Romans 10:16-21

The Rejectors of God's Message.

Romans 10:16. Hearing the glad tidings is the opportunity of salvation: can it be that they did not hear? Nay, surely, the sound has reached every land. Not hearing, but obedience was to seek.

Romans 10:19. Or should we put it that Israel did not know? the double I say (Romans 10:18 f.) marks the repetition of the same question in another form: to know is to hear understandingly (see Romans 10:2; cf. Matthew 13:14 f.). Israel should have known (cf. Luke 24:44; John 1:10 f., etc.). Yet Law and Prophets both foretold that despised, senseless heathen would win God's favour, to Israel's provocation; Isaiah daringly speaks of God as found by men who had not sought Him, after stretching out His hands all day to a disobedient, contradictious people; cf. Acts 7:51; Acts 13:46 f., etc. The words borrowed from Isaiah 65, like those drawn from Hosea in Romans 9:25 f., referred to apostate Israelites; in principle, they apply equally to Gentiles.