Israel's Promises and the Freedom of Mercy

“Bearing me witness” is symmartyreo, to testify alongside, the verb of 8:16 where the Spirit “beareth witness with our spirit”. A few lines after that assurance, the same co-witness is called to vouch for grief. Paul swears in both directions, positively and by denial, “I lie not”, as though expecting to be doubted.

The two nouns climb. Lype is grief of mind; odyne is pain, a word the New Testament uses only here and in 1 Timothy 6:10, where people have “pierced themselves through with many sorrows”. “Continual” is adialeiptos, unceasing, the word Paul uses for his prayers in 1:9.

“Accursed” is anathema, the Greek Old Testament word for things devoted to destruction, such as Jericho in Joshua 6:17. The verb is imperfect, “I was wishing” or “I could wish”, the idiom for a wish that cannot be granted. Moses offered to be blotted out for Israel in Exodus 32:32, the chapter before the one Paul quotes in verse 15.

Paul uses the covenant name, Israelites, not Jews. “Adoption”, huiothesia, is the word he gave believers in 8:15 and 8:23, and here Israel had it first, as in Exodus 4:22: “Israel is my son, even my firstborn.” “The service of God” is latreia, the temple worship.

“As concerning the flesh” has a small neuter article in Greek, “so far as the flesh goes”, which implies there is more to say about him than descent, just as 1:3–4 set Christ’s line from David beside his declaration as Son of God. The fathers are Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the list ends with their greatest descendant.

“Taken none effect” is ekpipto, to fall out or drop away, used of a withered flower falling in James 1:11 and of ships driven aground in Acts 27. The word Israel does double duty in one sentence: those descended from the man Israel, and the Israel the promise has in view.

The quotation is Genesis 21:12, spoken on the day Sarah demanded that Hagar and her son be cast out. The next verse in Genesis calls Ishmael Abraham’s seed as well. Both boys were seed; only one line was named, and that is the distinction Paul needs.

“Counted” is logizomai, the reckoning verb that ran through chapter 4, where Abraham’s faith was counted for righteousness. Being seed is here a matter of being reckoned so. “Children of the flesh” and “children of the promise” echo the two mothers Paul contrasts at length in Galatians 4:23.

The words fuse Genesis 18:10 and 18:14, the visit at Mamre. “At this time” means at the set time, this season next year. It is the promise Sarah laughed at from the tent door, and Paul makes it the definition of what a word of promise is.

“By one” stresses a single father and a single conception; the Greek word is koite, a bed, the root of “chambering” in 13:13. Isaac and Ishmael had different mothers, so a reader could explain the difference away. Twins from one bed leave no such exit. Paul calls Isaac “our father” to a church with many Gentiles in it.

The King James brackets mark a real break in the Greek, where Paul interrupts himself before finishing the sentence. “Purpose” is prothesis, the word of 8:28, “called according to his purpose”. “Him that calleth” is a present participle: God is still the one calling, not only the one who once called.

Genesis 25:23 was said to Rebekah, not to Isaac, after she went to enquire of the LORD about the struggle in her womb. In Genesis Esau never personally serves Jacob; it is Jacob who bows seven times and calls him “my lord” (33:3). The oracle came true through their peoples, when Edom served David (2 Samuel 8:14).

Malachi 1:2–3, from the last book of the prophets, centuries after the twins. “Hated” is a Hebrew idiom of preference: Genesis 29:30–31 says Jacob “loved also Rachel more than Leah” and then calls Leah “hated”. Jesus uses the same idiom in Luke 14:26 about hating father and mother.

“God forbid” translates me genoito, “may it not be”, which names no God at all; the King James chose an English oath of refusal. Paul uses the phrase ten times in Romans, always to reject a conclusion someone might draw from his own argument. “What shall we say then?” is his signal that an objection is coming.

Exodus 33:19 answers Moses’ request, “shew me thy glory”. God grants it by proclaiming his name, and these words belong to that proclamation. The Hebrew form, a verb repeated in its own relative clause, is the same shape as “I AM THAT I AM” in Exodus 3:14: God defines his mercy by himself.

“Runneth” is trecho, the runner in the stadium, an image Paul returns to in 1 Corinthians 9:24 and Galatians 2:2. Some readers hear Esau in it, out running after venison while the blessing went to Jacob in Genesis 27. That is an inference, though the chapter has just named him.

