685
[ο ~ 4 A ἀπειθείᾳ ᾿ 31. οὕτω καὶ οὗτοι νῦν ἠπείθησαν, τῷ ὑμετέρῳ ἐλέει ἵνα
καὶ αὐτοὶ] ἐλεηθῶσι' 32. συνέκλεισε γὰρ ὁ Θεὸς τοὺς πάντας εἰς
ἀπείθειαν, ἵνα τοὺς πάντας ἐλεήση. , ‘ , A ! σοφίας καὶ γνώσεως Θεού:
33. "2 βάθος πλούτου καὶ ὡς ἀνεξερεύνητα τὰ κρίµατα αὐτοῦ, καὶ
? After αντοι ${ BD? ins. νυν; and so Tischdf. and W. and H., not Weiss, who
regards it as a mere mechanical repetition.
out by the Apostle in verse 32: God shut them all up into disobedience that He might have mercy upon them all. Ver. 30. ποτὲ: once, in the past, chap. i. 18-32. τῇ τούτων ἀπειθείᾳ = Owing to their dis- obedience. Cf. vers. 11, 15. Ver. 31. τῷ ὑμετέρῳ ἐλέει is to be construed with ἵνα καὶ αὐτοὶ viv ἐλεηθῶσιν. For the order cf. Gal. ii. το, 2 Cor. xii. 7. It seems pedantic to make the construction strictly parallel to τῇ τούτων ἀπειθία, and to translate: ‘‘that owing to the mercy shown to γοι---ί.6., owing to the jealousy to which the Jews would be stirred at seeing the Gentiles the objects of Divine mercy—they also may obtain mercy’’; the simpler construction is to take the dative as explanatory of the verb, and to translate: ‘‘that they may be made the objects of the very same mercy which has been shown to you”. This is really the point which the Apostle wishes to be at; though the idea brought out in the former rendering is essential in the passage, it is not essential, nor obvious, in these particular words. The second vov (wanting in AD**FGL) is probably genuine (348), but cannot be forced to mean more than ‘‘now in their turn’’. The imminence of the result is not in view. Ver. 32. συνέκλεισεν γὰρ & θεὸς τοὺς πάντας εἰς ἄπειθιαν: this is the nearest approach made in the N.T. to putting the sin of man into a direct and positive relation to the act and purpose of God. But it would be a mistake to draw in- ferences from the concrete historical problem before the Apostle—viz., God’s dealings with Jew and Gentile, and the mutual relations and influence of Jew and Gentile in the evolution of God’s purpose—and to apply them to the general abstract question of the relation of the human will to the Divine. Paul is not thinking of this question at all, and his authority could not be claimed for such inferences. Salvation, he sees, as he looks at the world before him, is to come to Jew and Gentile alike by the way of free grace; and it answers to this, that in the providence of God, Jew and Gentile alike have been made to feel the need of
Some cursives have ὕστερον.
grace by being shut up under disobedi- ence. It is within Paul’s thought to say that the sin of Jews and Gentiles, to whom he preached the Gospel, did not lie outside the control, or outside the redeeming purpose, of God; but it does not seem to me to be within his thought to say that God ordains sin in general for the sake of, or with a view to, re- demption. This is a fancy question which an apostle would hardly discuss. God subordinates sin to His purpose, but it is not a subordinate element in His purpose. The same order of considera- tions ought to guide us in the interpreta- tion of τοὺς πάντας, ‘Them all” certainly refers in the first instance to Jews and Gentiles. It is not the same as τοὺς ἀμφοτέρους, “both parties”; but it differs from it in its present con- nection only by giving emphasis to the fact that both parties consist of numbers, to all of whom the truth here stated applies. To find here a doctrine of uni- versal salvation—a dogmatic assertion that every man will at last receive mercy —is simply to desert the ground on which the Apostle is standing. It is to leave off thinking about the concrete problem before his mind, and to start thinking about something quite different. It is gratuitous to contrast, as, ¢.g., is done by Lipsius, this passage with others in which Paul speaks of ἀπολλύμενοι as well as σωζόμενοι, and to say that they represent irreconcilable view-points—the Apostle speaking in the present instance from the standpoint of Divine teleology; in the other, from that of actual experience. The truth is, as Weiss puts it, there is not a word here to show how far, when the history of man has reached its term, Paul conceived God’s saving purpose to be τεβ]δεά. συνέκλεισεν answering to “WADI is frequent in LXX: the συν does not refer to the fact that Jews and Gentiles are shut up together, but in- dicates that those who are shut up are shut up on all sides, so that they cannot escape: ¢f. con-cludo and examples in Gal. iii, 22, Ps. xxx. 9 LXX. ἐλεήσῃ: