ple laid down would find several verifications. The Jews would be made jealous by seeing blessings, which they supposed were peculiar to themselves, imparted widely to other nations. The prediction has been fulfilled; for not keeping their minds and hearts open with an enlarged spirit, they were offended, instead of being gratified, as they should have been, at witnessing the diffusion of the blessings of revelation to all mankind.

20. But Esaias is very bold, &c. Isa. lxv. 1. The prophet Isaiah was even more strong and decided, and asserted that God would be found by, and be manifested to, those who sought him not, namely, the idolatrous and heathen nations. The warning of Moses was in case the children of Israel forgot their allegiance to their lawful Head and King, whereas the present verse relates to the positive admission of the Gentiles to higher privileges, at all events, and independently of any thing the Jews should do or leave undone.

21. To Israel he saith. Isa. Ixv. 2. Not only the Gentiles would be accepted, but, what was even more alarming, the Jews would run the hazard of becoming castaways themselves, and forfeiting to a more deserving people privileges which they had ceased to improve. The position of the prophet, standing and all day long stretching out his hands and

entreating them to return and live, and showing the most affectionate and importuning interest in their welfare, notwithstanding their disobedience and opposition, is a fine, graphic picture, drawn by a rich imagination. Tholuck says, that, “if from this passage we once more look back upon the tenth and ninth chapters, it is manifest how little Paul ever designed to revert to an absolute decree, but meant to cast all blame upon the want of will in man, resisting the gracious will of God.

The history of the Jews is in many respects a sad one, but it is only an enlarged sketch of what has befallen every nation, on a smaller scale; namely, to rise and flourish while faithful to the laws of God, and then to suffer decline and downfall when it became disobedient and corrupt. The providence of God manifested through Israel is similar to the universal providence manifested through Egypt, Greece, Rome, and all nations. Woe is unto any people, no matter how powerful or how famous, that has not respect unto the eternal laws of God, and builds not its renown and its strength upon the Rock of Ages. The Jews exist in every nation, as living witnesses of the truth of their ancient prophecies, and of the certainty of the retributions of the moral government of God. Their history is an eternal miracle and lesson to mankind.

CHAPTER XI.

The eleventh chapter is occupied with an answer to the objection, that, if what had been said before in chaps. vii.-x. was true, then God had rejected his chosen people Israel; which would be a thing incredible. First, the Apostle cites himself, ver. 1, and the "remnant" of his countrymen, as evidence that all were not rejected, ver. 2-5, and afterwards argues that, as the casting away was not total, so it would not be final, ver. 11–24; but that, as the rejection of the Jews had seemed to act favorably for the time being on the conversion of the Gentiles, so finally the faith of the Gentiles would react beneficially on the chosen people, ver. 25-32. He concludes with a spirit-stirring apostrophe to the grandeur and wisdom of the Divine plans, ver. 33-36.

The

1. Hammond suggests that it was probably this chapter to which the Apostle Peter referred, 2 Pet. iii. 16, as hard to be understood, and liable to be wrested to bad uses.- God forbid. Literally, Let it not be, the word God not being in the original at all. For I also am, &c. notable instance of the Apostle to the Gentiles was an evidence that there was no necessary and wholesale rejection of the Israelites. He elsewhere glories in his Hebrew ancestry. 2 Cor. xi. 22; Phil. iii. 5. Paley remarks that the Apostle follows this thought, that God had not

cast away his people, throughout this chapter, "in a series of reflections calculated to soothe the Jewish converts, as well as to procure from their Gentile brethren respect to the Jewish institutions. Now all this is perfectly natural. In a real St. Paul, writing to real converts, it is what anxiety to bring them over to his persuasion would naturally produce; but there is an earnestness and a personality, if I may so call it, in the manner, which a cold forgery, I apprehend, would neither have conceived nor supported.”