Exodus 9:16, said before the plague of hail. The Greek Old Testament reads “thou wast preserved”, and the Hebrew means “I have caused thee to stand”, kept alive through the plagues. Paul’s “raised thee up”, exegeiro, is sharper than either: God brought him onto the scene.

The verse restates verse 15 in brief and then adds the other half: mercy and hardening in one sentence. Exodus uses three different Hebrew verbs for Pharaoh’s heart, to make strong, to make heavy and to make hard. Paul’s skleryno, from the root of “sclerosis”, simply means to make hard.

Paul voices an imagined questioner, a device of the teaching style called diatribe that he has used since chapter 2. “Resisted” is anthistemi in the perfect tense, “who has ever stood against”. The same verb returns in 13:2, “whosoever resisteth the power”.

“O man” is the address of 2:1 and 2:3, where Paul confronted the one who sits in judgment on others. “Repliest against” is antapokrinomai, to answer back, as the lawyers “could not answer him again” in Luke 14:6. The clay’s question comes almost verbatim from Isaiah 29:16 and 45:9.

Behind the potter stands Jeremiah 18, where the prophet watches a vessel marred on the wheel and reworked. “Lump” is phyrama, the word for a lump of dough in 11:16 and 1 Corinthians 5:6. A vessel “unto dishonour” was an ordinary household pot for common use, as 2 Timothy 2:20 explains, not necessarily an evil one.

The Greek sentence begins “What if” and never supplies the main clause, so the question hangs unfinished. “Much longsuffering” recalls 2:4, where God’s forbearance and longsuffering are said to lead toward repentance. The same patience is named here, extended to vessels of wrath.

“Afore prepared” is proetoimazo, a verb found only here and in Ephesians 2:10, of good works God prepared beforehand. “The riches of his glory” is a phrase Paul repeats in Ephesians 1:18 and 3:16 and Colossians 1:27. Mercy in this verse is the thing made known, as power was in the last.

The Greek relative pronoun is masculine, so the neuter vessels suddenly become people: “even us”. Paul includes himself among the called, and the Gentiles are named for the first time in the chapter.

Hosea 2:23, reordered. Hosea named two of his children Lo-ammi, “not my people”, and Lo-ruhamah, “not pitied”, and the prophecy reverses both names. Paul renders the second as “not beloved”. “Osee” is simply the Greek spelling of Hosea.

Hosea 1:10. The same verse of Hosea begins “the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea”, which is why Paul can pass straight to Isaiah’s sand in the next line. “The living God” sets him against idols, which Hosea’s Israel had served.

“Crieth” is krazo, a loud cry, the verb of 8:15, “whereby we cry, Abba, Father”. The wording is Isaiah 10:22, but its opening borrows Hosea 1:10, joining the two prophets. Isaiah named a son Shear-jashub, “a remnant shall return” (Isaiah 7:3), so the remnant was a family name before it was a doctrine.

Isaiah 10:23, through the Greek Old Testament. “Cut it short” is syntemno, to cut short or bring to a swift end; the image is of a sentence carried out decisively. The older manuscripts give a shorter verse, lacking “in righteousness: because a short work”; the King James follows the longer text.

Isaiah 1:9. “Sabaoth” is the Hebrew tsebaoth, hosts or armies, left untranslated in the King James here and in James 5:4, its only New Testament appearances. Isaiah’s Hebrew has “a very small remnant”; the Greek, which Paul follows, has “a seed”, tying back to the seed of verses 7 and 8.

The verbs are from the chase. “Followed after” is dioko, to pursue or hunt; “attained” is katalambano, to seize or overtake. The Gentiles were not running and yet caught the prize, a sharp reversal after verse 16 denied that it depends on the one who runs.

Paul says “the law of righteousness”, not simply righteousness, as though Israel chased the law as the road to it. “Attained” is now phthano, to arrive at or reach, a different verb from verse 30. The older manuscripts read the end more briefly: Israel “did not arrive at law”.

“As it were” marks a mistaken means: pursuing as though works were the route. Mid-verse the picture changes from a racecourse to a stone on the track. “Stumbled” is proskopto, to strike the foot against something, the verb of Matthew 4:6, “lest thou dash thy foot against a stone”.

God himself lays the stone in Sion, and it is the same stone for everyone; what differs is how each meets it. The last clause turns stone into person: “believeth on him”. Paul will quote the line again in 10:11, and 1 Peter 2:6–8 joins the same two passages of Isaiah.