Romans 9:6-9

“ Not as though the word of God were made of no effect; for they are not all Israel, which are of Israel. Neither because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children; but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called;' that is, they which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God; but the children of the promise are counted for a seed. For this is a word of promise, ‘ At this time will I return, and Sarah shall have a son. '”

The δέ, but, between Romans 9:5-6, is strongly adversative: “But all those privileges, excellent as they were, could not assure to Israel what the word of God did not promise;” that the divine election should apply to all the children of Abraham according to the flesh.

As the form οὐχ οἶόν τε signifies: it is not possible, this meaning has been adopted here by Beza and others: “ But it is not possible that the word of God should be of no effect;” which would imply that this word proclaimed the exclusion of the Jewish nation as inevitable, and that consequently this exclusion could not fail to come about some time or other. But the apostle does not go so far. In the demonstration which follows, he proves the possibility of the rejection of the mass of the people, but not its necessity; then οἶον has only the meaning of it is possible, when it is followed by the particle τε; and finally, when it has this meaning, the verb following is in the infinitive, whereas we have here the perfect ἐκπέπτωκεν. This meaning must therefore be given up, and we must abide by the ordinary signification of the word οἶος, such that: “The thing is not such that,” that is to say, the rejection of Israel must not be so interpreted, that the word of God is thereby annulled. There is only a grammatical difficulty in the way of this explanation; that is the conjunction ὅτι, that, which intervenes between οἶον and the verb ἐκπέπτωκεν : such as that it has been annulled. This that was already contained in οἶον, and forms a pleonasm. It has been variously explained; it seems to me the simplest solution is to suppose that it depends on an idea understood: “such that one might say that”..., or: “that it comes about that”...

The word of God here denotes the promises by which Israel had been declared to be the people of God promises which seemed to exclude the possibility of their rejection. Hofmann, followed in this case by Volkmar, interprets the transition from Romans 9:5 to Romans 9:6 somewhat differently. He applies the οὐχ οἶον, not that the thing is such that, to Paul's desire to be cast off for the love of his people, and gives to Romans 9:6 this meaning: “Not that my wish signifies that without the sacrifice of my salvation which I am ready to make, the promise of God to Abraham would be nullified.” This meaning is more than forced. How could Paul suppose that the keeping of God's promise depends, even hypothetically, on the wish which he has expressed, especially when, in the very act of uttering it, he himself declares it to be impracticable? Holsten makes the οὐχ οἶον bear on the grief itself: “not that I distress myself as if the word of God were made of no effect.” This is less inadmissible, but far from natural. Could Paul suppose it possible for God to give man occasion to weep over the forgetfulness of His promises? The verb ἐκπίπτειν, to fall from, denotes the non-realization of the promise, its being brought to nothing by facts. And it must be confessed that the present rejection of Israel would be a giving of the lie to the divine election, if all the individuals composing the people of Israel really belonged to Israel, in the profound sense of the word. But that is precisely what is not the case, as the apostle declares in the second part of the verse. In this proposition Meyer applies the second Israel to the person of the patriarch Jacob; the first, to the people descended from him. But it is not till later that Paul comes to Jacob personally. We must beware of destroying in this place the significant relation between the first and second Israel. The word is used both times collectively, and yet in two different applications. They who are of Israel denote all the members of the nation at a given moment, as descendants of the preceding generation. By the first words: are not Israel, Paul signalizes among the nation taken en masse, thus understood a true Israel, that elect people, that holy remnant, which is constantly spoken of in the O. T., and to which alone the decree of election refers, so that rejection may apply to the mass of those who are of Israel, without compromising the election of the true Israel.

This possibility of rejection for the mass of the people is what is proved by the two following examples. And first, that of Isaac: