οἵτινες ἑνδείκνυνται : the relative is qualitative: “inasmuch as they shew”. τὸ ἔργον τοῦ νόμου is the work which the law prescribes, collectively. “Written on their hearts,” when contrasted with the law written on the tables of stone, is equal to “unwritten”; the Apostle refers to what the Greeks called ἄγραφος νόμος. To the Greeks, however, this was something greater and more sacred than any statute, or civil constitution; to the Apostle it was less than the great revelation of God's will, which had been made and interpreted to Israel, but nevertheless a true moral authority. There is a triple proof that Gentiles, who are regarded as not having law, are a law to themselves. (1) The appeal to their conduct: as interpreted by the Apostle, their conduct evinces, at least in some, the possession of a law written on the heart; (2) the action of conscience: it joins its testimony, though it be only an inward one, to the outward testimony borne by their conduct; and (3) their thoughts. Their thoughts bear witness to the existence of a law in them, inasmuch as in their mutual intercourse (μεταξὺ ἀλλήλων) these thoughts are busy bringing accusations, or in rarer cases (ἢ καί) putting forward defences, i.e., in any case, exercising moral functions which imply the recognition of a law. This seems to me the only simple and natural explanation of a rather perplexed phrase. We need not ask for what Paul does not give, the object to κατηγορούντων or ἀπολογουμένων : it may be any person, act or situation, which calls into exercise that power of moral judgment which shows that the Gentiles, though without the law of Moses, are not in a condition which makes it impossible to judge them according to their works. The construction in Romans 9:1 suggests that the συν views the witness of conscience, reflecting on conduct, as something added to the first instinctive consciousness of the nature of an action. συνείδησις does not occur in the Gospels except in John 8:9; twice only in Acts 23:1; Acts 24:16, both times in speeches of St. Paul; twenty times in the Pauline epistles. It occurs in the O.T. only in Ecclesiastes 10:20 (curse not the King, ἐν συνειδήσει σου = ne in cogitatione quidem tua): the ordinary sense is found, for the first time in Biblical Greek, in Sap. 17:11. It is a quasi-philosophical word, much used by the Stoics, and belonging rather to the Greek than the Hebrew inheritance of Paul.

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Old Testament