The Branches Do Not Support the Root

The question borrows the words of Psalm 94:14, “the LORD will not cast off his people”, so Scripture has already answered it. Benjamin was the tribe of Saul, Paul’s Hebrew namesake, and the tribe almost wiped out in Judges 20–21, when six hundred men survived at the rock Rimmon. A remnant tribe produced this witness.

“Foreknew” is the verb of 8:29. “Wot” is the 1611 present of “to wit”, to know. The Greek says “in Elias”, the Jewish way of citing a passage by its subject, the section about Elijah. “Maketh intercession” is the verb used in 8:27 and 8:34 of the Spirit and Christ pleading for the saints; Elijah pleads against Israel.

Elijah says these words twice at Horeb, in 1 Kings 19:10 and again in 19:14, word for word, before and after the wind, the earthquake and the fire. Paul puts the killing of prophets before the altars. The one seeking his life was Jezebel, who had already cut off the prophets of the LORD (1 Kings 18:4).

“The answer of God” is chrematismos, a divine oracle, a word found only here in the New Testament. The Greek puts a feminine article before Baal, which the King James fills out as “the image of”. The usual explanation is that Greek readers substituted aischyne, shame, when they came to the name Baal.

Three forms of one Greek root sit close together: Elijah was “left” alone, God “reserved”, literally left over, seven thousand, and now there is a “remnant”, leimma, a leftover. “At this present time” is Paul’s phrase for the now of the gospel, used in 3:26 and 8:18.

The second sentence, “But if it be of works...”, is absent from the oldest manuscripts and is found in later copies, which the King James follows. Even without it the first sentence stands as a definition: grace mixed with earning stops being grace at all.

“Seeketh” is present tense: Israel is still seeking. “The election” is an abstract noun standing for the chosen people within Israel. “Blinded” is poroo, from poros, a callus or hardened stone, and means hardened; the same verb describes the disciples’ hearts in Mark 6:52.

Two passages are woven together. “The spirit of slumber” is from Isaiah 29:10, and the eyes, ears and “unto this day” from Deuteronomy 29:4, where Moses speaks at the end of forty years in the wilderness. “Slumber” is katanyxis, a stupor, the numbness of someone stunned.

Psalm 69:22. The verse just before it in the psalm reads, “in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink”, which the gospels saw fulfilled at the cross, and John 2:17 quotes the same psalm’s “zeal of thine house”. The table may be a feast or a sacrificial meal, a place of security that becomes a trap.

The Hebrew of Psalm 69:23 reads “make their loins continually to shake”; the Greek, which Paul follows, has “bow down their back”, the stoop of someone carrying a load. “Alway” is dia pantos, continually, and the next verse at once asks whether that bent back means a final fall.

“Stumbled” is ptaio, to trip, while “fall” is pipto, to go down flat. The second “fall” is a different word again, paraptoma, the “offence” of Adam in 5:15–20, a false step. “Provoke them to jealousy” reaches back to Moses’ song quoted in 10:19.

“Diminishing” is hettema, a defeat or loss, the word Paul uses for lawsuits among believers in 1 Corinthians 6:7, “utterly a fault”. “How much more” is the argument from lesser to greater that ran through 5:9–17. “Fulness” is pleroma, the full measure, set against the shortfall.

Only here does Paul call himself “the apostle of the Gentiles” in so many words. The verse also tells us who is reading: Paul addresses the Roman church’s Gentiles directly. “Office” is diakonia, a servant’s work rather than a rank, and “magnify” is doxazo, to make much of.

“Provoke to emulation” is parazeloo, the same verb the King James rendered “provoke to jealousy” in verse 11. “My flesh” means my own kin. The aim is modest: “some of them”. Paul uses the same words in 1 Corinthians 9:22, “that I might by all means save some.”

“Casting away” is apobole, a different word from the “cast away” of verse 1, and it can mean loss; in Acts 27:22 Paul promises “no loss of any man’s life”. “Reconciling” is katallage, the reconciliation of 5:10–11, which the King James there rendered “atonement”.

Numbers 15:20–21 commands a cake from the first of the dough to be given as a heave offering, which sets apart the whole batch. “Lump” is phyrama, the dough of 9:21 again. The second image moves from bakery to orchard and prepares the olive tree.

Jeremiah 11:16 says the LORD called Israel’s name “A green olive tree, fair, and of goodly fruit”. “Graffed” is the older English spelling of grafted, from the French graffe. “Fatness” is piotes, the rich oily sap that made the olive the most valued tree of the Mediterranean.

“Boast not against” is katakauchaomai, to boast down upon someone, the verb of James 2:13, “mercy rejoiceth against judgment”. From verse 17 onward the “thou” is singular: Paul confronts one imagined Gentile believer. “Bearest” is bastazo, to carry a load.

