Romans 2:17

The name Jew, ᾿Ιουδαῖος, is probably not used without allusion to its etymological meaning: Jehoudah, the praised one. The preposition ἐπί, which enters into the composition of the verb, converts this name into a real title. But Israel possesses more than a glorious name; it has in its hands a real gift: the law. Here is a manifest sign of the divine favor on which it may consequently rest. Finally, this token of special favor makes God its God, to the exclusion of all other nations. It has therefore whereof to glory in God. To the gradation of the three substantives: Jew, law, God, that of the three verbs perfectly corresponds: to call oneself, to rest, to glory.

Hence there result (Romans 2:18) two capabilities which distinguished the Jew from every other man. He knows God's will, and so succeeds in discerning what to others is confused. One is always entitled to be proud of knowing; but when that knowing is of the will, that is to say, the absolute and perfect will which ordains all, and judges of all sovereignly, such a knowledge is an incomparable advantage. By this knowledge of the divine will the Jew can discern and appreciate (δοκιμάζειν) the most delicate shades of the moral life Τὰ διαφέροντα might signify the things that are better (meliora probare), from the meaning of surpass, which is often that of the verb διαφέρειν. But here it is better to translate: the things that differ (from the sense of differing, which is also that of διαφέρειν); for the apostle seems to be alluding to those discussions of legal casuistry in which the Jewish schools excelled, as when the two eminent doctors Hillel and Schammai gravely debated the question, whether it was lawful to eat an egg laid by a hen on the Sabbath day.

The last words of the verse: instructed out of the law, indicate the source of that higher faculty of appreciation. The term κατηχούμενος, from κατηχεῖδθαι, to be penetrated by a sound, makes each Jew law personified.

From this knowledge and faculty of appreciation flows the part which the Jew claims in regard to other men, and which is described in Romans 2:19-20 with a slight touch of ridicule. The first four terms set forth the moral treatment to which the Jew, as the born physician of mankind, subjects his patients, the Gentiles, to their complete cure. The term πέποιθας, thou art confident, describes his pretentious assurance. And first, he takes the poor Gentile by the hand as one does a blind man, offering to guide him; then he opens his eyes, dissipating his darkness by the light of revelation; then he rears him, as one would bring up a being yet without reason; finally, when through all this care he has come to the stage of the little child, νήπιος (who cannot speak; this was the term used by the Jews to designate proselytes; see Tholuck), he initiates him into the full knowledge of the truth, by becoming his teacher.

The end of the verse serves to explain the reason of this ministry to the Gentile world which the Jew exercises. He possesses in the law the precise sketch (μόρφωσις), the exact outline, the rigorous formula of the knowledge of things which men should have (the idea which every one should form of them), and of the truth, that is to say, the moral reality or substance of goodness. Knowledge is the subjective possession of truth in itself. The Jew possesses in the law not only the truth itself, but its exact formula besides, by means of which he can convey this truth to others. We need not then, with Oltramare, make these last words an appendix, intended to disparage the teaching of the Jew: “though thou hast but the shadow of knowledge.” The drift of the passage demands the opposite sense: “as possessing the truth in its precise formula.”