Romans 9:22

Vv. 22 describes God's dealing with the vessels unto dishonor; Romans 9:23-24 will describe His dealing with the vessels of value. The relation between the participle θέλων, willing, and the verb ἤνεγκεν, He endured, may be explained in three ways, expressed each by one or other of the conjunctions, when, because, or though. In the first connection the meaning would be: “When He had the intention of”...Instead of striking at once, as He already purposed doing, He bore with patience. The relation thus understood is only slightly different from that which would be expressed by though. The connection expressed by because (De Wette, Rück., and others), would signify that God's long-suffering had no other end than to bring about an accumulation of wrath; but would such long-suffering deserve the name? It is obvious from Romans 2:4-5 that if the long-suffering produces this painful result, this is not the intention of Him who bears long, but the fault of those who abuse His forbearance to harden themselves the more. The true relation is consequently that expressed by the conjunction though (Fritz., Philip., Meyer). There is, in fact, a natural contrast between the long-suffering and the manifestation of wrath, and it is this contrast which is expressed by the though.

God's intention in regard to the Jews was moving on to the display of His wrath and the manifestation of His power. In these expressions there is an evident allusion to the saying of God regarding Pharaoh, as just quoted, Romans 9:17; comp. the expressions ἐνδείξασθαι τὴν ὀργήν, to show wrath, Romans 9:22, and ἐνδείξωμαι ἐν σοί, to show in thee, Romans 9:17; τὸ δυνατὸν αὐτοῦ, His power, Romans 9:22, τὴν δύναμίν μου, my power, Romans 9:17. This because unbelieving Judaism was playing toward the church, at the date of Paul's writing, exactly the same part as Pharaoh formerly played toward Israel themselves. As this tyrant sought to crush Israel in its cradle, so Israel was endeavoring to crush the church at its first steps in the world. And hence God's dealings with Pharaoh must be now reproduced in the judgment of Israel.

The manifestation of wrath refers at once to the doom of destruction which was already suspended over the head of the nation in general, and to the condemnation of all unbelieving Israelites in particular; comp. Romans 2:5, and the saying of John the Baptist, Matthew 3:10; Matthew 3:12. We might refer the manifestation of God's power to the mighty efficacy of God's Spirit creating a new people in Israel from the day of Pentecost onward, and thus preparing the spiritual Israel, which was to replace the carnal Israel when the latter is to be rejected. But it is to Romans 9:23-24 that this idea belongs; and the allusion to the power displayed in the destruction of Pharaoh and his army (Romans 9:17) leads us rather to apply this expression to the near destruction of Jerusalem and of the Jewish people by the arm of the Romans, which was to be in this unexampled catastrophe the instrument of God's wrath and power.

The execution of this destruction, long ago determined and clearly announced by Jesus Himself, God delayed for forty years; that is the long-suffering of which the apostle here speaks. It seems as if, at the very moment when Israel was laying its deicidal arm on the person of the Messiah, God should have annihilated it by a thunderbolt. But, agreeably to the prayer of Him who said, “Father, forgive them,” a whole period more of long-suffering was granted them, and not only of long-suffering, but of tender and urgent invitation by the preaching of the apostles. Is not Paul then right in characterizing God's dealings with Israel by the words: “Though He was already determined to...He endured with much long-suffering”? Comp. the accumulated expressions of goodness, forbearance, and long-suffering. Chrysostom and De Wette have applied this word endured to God's patience with Pharaoh. This was to make a simple allusion the explanation; Paul has finished with Pharaoh long ago. According to Meyer, Paul means that God put off the judgment of the Jewish people, because as the destruction of Jerusalem was to be the signal of the end of the world, if God had hastened this event there would have remained no more time for the conversion of the Gentiles. This idea is bound up with the explanation given by Meyer of the that, Romans 9:23. But it is difficult to suppose that Paul, who, according to 1 Thessalonians 2:16, was expecting the destruction of the Jewish people as close at hand, and who yet, according to chap. 11, placed the conversion of all Gentile nations and the restoration of the Jews before the end of the world, could have imagined that all these phases of the great drama of humanity were to be accomplished in so brief a time. The meaning which we have given presents none of these difficulties.

But those Jews to whom God extends such marvellous long-suffering are none the less already vessels of wrath fitted to destruction. The term: vessels of wrath, signifies, according to Lange: “vessels on which wrath falls,” that is to say, which He will break in His wrath. But Romans 9:21 and the completely parallel passage, 2 Timothy 2:20, show that the point in question is the use, and consequently the contents of those vessels. The meaning is therefore: all saturated with wrath; not for the purpose of emptying it on others, like the angels who hold the seven vials of divine wrath, Revelation 16 (Lange's objection), but to taste all its bitterness themselves.