The objector returns, “Thou wilt say then”, as in 9:19. The Greek adds an emphatic ego to the boast: that I, of all people, might be grafted in. The logic sounds almost reasonable, which is what makes it dangerous.

“Well” is kalos, “quite so”: Paul concedes the fact and refuses the conclusion. “Standest” echoes 10:3, where Israel tried to make a righteousness of its own stand. “Highminded” is hypselophroneo, to think lofty thoughts, found elsewhere only in 1 Timothy 6:17.

“Spared not” is pheidomai, the verb of 8:32, “He that spared not his own Son”. “Natural branches” is literally “branches according to nature”, a phrase that sets up “contrary to nature” in verse 24. The warning is framed as a lesser-to-greater argument turned against the listener.

“Severity” is apotomia, built on a verb meaning to cut off; the word itself holds the pruning knife that appears at the end of the verse. It occurs only here in the New Testament, twice. “Goodness” is chrestotes, the kindness of 2:4 that “leadeth thee to repentance”.

“Abide” and the “continue” of verse 22 are the same Greek verb, epimeno. The Gentile must remain in goodness; Israel need only not remain in unbelief. “God is able” echoes 4:21, where Abraham was persuaded that what God promised “he was able also to perform.”

“Contrary to nature” is para physin, the phrase of 1:26. There it described human conduct; here God himself acts against the usual order. Growers normally graft a cultivated shoot onto wild stock. The Roman writer Columella describes grafting wild olive into a failing tree to revive it, though Paul’s argument does not depend on that practice.

“I would not... that ye should be ignorant” is Paul’s formula for something weighty (1:13; 1 Corinthians 10:1; 1 Thessalonians 4:13). A mystery in his letters is a secret now disclosed, not a puzzle left unsolved. “Wise in your own conceits” recalls Proverbs 3:7, and Paul repeats it in 12:16. “Blindness” is porosis, hardening.

“And so” is houtos, “in this way”, a word about manner rather than sequence. Isaiah 59:20 in Hebrew says the Redeemer comes “to Zion”, and in the Greek “for the sake of Zion”. Paul’s “out of Sion” may draw on Psalm 14:7, “Oh that the salvation of Israel were come out of Zion!”

The first half is Isaiah 59:21. The second, “when I shall take away their sins”, comes from Isaiah 27:9, where Jacob’s iniquity is purged and the altars are beaten to chalkstones. Jeremiah 31:34 ties the new covenant to the same forgiveness.

The two halves of the Greek are exactly balanced, clause against clause. “For your sakes” means the Gentiles have gained from Israel’s present opposition. “The fathers” brings back 9:5, “whose are the fathers”, and the holy root of verse 16.

In Greek “without repentance” comes first, for emphasis. The word, ametameletos, means not to be regretted, and its only other use is 2 Corinthians 7:10, “repentance to salvation not to be repented of”. “Gifts” is charismata, and the list of 9:4 shows what they are.

“Have not believed” is apeitheo, to disobey, the participle behind “disobedient” in 10:21. “In times past” sends the Gentile reader back to the history sketched in 1:18–32. The verse and the next are built as a pair, like two pans of a balance.

Several of the oldest manuscripts read a second “now”: “that they also may now obtain mercy”, which the King James does not have. “Through your mercy” can attach to either verb, so it may be the Gentiles’ mercy that occasions Israel’s disobedience or the mercy through which Israel receives.

“Concluded” is synkleio, to shut in together, the verb of Luke 5:6, where the nets “inclosed a great multitude of fishes”. Galatians 3:22 says the Scripture “hath concluded all under sin”. The Greek reads “the all”, both groups just described, penned in so that mercy is the only way out.

The Greek can be read as three depths, of riches, of wisdom and of knowledge, rather than the King James’s two. “Past finding out” is anexichniastos, untraceable, from ichnos, a footprint: ways whose tracks cannot be followed. Ephesians 3:8 uses it for “the unsearchable riches of Christ”.

Isaiah 40:13, from the chapter that opens “Comfort ye my people.” Paul quotes the same question in 1 Corinthians 2:16 and there answers it: “But we have the mind of Christ.” Here he leaves it unanswered.

The source is Job 41:11, God speaking from the whirlwind after describing leviathan: “Who hath prevented me, that I should repay him? whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine.” Paul’s wording stands closer to the Hebrew than to the Greek translation of Job.

Marcus Aurelius would later address Nature in similar words, “from thee are all things, in thee all things, to thee all things” (Meditations 4.23), and Paul uses a like formula of the Father and of Christ in 1 Corinthians 8:6. The “Amen” closes the three chapters that the “Amen” of 9:5 opened.