Romans 11:7

τί οὖν; What then? How are we to describe the present situation, if not in the painful language of Romans 11:1 ? Thus: ὃ ἐπιζητεῖ Ἰσραὴλ κ. τ. λ. What Israel is in quest of is δικαιοσύνη : the present conveys more sympathetically than the impft. of some MSS. the Apostle's sense of the seaseless and noble (though misdirected) efforts of his countrymen. ἐπέτυχεν : James 4:2; Hebrews 6:15. ἡ δὲ ἐκλογή = οἱ ἐκλεκτοί = τὸ λεῖμμα. ἐπωρώθησαν : were hardened, 2 Corinthians 3:14; John 12:40; Mark 6:52; Mark 8:17. Paul does not say how they were hardened or by whom: there is the same indefiniteness here as in κατηρτισμένα εἰς ἀπώλειαν in Romans 9:22. It may be quite possible to give a true sense to the assertion that they were hardened by God (cf. the following verse), although the hardening in this case is always regarded as a punishment for sin, that is, as a confirming in an obduracy which originally was not of God, but their own; as if the idea were, first they would not, and then, in God's just reaction against their sin, they could not; but it is a mistake to import into the text a definiteness which does not belong to it. It is rather essential to Paul's argument that he should not be bound down to one-sided interpretations of what he has intentionally left vague.