham's son, yet not his son. Esau is Isaac's son, yet not his son.
And though we trace in Ishmael and in Esau, as they grow,
characteristics which may seem to explain the limitation, this will
not really do. For the chosen one in each case has his conspicuous
unfavourable characteristics too. And the whole tone of the record
(not to speak of this its apostolic interpretation) looks towards
mystery, not explanation. Esau's "profanity" was the concurrent
occasion, not the cause, of the choice of Jacob. The reason of the
choice lay in the depths of God, that World "dark with excess of
bright." All is well there, but not the less all is unknown.
So we are led up to the shut door of the sanctuary of God's Choice.
Touch it; it is adamantine, and it is fast locked. No blind Destiny
has turned the key, and lost it. No inaccessible Tyrant sits within,
playing to himself both sides of a game of fate, and indifferent to
the cry of the soul. The Key-Bearer, whose Name is engraved on the
portal, is "He that liveth, and was dead, and is alive for evermore"
(Rev. i. 18). And if you listen you will hear words within, like the
soft deep voice of many waters, yet of an eternal Heart; "_I am that I
am; I will that I will; trust Me_." But the door _is_ locked; and the
Voice _is_ mystery.
Ah, what agonies have been felt in human souls, as men have looked at
that gate, and pondered the unknown interior! The Eternal knows, with
infinite kindness and sympathy, the pain unspeakable which can beset
the creature when it wrestles with His Eternity, and tries to clasp it
with both hands, and to say that "that is all!" We do not find in
Scripture, surely, anything like an anathema for that awful sense of
the unknown which can gather on the soul drawn--irresistibly as it
sometimes seems to be--into the problems of the Choice of God, and
oppressed as with "the weight of all the seas upon it," by the very
questions stated presently here by the Apostle. The Lord knoweth, not
only His will, but our heart, in these matters. And where He entirely
declines to explain (surely because we are not yet of age to
understand Him if He did) He yet shews us JESUS, and bids us meet the
silence of the mystery with the silence of a personal trust in the
personal Character revealed in Him.
In something of such stillness shall we approach the paragraph now to
follow? Shall we listen, not to explain away, not even over much to
explain, but to submit, with a submission which is not a suppressed
resentment but an entire reliance? We shall find that the whole
matter, in its practical aspect, has a voice articulate enough for the
soul which sees Christ, and believes on Him. It says to that soul,
"Who maketh thee to differ? Who hath fashioned thee to honour? Why art
thou not now, as once, guiltily rejecting Christ, or, what is the
same, postponing Him? Thank HIM who has 'compelled thee,' yet without
violation of thyself, 'to come in.' See in thy choice of Him His mercy
on thee. And now, fall at His feet, to bless Him, to serve Him, and to
trust Him. Think ill of thyself. Think reverently of others. And
remember (the Infinite, who has chosen thee, says it), He willeth not
the death of a sinner, He loved the world, He bids thee to tell it
that He loves it, to tell it that He is Love."
Now we listen. With a look which speaks awe, but not misgiving,
disclosing past tempests of doubt, but now a rest of faith, the
Apostle dictates again:
[Sidenote: Ver. 14.] =What therefore shall we say? Is there injustice
at God's bar (παρὰ τῷ Θεῷ)? Away with the thought.= The thing is,
in the deepest sense, unthinkable. God, the God of Revelation, the God
of Christ, is a Being who, if unjust--_ceases to be_, "denies
_Himself_." But the thought that His reasons for some given action
should be, at least to us now, absolute mystery, He being the Infinite
Personality, is not unthinkable at all. And in such a case it is not
unreasonable, but the deepest reason, to ask for no more than His
articulate guarantee, so to speak, that the mystery is fact; that He
is conscious of it, alive to it (speaking humanly); and that He avows
it as His will. For when GOD, the God of Christ, bids us "take His
will for it," it is a different thing from an attempt, however
powerful, to frighten us into silence. It is a reminder WHO He is who
speaks; the Being who is kindred to us, who is in relations with us,
who loved us, but who also has absolutely made us, and cannot (because
we are sheer products of His will) make us so much His equals as to
tell us all. So the Apostle proceeds with a "_for_" whose bearing we
have thus already indicated: [Sidenote: Ver. 15.] =For to Moses he
says= (Exod. xxxiv. 19), in the dark sanctuary of Sinai, ="I shall
pity whomsoever I do pity, and compassionate whomsoever I do
compassionate";= My account of My saving action shall stop there.