2. His people which he foreknew. A circumlocution for Israel. God chose the Jews, not as favorites, but as instruments; not as idle and irresponsible recipients of his bounties, but as stewards, who should give account; not as spoiled and indulged children, but as trustees of a great bequest to the world; the flame of heaven was kindled among them, not to warm merely their hearthstone, but to be the altar-fire of the whole earth. If the election of the Hebrews was then an election to privileges and blessings, it was also a promotion to the highest and most responsible trusts and duties on earth, namely, to be the light-bearers and religious leaders of the world.—Wot. Old English, now obsolete, for know.

Of Elias, or, as the marginal reading is, in Elias; that is, according to the ancient mode of quotation, in the section relating to Elias. 1 Kings

xix. 10-18.- Saying is omitted by both Griesbach and Tischendorf. Paul is peculiarly happy in quoting an instance of the difference between the Church visible and the Church invisible, and the encouragement there always was that the heart of the people was really sounder than it appeared to be to a casual observer.

3, 4. 1 Kings xvi. 31, 32; xviii. 30. Ahab, the wicked king of Israel, married Jezebel, a heathen woman, the daughter of the Sidonian king, and introduced the worship of Baal, a heathen deity, instead of the service of Almighty God. The children of Israel were with great difficulty weaned from idolatry, and they were constantly liable to relapse. It is sufficiently evident that only the power of a revelation and authority above themselves could have raised them out of this national, characteristic habit, and banished at last idolworship for ever from the Hebrew commonwealth.. To the image of Baal. Baal is here represented in the original as a goddess, but elsewhere as a god. The gender was sometimes masculine, and sometimes feminine.

5, 6. The old saying was made good in a nobler sense than the original one, and there was now, as then, 66 a faithful few.". -The election of grace. Dropping the Hebrew idiom, we read it the gracious election, or choice. But if it be of works, then it is no more grace: otherwise work is no more work. This is all omitted

as spurious by Griesbach and other critics of the highest class. It really adds nothing to the sense before expressed, unless it be to intensify the thought by reiteration and amplification. The doctrine of election has been sufficiently commented on in the ninth chapter. It is evident that it is an election to privileges, and not final and eternal condition or character, of which the Apostle speaks. It is an election too, which, though originally on the part of the All-wise Disposer undetermined by the personal merit of the individual, immediately takes on a character from the faithfulness or unfaithfulness of the elected party of further approval or disapproval. Thus the chosen people found in election no charm to keep off the natural retribution of their sins, and the Gentiles not chosen found acceptance in proportion as they feared God and wrought righteousness. When we speak of works, we must remember that faith is a work, and one of the greatest works a human being can perform, and the Apostle grounds salvation on faith. John vi. 28, 29. There is an election of God, by which he causes one man to be born in Africa and another in the United States, one man in a Mahometan and another in a Christian land, one man black and another white, one man simple and another a genius; and there is no injustice, only variety, in such election, because no more is required of each one than he is gifted with powers to fulfil. But from the

point of this varied endowment, constitution, and condition, from the moment the soul begins to act, the free agency and responsibility of man run parallel with the overruling power and providence of God. In faith, in choice, in obedience, in devotion to duty, in every good word and work, all the way up from the germ to the full-grown man and perfected Christian, man must work, labor, persevere, or he cannot inherit the promises of God. The doctrine of the Apostle, therefore, relating to election, and his exhortations to duty, to good works, chaps. xii.-xv., are perfectly accordant one with the other. He who believes in Jesus Christ has already done one of the greatest works a human being can possibly perform, and one that leads on to the whole diadem of Christian graces and virtues.

