110:3 Your people willingly follow you 1 when you go into battle. 2
On the holy hills 3 at sunrise 4 the dew of your youth 5 belongs to you. 6
9:1 7 I am telling the truth in Christ (I am not lying!), for my conscience assures me 8 in the Holy Spirit – 9:2 I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. 9 9:3 For I could wish 10 that I myself were accursed – cut off from Christ – for the sake of my people, 11 my fellow countrymen, 12 9:4 who are Israelites. To them belong 13 the adoption as sons, 14 the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the temple worship, 15 and the promises. 9:5 To them belong the patriarchs, 16 and from them, 17 by human descent, 18 came the Christ, 19 who is God over all, blessed forever! 20 Amen.
10:1 Brothers and sisters, 21 my heart’s desire and prayer to God on behalf of my fellow Israelites 22 is for their salvation. 10:2 For I can testify that they are zealous for God, 23 but their zeal is not in line with the truth. 24 10:3 For ignoring the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking instead to establish their own righteousness, they did not submit to God’s righteousness.
10:1 Brothers and sisters, 25 my heart’s desire and prayer to God on behalf of my fellow Israelites 26 is for their salvation.
1 tn Heb “your people, free will offerings.” Perhaps the people, in their willingness to volunteer, are compared metaphorically to freewill offerings. Following the LXX, some revocalize the text and read “with you is nobility.”
2 tn Heb “in the day of your power.”
3 tc Heb “in splendor of holiness.” The plural construct form הַדְרֵי (hadrey, from הָדַר, hadar, “splendor”) occurs only here; it may indicate degree or perhaps refer by metonymy to garments (see Pss 29:2 and 96:9, where the phrase הַדְרַת קֹדֶשׁ [hadrat qodesh] refers to “holy attire”). If one retains the reading of the MT, this phrase should probably be taken with the preceding line. However, because of the subsequent references to “dawn” and to “dew,” it is better to emend the text to הַרְרֵי קֹדֶשׁ (harrey qodesh, “mountains of holiness”), a reading found in many medieval Hebrew
4 tn Heb “from the womb of dawn.” The Hebrew noun רֶחֶם (rekhem, “womb”) is probably used here metonymically for “birth.” The form מִשְׁחָר (mishkhar) occurs only here and should be emended to שַׁחַר (shakhar, “dawn”) with the mem (מ) being understood as dittographic (note the final mem [ם] on the preceding word). The phrase “womb [i.e., “birth”] of dawn” refers to sunrise.
5 sn The point of the metaphor is not entirely clear. The dew may symbolize the king’s youthful vitality or, more likely (note the parallelism), may refer to his army of strong, youthful warriors.
6 tn Heb “to you [is].”
7 sn Rom 9:1–11:36. These three chapters are among the most difficult and disputed in Paul’s Letter to the Romans. One area of difficulty is the relationship between Israel and the church, especially concerning the nature and extent of Israel’s election. Many different models have been constructed to express this relationship. For a representative survey, see M. Barth, The People of God (JSNTSup), 22-27. The literary genre of these three chapters has been frequently identified as a diatribe, a philosophical discussion or conversation evolved by the Cynic and Stoic schools of philosophy as a means of popularizing their ideas (E. Käsemann, Romans, 261 and 267). But other recent scholars have challenged the idea that Rom 9–11 is characterized by diatribe. Scholars like R. Scroggs and E. E. Ellis have instead identified the material in question as midrash. For a summary and discussion of the rabbinic connections, see W. R. Stegner, “Romans 9.6-29 – A Midrash,” JSNT 22 (1984): 37-52.
8 tn Or “my conscience bears witness to me.”
9 tn Grk “my sorrow is great and the anguish in my heart is unceasing.”
10 tn Or “For I would pray.” The implied condition is “if this could save my fellow Jews.”
11 tn Grk “brothers.” See BDAG 18-19 s.v. ἀδελφός 2.b.
12 tn Grk “my kinsmen according to the flesh.”
13 tn Grk “of whom.” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.
14 tn The Greek term υἱοθεσία (Juioqesia) was originally a legal technical term for adoption as a son with full rights of inheritance. BDAG 1024 s.v. notes, “a legal t.t. of ‘adoption’ of children, in our lit., i.e. in Paul, only in a transferred sense of a transcendent filial relationship between God and humans (with the legal aspect, not gender specificity, as major semantic component).” Although some modern translations remove the filial sense completely and render the term merely “adoption” (cf. NAB, ESV), the retention of this component of meaning was accomplished in the present translation by the phrase “as sons.”
15 tn Or “cultic service.”
16 tn Grk “of whom are the fathers.” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.
17 tn Grk “from whom.” Here the relative pronoun has been replaced by a personal pronoun.
18 tn Grk “according to the flesh.”
19 tn Or “Messiah.” (Both Greek “Christ” and Hebrew and Aramaic “Messiah” mean “one who has been anointed.”)
20 tn Or “the Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever,” or “the Messiah. God who is over all be blessed forever!” or “the Messiah who is over all. God be blessed forever!” The translational difficulty here is not text-critical in nature, but is a problem of punctuation. Since the genre of these opening verses of Romans 9 is a lament, it is probably best to take this as an affirmation of Christ’s deity (as the text renders it). Although the other renderings are possible, to see a note of praise to God at the end of this section seems strangely out of place. But for Paul to bring his lament to a crescendo (that is to say, his kinsmen had rejected God come in the flesh), thereby deepening his anguish, is wholly appropriate. This is also supported grammatically and stylistically: The phrase ὁ ὢν (Jo wn, “the one who is”) is most naturally taken as a phrase which modifies something in the preceding context, and Paul’s doxologies are always closely tied to the preceding context. For a detailed examination of this verse, see B. M. Metzger, “The Punctuation of Rom. 9:5,” Christ and the Spirit in the New Testament, 95-112; and M. J. Harris, Jesus as God, 144-72.
21 tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 1:13.
22 tn Grk “on behalf of them”; the referent (Paul’s fellow Israelites) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
23 tn Grk “they have a zeal for God.”
24 tn Grk “in accord with knowledge.”
25 tn Grk “brothers.” See note on the phrase “brothers and sisters” in 1:13.
26 tn Grk “on behalf of them”; the referent (Paul’s fellow Israelites) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
27 tc The words ἐπὶ τοὺς υἱοὺς τῆς ἀπειθείας (epi tou" Juiou" th" apeiqeia", “on the sons of disobedience”) are lacking in Ì46 B b sa, but are found in א A C D F G H I Ψ 075 0278 33 1739 1881 Ï lat sy bo. The words are omitted by several English translations (NASB, NIV, ESV, TNIV). This textual problem is quite difficult to resolve. On the one hand, the parallel account in Eph 5:6 has these words, thus providing scribes a motive for adding them here. On the other hand, the reading without the words may be too hard: The ἐν οἷς (en |oi") of v. 7 seems to have no antecedent without υἱούς already in the text, although it could possibly be construed as neuter referring to the vice list in v. 5. Further, although the witness of B is especially important, there are other places in which B and Ì46 share errant readings of omission. Nevertheless, the strength of the internal evidence against the longer reading is at least sufficient to cause doubt here. The decision to retain the words in the text is less than certain.
28 tn Grk “Having willed, he gave us birth.”