The perfect participle κατηρτισμένα, prepared, fitted to, has given rise to great discussions; for the apostle does not tell us by whom this preparing was made. Meyer contends that it should be ascribed to God Himself. He supports his view by the regimen following: to destruction, which indicates a judgment of God. But we find in Romans 2:4 an authentic explanation from the apostle himself on this subject. If the Jews are actually ripe for judgment, he says, it is not the fault of God, who has faithfully pointed them to repentance and salvation; it is the effect of their own hardening and impenitent heart which has changed the treasures of divine grace into treasures of wrath heaped on them. What answer does Meyer give to this? He holds that the apostle moves between two irreconcilable theories. In chap. 2 Paul stood, it is true, at the viewpoint of human liberty; but here he starts from the standpoint of absolute divine will. But is it probable that a mind so logical as Paul's should accept such an irreducible duality of views? And what seems stranger still is, that from Romans 9:30 of our chapter onward, and in the whole of chap. 10, he replaces himself anew at the standpoint of human liberty, and reproduces exactly the same explanation as in chap. 2! Finally, while in the following verse he directly ascribes to God the preparation of the elect for salvation: “ which He has prepared unto glory,” he deliberately avoids expressing himself thus in speaking of the preparation of the Jews for destruction. He here employs, instead of the active verb prepare, with God as its subject, the passive participle: fitted to. The understood subject of this action of fitting appears not only from Romans 2:4, but more clearly still if possible from the passage, 1 Thessalonians 2:15-16: “The Jews, who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets, and persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway; but wrath is come upon them to make an end of them.” It thus appears who is the author of the present ripeness of the Jews for judgment in Paul's view. It is not God assuredly who has Himself prepared vessels which please Him not, and of which He is in haste to make an end. De Wette even acknowledges that the apostle “ avoids saying by whom they have been fitted to destruction.”

The perfect participle used by the apostle denotes a present state which has been previously formed in a certain manner; but this participle indicates absolutely nothing as to the mode in which this state has been produced; hence the expressions ripe or ready for...very well render the thought contained in this term; comp. Luke 6:40. The choice of the verb καταρτίζειν, to arrange perfectly, equip (for example, a vessel, that it may be ready to set sail, see Passow), shows also that the point in question is not the beginning of this moral development (which would have required the term ἑτοιμάζειν, Romans 9:23), but its end. In using this term, Paul means to designate the result of the historical development of the people: their present state as being that of full ripeness for divine judgment. So this expression has been rightly explained by the Greek Fathers, Grot., Calov., Beng., Olsh., Hofm., etc. As to the manner in which St. Paul viewed the formation of this state of perdition, we may determine it with certainty by what he has said in chap. 1 of the analogous development wrought among the Gentiles. First, they voluntarily extinguished the light which burned in them by natural revelation; then, as a punishment, God gave them up to their evil propensities, and thereafter evil overflowed like a flood; comp. Romans 1:24; Romans 1:26; Romans 1:28. The same was the case with Pharaoh; he began by hardening himself when confronted with the first signs of the divine will; then God hardened him; again he hardened himself; and finally, judgment took hold of him. Thus it is always that the two factors, the human and the divine, concur in the tragical development of such a moral state. As is admirably said by Lange: “These two points of view [which are alleged to be contradictory] fall into one, according to which every development in sin is a tissue of transgressions due to human responsibility, and of judgments coming from God.” It is exactly so with Israel. The development of their state of perdition begins face to face with the Mosaic and prophetic revelations, whose sanctifying influence they reject; it continues in presence of the appearance and work of Jesus Himself; and now it reaches its goal with the rejection of the apostolical preaching and the perfidious obstacles raised by Israel against this preaching throughout the whole world. After such a history this people deserved the judgment of hardening which overtook them (Romans 11:8-10), more even than Pharaoh.

Perdition, ἀπώλεια, does not merely denote external punishment, the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the people; it is also the condemnation of the wilfully unbelieving Israelites. It is quite obvious, indeed, that this ripeness of the people for condemnation did not prevent the individual conversion of any of its members, any more than the collective entrance of the Gentiles into the kingdom of God, Romans 9:27, prevents the unbelief and hardening of individuals among them. And this is what explains the object of God's long-suffering toward this people even when ripe for destruction; He wished to allow all those who might yet separate from this mass time to respond to the gospel call (Acts 2:40). To the long-suffering of God with the already devoted nation, there is added the merciful work whereby God draws from within it the foreknown believers to form the nucleus of the church (Romans 9:23-24).