Romans 11:35

ἢ τίς προέδωκεν αὐτῷ, καὶ ἀνταποδοθήσεται αὐτῷ; see Job 41:11 (A.V.). The translation of Job 41:3, Hebrew, is perhaps Paul's own, as the LXX is entirely different and wrong. The point of the quotation has been variously explained. If it continues the proof of Romans 11:33, the underlying assumption is that God's ways would be finite and comprehensible if they were determined by what men had done, so as merely to requite that. It seems better, however, to read the words in the largest sense, and then they express the fundamental truth of religion as Paul understood it viz., that the initiative in religion belongs to God; or as he puts it elsewhere, that we have nothing we did not receive, and that boasting is excluded. The relation of man to God in these conditions is one which naturally expresses itself in doxology.