Romans 11:30-32

There is the less need, too, that they should be withdrawn, because God makes the very misuse of them contribute to the working out of His universal purpose of redemption. The past unbelief of the Gentiles and the mercy they presently enjoy, the present unbelief of the Jews and the mercy they are destined to enjoy in the future these things not only correspond to each other, but they are interwoven with each other; they are parts of a system which God controls, and in which every element conditions and is conditioned by all the rest: there is a Divine necessity pervading and controlling all the freedom of men a Divine purpose mastering all the random activity of human wills; a purpose which is read out by the Apostle in Romans 11:32 : God shut them all up into disobedience that He might have mercy upon them all. Romans 11:30. ποτὲ : once, in the past, chap. Romans 1:18-32. τῇ τούτων ἀπειθείᾳ = owing to their disobedience. Cf. Romans 11:11; Romans 11:15.Romans 11:31. τῷ ὑμετέρῳ ἐλέει is to be construed with ἵνα καὶ αὐτοὶ νῦν ἐλεηθῶσιν. For the order cf. Galatians 2:10, 2 Corinthians 12:7. It seems pedantic to make the construction strictly parallel to τῇ τούτων ἀπειθίᾳ, and to translate: “that owing to the mercy shown to you i.e., owing to the jealousy to which the Jews would be stirred at seeing the Gentiles the objects of Divine mercy they also may obtain mercy”; the simpler construction is to take the dative as explanatory of the verb, and to translate: “that they may be made the objects of the very same mercy which has been shown to you”. This is really the point which the Apostle wishes to be at; though the idea brought out in the former rendering is essential in the passage, it is not essential, nor obvious, in these particular words. The second νῦν (wanting in [17] [18] [19] [20]) is probably genuine ([21] [22]), but cannot be forced to mean more than “now in their turn”. The imminence of the result is not in view. Romans 11:32. συνέκλεισεν γὰρ ὁ θεὸς τοὺς πάντας εἰς ἀπειθιαν : this is the nearest approach made in the N.T. to putting the sin of man into a direct and positive relation to the act and purpose of God. But it would be a mistake to draw inferences from the concrete historical problem before the Apostle viz., God's dealings with Jew and Gentile, and the mutual relations and influence of Jew and Gentile in the evolution of God's purpose and to apply them to the general abstract question of the relation of the human will to the Divine. Paul is not thinking of this question at all, and his authority could not be claimed for such inferences. Salvation, he sees, as he looks at the world before him, is to come to Jew and Gentile alike by the way of free grace; and it answers to this, that in the providence of God, Jew and Gentile alike have been made to feel the need of grace by being shut up under disobedience. It is within Paul's thought to say that the sin of Jews and Gentiles, to whom he preached the Gospel, did not lie outside the control, or outside the redeeming purpose, of God; but it does not seem to me to be within his thought to say that God ordains sin in general for the sake of, or with a view to, redemption. This is a fancy question which an apostle would hardly discuss. God subordinates sin to His purpose, but it is not a subordinate element in His purpose. The same order of considerations ought to guide us in the interpretation of τοὺς πάντας. “Them all” certainly refers in the first instance to Jews and Gentiles. It is not the same as τοὺς ἀμφοτέρους, “both parties”; but it differs from it in its present connection only by giving emphasis to the fact that both parties consist of numbers, to all of whom the truth here stated applies. To find here a doctrine of universal salvation a dogmatic assertion that every man will at last receive mercy is simply to desert the ground on which the Apostle is standing. It is to leave off thinking about the concrete problem before his mind, and to start thinking about something quite different. It is gratuitous to contrast, as, e.g., is done by Lipsius, this passage with others in which Paul speaks of ἀπολλύμενοι as well as σωζόμενοι, and to say that they represent irreconcilable view-points the Apostle speaking in the present instance from the standpoint of Divine teleology; in the other, from that of actual experience. The truth is, as Weiss puts it, there is not a word here to show how far, when the history of man has reached its term, Paul conceived God's saving purpose to be realised. συνέκλεισεν answering to הִסְגִּיר is frequent in LXX: the συν does not refer to the fact that Jews and Gentiles are shut up together, but indicates that those who are shut up are shut up on all sides, so that they cannot escape: cf. con-cludo and examples in Galatians 3:22; Psalms 30:9 LXX, ἐλεήσῃ : “to have mercy upon” means “to make partakers of that ‘ common salvation ' (Jude 1:3) which is emphatically a dispensation of mercy” (Gifford).

[17] Codex Alexandrinus (sæc. v.), at the British Museum, published in photographic facsimile by Sir E. M. Thompson (1879).

[18] Codex Augiensis (sæc. ix.), a Græco-Latin MS., at Trinity College, Cambridge, edited by Scrivener in 1859. Its Greek text is almost identical with that of, and it is therefore not cited save where it differs from that MS. Its Latin version, f, presents the Vulgate text with some modifications.

[19] Codex Boernerianus (sæc. ix.), a Græco-Latin MS., at Dresden, edited by Matthæi in 1791. Written by an Irish scribe, it once formed part of the same volume as Codex Sangallensis (δ) of the Gospels. The Latin text, g, is based on the O.L. translation.

[20] Codex Angelicus (sæc. ix.), at Rome, collated by Tischendorf and others.

[21] Codex Sinaiticus (sæc. iv.), now at St. Petersburg, published in facsimile type by its discoverer, Tischendorf, in 1862.

[22] Codex Vaticanus (sæc. iv.), published in photographic facsimile in 1889 under the care of the Abbate Cozza-Luzi.