* Lest ye proudly imagine that your own ideas of the destiny of the Jews are correct ;' or, ' Lest ye be proud and elated, as though you were better and more highly favoured than the Jews.' The former is perhaps most in accordance wdth the literal meaning of the words ; see Proverbs 3:7.
Blindness in part, i. e. partial blindness ; partial as to its extent and continuance ; because not all the Jews were thus blinded, nor were the nation to remain blind for ever. The word rendered blindness is more correctly rendered, in Mark 3: 5, hardness ; compare Eph. 4 : 18 ; see V. 7, and ch. 9 : 18.
Until the fulness of the Gentiles he come in. See v. 12 for the vari- ous meanings of the word rendered /liZnes.s. The sense which best suits this passage is multitude ; see Gen. 48: 19, " His seed shall become a multitude of nations ;" and Isa. 31:4, where, in Hebrew, the word for fulness is used. The clause then means, ' Until the multitude of the Gentiles be converted.' It does not necessarily imply that all the Gen- tiles are to be thus brought in before the conversion of the Jews occurs, but that this latter.event was not to take place until a great multitude of the Gentiles had entered into the kingdom of Christ. The meaning then of this interesting passage is, that the partial blindness of the Jews is to continue until the conversion of the fulness of the Gentiles, and then, as stated in the next verse, they are to be brought again into the kingdom of God.
(26) And so all Israel shall be saved, as it is written. Israel here, from the context, must mean the Jewish people, and all Israel the whole nation, in opposition to the part spoken of above. Now, part of the Jewish people is rejected ; then, the whole shall be gathered in. The nation, as such, shall acknowledge Jesus to be the Messiah, and be ad- mitted into his kingdom.
In support of this declaration, Paul appeals to a prediction in Isa. 59 : 20, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, who shall turn away un- godliness from Jacob. The apostle's version of this passage agrees neither with the Hebrew nor the Septuagint. It differs, however, but little from the latter. Instead of out of Zion, the Greek version has for the sake of Zion, and the English, to Zion. The last is the most literal, the second is also correct, but the first (^out of Zion) is not consistent with the force of the Hebrew preposition used by Isaiah. It is most probable, therefore, that the apostle borrowed those words fromPs. 14 : 7. In the latter part of the verse the departure from the Hebrew is more serious. In our version we have a literal translation of the Hebrew, "The Re- deemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob." Paul follows the Septuagint, with which also the Chaldee paraphrase agrees. This agreement of the ancient versions has led critics to suppose that the ancient translators found a different reading in the Hebrew text from that which we have at present. This is the more pro- bable, because the Hebrew phrase, as it now stands, is very unusual, to