7, 8. As Israel was an election from the rest of the world, so was there also a further winnowing of Israel, an election of an election. -The rest were blinded, &c. Deut. xxix. 4; Is. vi. 10; 2 Cor. iii. 14, 15. God of course does not actually make any human being worse by a direct agency, or add a feather's weight to give the preponderance of the moral scale on the side of evil. But he is represented as doing that which he did not actually prevent, and causing that blindness which took place under his providence, and which he did not directly remove. This was in accordance with the Hebrew habit of ascribing everything, both good and bad, to the immediate agency of the higher

powers. Unto this day. Olshausen remarks, that "it is evident from these words that the Apostle has in view in the first instance, only a temporary hardening, and hopes that it will soon be possible to remove the spirit of slumber from them, without being obliged to apprehend that they will afterwards, when awake, continue to resist, and only incur heavier guilt." Griesbach edits this verse, with the exception of this clause, as parenthetical, thus connecting blinded in ver. 7 with unto this day in ver. 8.

9, 10. And David saith. Ps. lxix. 22, 23. The expressions of David towards his enemies were still more severe than those of the prophet, for he seemed to invoke direct maledictions upon them. He says, Let the very place of God's bounty, the daily table, become a curse to them, and let the blinded eyes and bowing form of age be theirs. It has been customary among commentators to justify these words of David, as uttered not only against his enemies, but against those of God. Yet on no such ground can we excuse his revengeful directions to his son Solomon just before his death, and those perhaps are a key of explanation to some passages in the Psalms. 1 Kings ii. 1-9. The truth is, that Christianity is not responsible for the conduct of the patriarchs, kings, and prophets of the elder dispensation. Revelation did not drive out their human nature, nor entirely overcome its downward propensities. Inspiration does not signify either infallibility in all knowledge, or moral perfec

eyes

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men.

tion of character. Even the Apostles, who had been under the influence of the example and the teachings of the Master, were not perfect When Paul, therefore, quotes such sentiments as those of the ninth and tenth verses, he is not to be understood as doing it necessarily by way of approbation, but of illustration. He argues with the Jews on their own ground, and adduces the words of their most revered king and psalmist as descriptive of the retribution that would overtake the enemies of the truth. The rich privileges of Christianity would be perverted by the obstinate and unbelieving, and turned into evils, just as David wished the blessings of the happiest and most joyous part of life, the bounties and hospitalities of the table, might become snares, traps, stumblingblocks, and retributions to his wicked persecutors. Christianity in the days of Paul was darkened to the Jews by the mists of prejudice and error, just as the poet king in his poetic rage and ecstasy desired that his foes might be made blind, old, and decrepit. We know what the spirit of Christ is, and there is nothing in this passage, interpreted as above, which was designed by Paul to conflict with that boundless love and mercy of the Lord; but in describing the natural consequences of unbelief and of the rejection of the Gospel, he quotes the poetry of David, as we now quote a favorite author for description, impression, or illustration of our views.

11. Having settled the question that the rejection of the Jews is not total, he now proceeds to prove that it is not final, but that the conversion

Now if the fall of them be the 12

of the Gentiles would be an instrument to react favorably for the restoration of Israel to Christianity. This train of thought is pursued through most of the remainder of this chapter. That they should fall, i. e. utterly. From his strain thus far, it might be inferred that he regarded the moral overthrow of the chosen people as decisive. But such is by no means his conclusion, for he rallies from this point, and expatiates on the hope that the action and reaction of Judaism and Gentilism on one another would be reciprocally beneficial.-For to provoke them to jealousy. The Vulgate better reads, that they may be emulous of them. See ver. 14. It was emulation rather than jealousy that was to be promoted by the causes under consideration. Acts xiii. 46. In the mighty movements of the Apostle's mind from side to side of his argument, he maintains the equilibrium of loss and gain, rebuke and hope, and indulges in no unhealthy and morbid complaints. While he draws from the old Scriptures sentences of severe condemnation, he also finds there his materials of consolation and courage. As Tholuck quotes from Chrysostom: "But as he had greatly run the Israelites down, and strung accusation upon accusation, bringing forward prophet after prophet crying out against them, Isaiah and Elias and Moses and David and Hosea, and that not once nor twice, but frequently, lest in this way he might plunge them in despair, and obstruct their return to the faith; and, on the other hand, lest he might lift the believers from among the Gentiles into arrogance, and, by