Romans 10:2

In this verse Paul justifies his so lively interest in the lot of the Jews, expressed in Romans 10:1. What has not been done, what has not been suffered, by those Jews devoted to the cause of God, under successive Gentile powers? Notwithstanding the most frightful persecutions, have they not succeeded in maintaining their monotheistic worship for ages in all its purity? And at that very time what an admirable attachment did they show to the ceremonies of their worship and the adoration of Jehovah! When Paul says μαρτυρῶ, I bear them witness, he seems to be alluding to his conduct of other days, and to say: I know something of it, of that zeal!

Unhappily this impulse is not guided according to the standard (κατά) of a just knowledge, of a real discernment of things. And it is this want of understanding which has spoiled the effects of this admirable zeal. He does not use the word γνῶσις, knowledge (in the ordinary sense of the word), for the Jews certainly do not lack religious knowledge. The compound term ἐπίγνωσις, which he employs here, rather signifies discernment, that understanding which puts its finger on the true nature of the thing. They have failed to discern the true meaning and the true scope of the legal dispensation; they are ardently attached to all its particular rites, but they have not grasped their moral end.