*For the numerous attempts to make the two figures represent different thoughts, see Lange on the passage,
Cu. XL] THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS. 124
whole trees, not even quite young ones are ingrafted, either with the stem or as to all their branches. Besides, ver. 24 con- tradicts this view.”
Wert graffed in among them (évexevtpicdns év avrois). The verb occurs only in this chapter. From x«évtpov a sting, a goad. See on Apoe. ix. 9. Thus, in the verb to graft the in- cision is emphasized. Some render in their place, instead of among them; but the latter agrees better with partakest. Hence the reference is not to some of the broken-off branches in whose place the Gentiles were grafted, but to the branches in general.
With them partakest (cvyxowvds éyévov). Lit., as Rev., didst become partaker with them. See on Apoc.i. 9; and part- ners, Luke vy. 10. With them, the natural branches.
Of the root and fatness (ris pigys Kal ths muotynTos). The best texts omit «ai and, and render of the root of the fatness : the root as the source of the fatness.
Paul’s figure is: The Jewish nation is a tree from which some branches have been cut, but which remains living because the root (and therefore all the branches connected with it) is still alive. Into this living tree the wild branch, the Gentile, is grafted among the living branches, and thus draws life from the root. The insertion of the wild branches takes place in connection with the cutting off of the natural branches (the bringing in of the Gentiles in connection with the rejection of the Jews). But the grafted branches should not glory over the natural branches because of the cutting off of some of the latter, since they derive their life from the common root. “ The life- force and the blessing are received by the Gentile through the Jew, and not by the Jew through the Gentile. The spiritual plan moves from the Abrahamic covenant downward, and from the Israelitish nation outward” (Dwight).
The figure is challenged on the ground that the process of grafting is the insertion of the good into the inferior stock, while here the case is reversed. It has been suggested in ex- planation that Paul took the figure merely at the point of in- serting one piece into another; that he was ignorant of the
128 WORD STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. [Cu. XL
agricultural process; that he was emphasizing the process of grace as contrary to that of nature. References to a custom of grafting wild upon good trees are not sufficiently decisive to warrant the belief that the practice was common. Dr. Thom- son says: “In the kingdom of nature generally, certainly in the case of the olive, the process referred to by the apostle never succeeds. Graft the good upon the wild, and, as the Arabs say, “it will conquer the wild;’ but you cannot reverse the process with success. . . . It is only in the kingdom of grace that a process thus contrary to nature can be successful; and it is this circumstance which the apostle has seized upon to magnify the mercy shown to the Gentiles by grafting them, a wild race, contrary to the nature of such operations, into the good olive- tree of the church, and causing them to flourish there and bring forth fruit unto eternal life. The apostle lived in the land of the olive, and was in no danger of falling into a blunder in founding his argument upon such a circumstance in its cult- ivation” (“Land and Book, Lebanon, Damascus and Beyond Jordan,” p. 35). Meyer says: “The subject-matter did not require the figure of the ordinary grafting, but the converse— the grafting of the wild scion and its ennoblement thereby. The Gentile scion was to receive, not to impart, fertility.”
18. The branches. Of the olive-tree generally, Jewish Christians and unbelieving Jews. Not those that are broken off, who are specially indicated in ver. 19.