[Sidenote: Ver. 16.] =It appears (ἄρα) therefore that it,= the
ultimate account of salvation, =is not of= (as the effect is "_of_"
the first cause) =the willer, nor of the runner,= the carrier of
willing into work, =but of the Pitier--God.= [Sidenote: Ver. 17.] =For
the Scripture[154] says= (Exod. x. 16) =to Pharaoh,= that large
example of defiant human sin, real and guilty, but also, concurrently,
of the sovereign Choice which sentenced him to go his own way, and
used him as a beacon at its end, ="For this very purpose I raised thee
up,= made thee stand, even beneath the Plagues, =that I might display
in thee My power, and that My Name,= as of the just God who strikes
down the proud, =might be told far and wide (διαγγελῇ) in all the
earth."=
Pharaoh's was a case of concurrent phenomena. _A man_ was there on the
one hand, willingly, deliberately, and most guiltily, battling with
right, and rightly bringing ruin on his own head, wholly of himself.
_God_ was there on the other hand, making that man a monument not of
grace but of judgment. And that side, that line, is isolated here, and
treated as if it were all.
[Sidenote: Ver. 18.] =It appears then that whom He pleases, He pities,
and whom He pleases, He hardens,= in that sense in which He "hardened
Pharaoh's heart," "made it stiff" (חזק), "made it heavy" (כבד), "made
it harsh" (קשׁה)--by sentencing it to have its own way. Yes,[155] thus
"_it appears_." And beyond that inference we can take no step of
thought but this--that the Subject of that mysterious "_will_," HE who
thus "_pleases_," and "_pities_," and "_hardens_," is no other than
the God of Jesus Christ. HE may be, not only submitted to, but
trusted, in that unknowable sovereignty of His will. Yet listen
to the question which speaks out the problem of all hearts:
[Sidenote: Ver. 19.] =You will say to me therefore, Why does He
still,= after such an avowal of His sovereignty, softening this heart,
hardening that, why does He still =find fault?= Ah why? =For His act
of will who has withstood?= (Nay, you have withstood His will, and so
have I. Not one word of the argument has contradicted the primary fact
of our will, nor therefore our responsibility. But this he does not
bring in here.) Nay rather, rather than take such an attitude of
narrow and helpless logic, think deeper; [Sidenote: Ver. 20.] =Nay
rather, O man,= O mere human being (ὦ ἄνθρωπε), =you--who are you, who
are answering back to your (τῷ) God? Shall the thing formed say to its
Former, Why did you make me like this?= [Sidenote: Ver. 21.] =Has not
the potter authority over his (τοῦ) clay, out of the same kneaded
mass to make this vessel for honour but that for dishonour?=
[Sidenote: Ver. 22.] =But if God, being pleased to demonstrate His
(τὴν) wrath, and to evidence what He can do=--_what_ will St Paul go
on to say? That the Eternal, being thus "pleased," created responsible
beings on purpose to destroy them, gave them personality, and then
compelled them to transgress? No, he does not say so. The sternly
simple illustration, in itself one of the least relieved utterances in
the whole Scripture--that dread Potter and his kneaded Clay!--gives
way, in its application, to a statement of the work of God on man full
of significance in its variation. Here are indeed the "_vessels_"
still; and the vessels "_for honour_" are such because of "_mercy_,"
and His own hand has "_prepared them for glory_." And there are the
vessels "_for dishonour_," and in a sense of awful mystery they are
such because of "_wrath_." But the "_wrath_" of the Holy One can fall
only upon demerit; so these "_vessels_" have merited His displeasure
of themselves. And they are "_prepared for ruin_"; but where is any
mention of _His_ hand preparing them? And meanwhile He "_bears them in
much longsuffering_." The mystery is there, impenetrable as ever, when
we try to pierce behind "His will." But on every side it is limited
and qualified by facts which witness to the compassions of the
Infinite Sovereign even in His judgments, and remind us that sin is
altogether "of" the creature. So we take up the words where we dropped
them above: =What if He bore,= (the tense throws us forward into
eternity, to look back thence on His ways in time,) =in much
longsuffering, vessels of wrath, adjusted for ruin?= And acted
otherwise with others, [Sidenote: Ver. 23.] =that He might evidence
the wealth of His glory,= the resources of His inmost Character,
poured =upon vessels of pity, which He prepared in advance for
glory,= by the processes of justifying and hallowing grace--
[Sidenote: Ver. 24.] =whom in fact (καὶ) He called,= effectually, in
their conversion, =even us, not only from the Jews, but also from the
Gentiles?= For while the lineal Israel, with its privilege and its
apparent failure, is here first in view, there lies behind it the
phenomenon of "the Israel of God," the heaven-born heirs of the
Fathers, a race not of blood but of the Spirit. The great Promise, all
the while, had set towards _that_ Israel as its final scope; and now
he gives proof from the Prophets that this intention was at least half
revealed all along the line of revelation.
