11:1 So I ask, God has not rejected his people, has he? Absolutely not! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin.
“The Deliverer will come out of Zion;
he will remove ungodliness from Jacob.
13:11 And do this 15 because we know 16 the time, that it is already the hour for us to awake from sleep, for our salvation is now nearer than when we became believers.
1 tn Grk “the father of circumcision.”
2 tn Grk “the ‘in-uncircumcision faith’ of our father Abraham.”
3 tn Grk “you were slaves of sin but you obeyed.”
4 tn Or “type, form.”
5 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.
6 tn Grk “from whom.” Here the relative pronoun has been replaced by a personal pronoun.
7 tn Grk “according to the flesh.”
8 tn Or “Messiah.” (Both Greek “Christ” and Hebrew and Aramaic “Messiah” mean “one who has been anointed.”)
9 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.
7 tn Grk “Or does not the potter have authority over the clay to make from the same lump.”
8 tn Grk “one vessel for honor and another for dishonor.”
9 sn A quotation from Deut 9:4.
10 sn A quotation from Deut 30:12.
11 tn It is not clear whether the phrase καὶ οὕτως (kai Joutws, “and so”) is to be understood in a modal sense (“and in this way”) or in a temporal sense (“and in the end”). Neither interpretation is conclusive from a grammatical standpoint, and in fact the two may not be mutually exclusive. Some, like H. Hübner, who argue strongly against the temporal reading, nevertheless continue to give the phrase a temporal significance, saying that God will save all Israel in the end (Gottes Ich und Israel [FRLANT], 118).
13 tn Grk “and this,” probably referring to the command to love (13:8-10); hence, “do” is implied from the previous verses.
14 tn The participle εἰδότες (eidotes) has been translated as a causal adverbial participle.