Romans 9:31

The lot of the Gentiles presents a contrast fitted to bring out more clearly the tragical character of that of Israel. This people, which alone followed the law of righteousness, is precisely the one which has not succeeded in reaching it. Some (Chrys., Calv., Beng., etc.) have stumbled at this expression, the law of righteousness, and have translated it as if it were the righteousness of the law. They have not understood the apostle's expression. What Israel sought was not so much righteousness itself in its moral essence, as the law in all the detail of its external and manifold observances. The expression is therefore chosen deliberately, “to remind the reader,” as Holsten well says, “of the weakness of the religious conscience of Israel, which was ever seeking an external standard.” If the Jews in general had been seriously preoccupied, like young Saul, with true moral righteousness, the law thus applied would have become to them what it was in its destination, the schoolmaster to bring them to Christ (Galatians 3:23-24). But seeking only the letter, they neglected the spirit. Levitical prescriptions, minutiae about Sabbaths and meats, fastings, tithes, washings of hands, of bodies, of furniture, etc., such were their sole pursuits. The object of their labor was thus really the law, from which righteousness should have proceeded, and not righteousness itself, as the true contents of the law. Therein there was a profound moral aberration which led them to the refusal of true righteousness when it was presented to them in the person of the Messiah.

By designating true righteousness in the same sentence by the same expression, the law of righteousness, the apostle wishes by the identity of terms to exhibit the contrast in the things: pursuing the shadow, they missed the reality.

The term law is taken the second time in that more general sense in which we have found it so often used in our Epistle (Romans 3:27; Romans 7:21; Romans 7:25, Romans 8:2): a certain mode of being, fitted to determine the will. The reference is to the true mode of justification.

The strongly supported reading which rejects the word δικαιοσύνης, of righteousness, would signify: “they have not attained to the law. ” But what would that mean? They have not attained to the fulfilment of the law? The expression: “attain to the law,” would be very strange taken in this sense. Or would it apply, as some have thought, to the law of the gospel? But where is the gospel thus called nakedly the law? This reading is therefore inadmissible, as Meyer himself acknowledges, notwithstanding his habitual predilection for the Alexandrine text, and in opposition to the opinion of Tischendorf.