of eternal life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles," Acts 13 : 46. And in Acts 28 : 28, after saying that the prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled in their unbelief, he adds, " Be it known, therefore, unto you that the salvation of God is sent unto them."
For to provoke them to jealousy. As the result and design of the rejection of the Jews was the salvation of the Gentiles, so the conversion of the latter was designed to bring about the restoration of the former. The Gentiles are saved in order to provoke the Jews to jealousy. That is, this is one of the many benevolent purposes which God designed to accomplish by that event. This last clause serves to explain the mean- ing of the apostle in the former part of the verse. He shows that the rejection of the Jews was not intended to result in their being finally cast away, but to secure the more rapid progress of the gospel among the heathen, in order that their conversion might react upon the Jews, and be the means of bringing all, at last, within the fold of the Redeemer.
(12) Now if the fall of them he the riches of the worlds and the di- minishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their ful- ness ? Although there is considerable difficulty in fixing the precise sense of the several clauses of this verse, its general meaning seems sufficiently obvious. ' If the rejection of the Jews has been the occa- sion of so much good to the world, how much more may be expected from their restoration.' In this view it bears directly upon the apostle's object, which, in the first place, is to show that the restoration of the Jews is a probable and desirable event. There is in the verse a twofold annunciation of the same idea. In the first, the sentence is incomplete. * If the fall of them be the riches of the world, how much more their re- covery ? if their diminishing, how much more their fulness V The prin- cipal difficulty in this passage results from the ambiguity of the wordb rendered diminishing and fulness. The former properly means, inferior- ity, a state or condition worse than that of others, or luorse than a for- mer one. This sense suits the present passage. ' If their misfortune, or loss of former advantages, was a source of good ; how much more their fulness V
The word rendered fulness has various senses in the New Testament. It properly means that with which any thing is filled, as in the frequent phrase the fulness of the earth, or of the sea, &c. So fulness of the God- head, all that is in God, the plenitude of Deity. It then naturally is used for the fulness or abundance of blessings that is in any one. John 1 : 16, " Of his fulness have all we received ;" Eph. 3 : 19, " That ye might be filled with all the fulness of God." Thirdly, it means abun- dance, multitude, especially when followed by a genitive expressing the particulars of which the multitude consists, as fulness of the Gentiles^ i. e. the multitude of the Gentiles, v. 25 of this chapter. It also means the complement or supplement of any thing, the remaining part ^ see Matt. 9:16. So in Eph. 1 : 23, the church may be called the fulness of
irist because he is the head, the church is the residue, or complement,