[Sidenote: Ver. 25.] =As actually (καὶ) in our (τῷ) Hosea=
(ii. 23, Heb., 25) in the book we know as such, =He says, "I will call
what= was =not My people, My people; and the not-beloved one,
beloved.[156]= [Sidenote: Ver. 26.] =And= (another Hosean oracle,[157]
in line with the first) =it shall be, in the place where it was said
to them, Not My people are ye, there they shall be called sons of the
living God."= In both places the first incidence of the words is on
the restoration of the Ten Tribes to covenant blessings. But the
Apostle, in the Spirit, sees an ultimate and satisfying reference to a
vaster application of the same principle; the bringing of the
rebelling and banished ones of all mankind into covenant and blessing.
Meanwhile the Prophets who foretell that great ingathering indicate
with equal solemnity the spiritual failure of all but a fraction of
the lineal heirs of promise. [Sidenote: Ver. 27.] =But Isaiah cries
over[158] Israel, "If the number of the sons of Israel should be as
the sand of the sea, the remnant= only =shall be saved;=
[Sidenote: Ver. 28.] =for as one who completes and cuts short will the
Lord do His work (λόγον, דבר) upon the earth."[159]= Here again
is a first and second incidence of the prophecy. In every stage of the
history of Sin and Redemption the Apostle, in the Spirit, sees an
embryo of the great Development. So, in the wofully limited numbers of
the Exiles who returned from the old captivity he sees an embodied
prophecy of the fewness of the sons of Israel who shall return from
the exile of incredulity to their true Messiah. [Sidenote: Ver. 29.]
=And as Isaiah= (i. 9) =has foretold (προείρηκεν),= so it is;
="Unless the Lord of Hosts (Σαβαώθ, צבאות) had left us a seed,[160]
like Sodom we had become, and to Gomorrah we had been resembled."=
Such was the mystery of the facts, alike in the older and in the later
story of Israel. A remnant, still a remnant, not the masses, entered
upon an inheritance of such ample provision, and so sincerely offered.
And behind this lay the insoluble shadow within which is concealed the
relation of the Infinite Will to the wills of men. But also, in front
of the phenomenon, concealed by no shadow save that which is cast by
human sin, the Apostle sees and records the reasons, as they reside in
the human will, of this "salvation of a remnant." The promises of God,
all along, and supremely now in Christ, had been conditioned (it was
in the nature of spiritual things that it should be so) by submission
to His way of fulfilment. The golden gift was there, in the most
generous of hands, stretched out to give. But it could be put only
into a recipient hand open and empty. It could be taken only by
submissive and self-forgetting faith. And man, in his fall, had
twisted his will out of gear for such an action. Was it wonderful
that, by his own fault, he failed to receive? [Sidenote: Ver. 30.]
=What therefore shall we say?[161] Why, that the Gentiles, though they
did not (τὰ μὴ) pursue righteousness,= though no Oracle had set them
on the track of a true divine acceptance and salvation, =achieved
righteousness,= grasped it when once revealed, =but[162] the
righteousness that results on faith;= [Sidenote: Ver. 31.] =but Israel,
pursuing a law of righteousness,= aiming at what is, for fallen man,
the impossible goal, a perfect meeting of the Law's one principle of
acceptance, "This do and thou shalt live," =did not attain that
law[163];= that is to say, practically, as we now review their story
of vain efforts in the line of self, did not attain the acceptance to
which that law was to be the avenue. The Pharisee as such, the
Pharisee Saul of Tarsus for example, neither had peace with God, nor
dared to think he had, in the depth of his soul. He knew enough of the
divine ideal to be hopelessly uneasy about his realization of it. He
could say, stiffly enough, "_God, I thank Thee_" (Luke xviii. 11, 14);
but he "went down to his house" unhappy, unsatisfied, unjustified.
[Sidenote: Ver. 32.] =On what account? Because= it was =not of faith,
but as of works[164];= in the unquiet dream that man must, and could,
work up the score of merit to a valid claim. =They stumbled[165] on
the Stone of their (τοῦ) stumbling;= [Sidenote: Ver. 33.] =as it
stands written= (Isai. viii. 14, xxviii. 16), in a passage where the
great perpetual Promise is in view, and where the blind people are
seen rejecting it as their foothold in favour of policy, or of
formalism, =Behold, I place in Sion,= in the very centre of light and
privilege, =a Stone of stumbling, and a Rock of upsetting;= and =he
who[166] confides in Him,= (or, perhaps, in it,) he who rests on it,
on Him (ἐπ' αὐτῷ), =shall not be put to shame.=
One great Rabbi at least, Rashi, of the twelfth century, bears witness
to the mind of the Jewish Church upon the significance of that mystic
Rock. "Behold," so runs his interpretation, "I have established a
King, Messiah, who shall be in Zion a stone of proving."
Was ever prophecy more profoundly verified in event? Not for the
lineal Israel only, but for Man, the King Messiah is, as ever, the
Stone of either stumbling or foundation. He is, as ever, "a Sign
spoken against." He is, as ever, the Rock of Ages, where the believing
sinner hides, and rests, and builds,
"Below the storm-mark of the sky,
Above the flood-mark of the deep."
Have we known what it is to stumble over Him? "We will not have this
Man to reign over us"; "We were never in bondage to any man; who is He
that He should set us free?" And are we now lifted by a Hand of
omnipotent kindness to a place deep in His clefts, safe on His summit,
"knowing nothing" for the peace of conscience, the satisfaction of
thought, the liberation of the will, the abolition of death, "but
Jesus Christ, and Him crucified"? Then let us think with always
humbled sympathy of those who, for whatever reason, still "forsake
their own mercy" (Jonah ii. 8). And let us inform them where we are,
and how we are here, and that "the ground is good." And for ourselves,
that we may do this the better, let us often read again the simple,
strong assurance which closes this chapter of mysteries; "_He who
confides in Him shall not be put to shame_"; "_shall not be
disappointed_"; "_shall not_" in the vivid phrase of the Hebrew
itself, "_make haste_." No, we shall not "make haste." From that safe
Place no hurried retreat shall ever need to be beaten. That Fortress
cannot be stormed; it cannot be surprised; it cannot crumble. For "IT
is HE"; the Son, the Lamb, of God; the sinner's everlasting
Righteousness, the believer's unfailing Source of peace, of purity,
and of power.
DETACHED NOTE TO IX. 5.
The following is transcribed, with a few modifications, from the
writer's Commentary on the Epistle in _The Cambridge Bible_:
["_Who is over all, God blessed for ever._] The Greek may, with more
or less facility, be translated (1) as in A.V.; or (2) '=who is God
over all,=' etc.; or (3) '=blessed for ever be He who is God over
all=' (_i.e._, the Eternal Father).... If we adopt (3) we take the
Apostle to be led, by the mention of the Incarnation, to utter a
sudden and solemn doxology to the God who gave that crowning mercy. In
favour of this it is urged (by some entirely orthodox commentators, as
H. A. W. Meyer) that St Paul nowhere else styles the Lord simply
'God,' but rather 'the Son of God,' etc. By this they do not mean to
detract from the Lord's Deity; but they maintain that St Paul always
so states that Deity, under divine guidance, as to mark the
'Subordination of the Son'--that Subordination which is not a
difference of Nature, Power, or Eternity, but of Order; just such as
is marked by the simple but profound words FATHER and SON.
"But on the other hand there is Tit. ii. 13, where the Greek is (at
least) _perfectly capable_ of the rendering, 'our great God and
Saviour, Jesus Christ.' [There is Acts xx. 28, where the evidence is
very strong for the reading, retained by the R.V. (text), '_the Church
of God_, which He purchased with His own blood.' And if St John is to
be taken to report words exactly, in his narrative of the
Resurrection, in an incident whose point is deeply connected with
verbal precision, we have one of the first Apostles, within eight days
of the Resurrection, addressing the Risen Lord (John xx. 28) as '_my
God_.' (We call attention to this as against the contention that only
the latest developments of inspiration, represented in _e.g._ St
John's Preamble to his Gospel, shew us Christ called explicitly God.)]
