Ver. 23. κἀκεῖνοι δέ: and they too, they on the other hand, viz., the un- believing Jews. ἐὰν μὴ κ.τ.λ., unless they remain on in their unbelief. It is assumed that they need not do this. The hardening spoken of in vers. 7-10, though it is a judgment upon sin, and may seem from the nature of the case to be irre-. mediable, is not to be so absolutely taken. Even in the most hardened re- jector of the Gospel we are not to limit either the resources of God’s power, or the possibilities of change in a self-con- scious, self- determining creature. All things are possible to him that believeth, and we are not to say that in this man or that, Jew or Gentile, unbelief is final, and belief an impossibility. If the Jews give up their unbelief ἐγκεντρισθήσονται they will be incorporated again in the true people of God. δυνατὸς γάρ ἐστιν
682
a , τρισθήσονται τῇ ἰδίᾳ ἐλαίᾳ ;
25. Οὖ γὰρ θέλω ὑμᾶς ἀγνοεῖν,
qCh. αν.15, ἀδελφοί, τὸ µυστήριον τοῦτο (ἵνα μὴ Fre map ἑαυτοῖς Σ φρόνιμοι), ὅτι
24; 3 ΌΟΓ. ς
i 14; ii 5. πώρωσις ἀπὸ ἃ µέρους τῷ ‘lopand γέγονεν, ἄχρις οὗ τὸ πλήρωμα τῶν
1 παρ’ εαντοις NCDL; εν εαντοις AB.
Weiss, W. and H., Treg. and Alf.
put ev in text, apparently on the ground that wap’ has been conformed to xii. 16 ;
but W. and H. give wap’ a place in marg.
«
ὃ θεός κ.τ.λ. The phrase implies not only the possibility but the difficulty of the operation. Cf. xiv. 4. With man it is impossible, but not with God. No- thing less than the thought of God could keep Paul from despairing of the future of Israel.
Ver. 24. God’s power to engraft the Jews again into the stock of His people proved a fortiori by comparison with what He has done for the Gentiles. To restore His own is more natural, con- ceivable, and one may even say easy, than to call those who are not His own. The Gentile Christian (1) was cut ἐκ τῆς κατὰ φύσιν aypteAaiov, from what is in its own nature an uncultivated olive, with no suitableness for the uses which the olive is intended to subserve, and (2) παρὰ vot in violation of nature was engrafted into a good olive; in compari- son with this doubly unnatural process one may well argue πόσῳ μᾶλλον κ.τ.λ. how much more shall these, the Jews who κατὰ φύσιν (in their own nature) belong to the good tree, have their con- nection with it re-established? Weiss takes ἐγκεντρισθήσονται as α logical future, and it may beso; but Paul believes in his logic, and has probably in view in the word that actual restoration of the Jews of which he now proceeds to speak.
Vv. 25-32. In this concluding section Paul abandons the ground of argument for that of revelation. He has discussed the problems arising out of the rejection of Israel and the calling of the Gentiles, when taken in connection with the pro- mises of God to His people; and he has tried to make it clear that in all His dealings with His people, God has acted tighteously, that for all that has befallen them the Jews have full responsibility, and that a Divine purpose, with blessing in it to both Jew and Gentile, has in- directly been getting itself carried into effect through this perplexing history. The rejection of the Jews has led to the calling of the Gentiles, and the calling of the Gentiles, by provoking the Jews to jealousy, is eventually to lead to their conversion too. All this, it may be said, is matter of argument; it is more or less
convincing as the argument appeals with less or greater force to our minds, It is Paul’s construction and interpretation of the facts before him, and his anticipation of the result in which they are likely to issue; but it has no jgreater authority than the reasoning by which he supports it, or the motives which suggest one line of reasoning upon the facts rather than another. We can understand how patriotism, and religious faith in God’s promise, and insight into the psycho- logical influences which determine human conduct, all contribute some weight to his argument; but he is not content to rest upon argument alone the central truth he has been expounding—that the hardening of Israel is temporary as well as partial, and that when ‘the fulness of the Gentiles” has come in the hardening will cease, and all Israel be saved. He expressly puts this truth forward as a revelation (µυστήριον, ver. 25). What this means psycho- logically we cannot tell, but it is clear that for Paul it was an essential part of the true religion, so far as he could make out the manner of its working in the world. He might try to lead the mind up to it along various lines of argument, or to confirm it by considerations of various kinds; but for him it had a Divine authority, antecedent to argu- ment and independent of it. He sought arguments to make it credible and in- telligible, not for his own sake, but for the sake of others. How much a revela- tion of this kind will weigh with the modern reader depends on the extent to which on general grounds he can recog- nise in Paul an inspired interpreter of Christianity. History, it must be ad- mitted, throws no light on his words. The Gentiles are not fully gathered in; the time to say whether Israel as a whole is to have any distinct or decisive place in the final fulfilment of God’s gracious purpose is therefore not yet. One feels as if the nationalism of the passage fell short of Paul’s great word, There is neither Greek nor Jew; but there the Jews are, a problem to unbelief as well as to faith; think what we will of it, it is