"If ... it is divinely true that 'the WORD IS GOD,' it is surely far
from wonderful if here and there, in peculiar connexions, [St Paul]
should so speak of Christ, even though guided to keep another phase of
the truth _habitually_ in view.
"Now, beyond all fair question, the Greek here is quite naturally
rendered as in the A.V.; had it not been for historical controversy,
probably, no other rendering would have been suggested. And lastly,
and what is important, the context far rather suggests _a lament_
(over the fall of Israel) than an ascription of praise. And what is
most significant of all, it pointedly suggests _some explicit allusion
to the super_-human Nature of Christ, by the words '_according to the
flesh_.' But if there is such an allusion, then it must lie in the
words, '_over all, God_.'"
It may be interesting to add the following note from Franz Delitzsch
(_Brief an die Römer in das Hebräische übersetzt und aus Talmud und
Midrasch erläutert_, Leipzig, 1870, p. 89):
"_Christus, nach dem Fleisch, welcher ist Gott über alles, hochgelobet
in Ewigkeit._ Deshalb nämlich weil er Gott und Mensch in Einer Person
ist. Er ist der andere David (דוד אחר), und ist Jahve unsere
Gerechtigkeit (יהוה צדקנו Jer. xxiii. 6). Auch der Midrasch
_Mischle_ zu Spr. xix. 21 zählt ה׳ צדקנו neben דוד unter den
Messiasnamen auf, und auch anderwärts bezeugen Talmud und Midrasch,
dass der Messias יהוה heisst; denn 'Gott war in Christo und
versöhnte die Welt mit ihm selber.' Paulus sagt im Grunde nichts
anderes als was Jesaia ix. 5, wo die Zunz'sche Bibelübersetzung, der
exegetischen Wahrheit die Ehre gebend, übersetzt: 'Man nennt seinen
Namen: Wunder, Berather, starker Gott, ewiger Vater, Fürst des
Friedens.' Der Messias ist und heisst אל גבור und אבי־עד, also
obwohl nicht האלהים, doch אלהים (אל) לעולמים."
Delitzsch renders the close of ix. 5 thus:
וַאֲשֶׁר מֵהֶם יָצָא הַמָּשִׁיחַ לְפִי בְשָׂרוֹ אֲשֶׁר הוּא אֵל עַל־הַכֹּל מְבֹרָךְ לְעוֹל מִים אָמֵו
[152] For this rendering, rather than the alternative, "_Blessed for
ever be the God who is over all_," see the reasons offered below, p.
261.
[153] Mal. i. 2, 3.--It is plain that "_hatred_" in such a connexion
(and cp. Matt. vi. 24, Luke xiv. 26) need mean no more than relative
repudiation. No personal animosity is in question, but a decisive
rejection of a rival claim. See Grimm's _N. T. Lexicon_ (Thayer),
_s.v._ μισεῖν.
[154] Observe the vital personality of the phrase; "_the Scripture
speaks_." Cp. Gal. iii. 8 for perhaps the strongest example of the
kind.
[155] Cp. Psal. lxxxi. 12, and above, i. 24, 26.
[156] In the Hebrew, literally, "_I will pity the not-pitied one_"
(feminine, of the idealized people or church; so in the Greek here,
ἠγαπημένην). Divine "_pity_" is more than "akin to" divine "_love_."
[157] i. 10 (Hebrew, ii. 1).
[158] Ὑπέρ: with the thought of a _lament over_ the ruined ones.
The preposition appears here in its original and literal meaning.
[159] Isa. x. 22, 23: perhaps with an insertion of the phrase, "_the
number of_," from Hos. i. 10. As to wording, he quotes freely from the
Hebrew, more nearly from the Lxx. But the substance is identical as
compared with both. Following considerable documentary evidence, we
omit here the Greek words represented by "_in righteousness; because a
short work_."
[160] The equivalent of the Lxx. for the "very small _remnant_" (שׂריד)
of the Hebrew.
[161] For the seventh and last time he uses this characteristic
phrase.
[162] Δέ: in slightly suggested contrast to the ideal of the Jew, a
_merited_ acceptance.
[163] Omit here the word δικαιοσύνης.
[164] Omit τοῦ νόμου.
[165] Omit γάρ.
[166] Omit πᾶς.