Romans 9:1-17

Israel’s Rejection Considered

9:1 ¹ I am telling the truth in Christ (I am not lying!), for my conscience assures me ²  in the Holy Spirit – 9:2 I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. ³  9:3 For I could wish ⁴  that I myself were accursed – cut off from Christ – for the sake of my people, ⁵  my fellow countrymen, ⁶  9:4 who are Israelites. To them belong ⁷  the adoption as sons, ⁸  the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the temple worship, ⁹  and the promises. 9:5 To them belong the patriarchs, ¹⁰  and from them, ¹¹  by human descent, ¹²  came the Christ, ¹³  who is God over all, blessed forever! ¹⁴  Amen.

9:6 It is not as though the word of God had failed. For not all those who are descended from Israel are truly Israel, ¹⁵  9:7 nor are all the children Abraham’s true descendants; rather “through Isaac will your descendants be counted.” ¹⁶  9:8 This means ¹⁷  it is not the children of the flesh ¹⁸  who are the children of God; rather, the children of promise are counted as descendants. 9:9 For this is what the promise declared: ¹⁹  “About a year from now ²⁰  I will return and Sarah will have a son.” ²¹  9:10 Not only that, but when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, ²²  our ancestor Isaac – 9:11 even before they were born or had done anything good or bad (so that God’s purpose in election ²³  would stand, not by works but by ²⁴  his calling) ²⁵  – 9:12 ²⁶  it was said to her, “The older will serve the younger,” ²⁷  9:13 just as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” ²⁸ 

9:14 What shall we say then? Is there injustice with God? Absolutely not! 9:15 For he says to Moses: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” ²⁹  9:16 So then, ³⁰  it does not depend on human desire or exertion, ³¹  but on God who shows mercy. 9:17 For the scripture says to Pharaoh: ³²  “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may demonstrate my power in you, and that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.” ³³ 

[9:1]  ¹ 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.

[9:1]  ² tn Or “my conscience bears witness to me.”

[9:2]  ³ tn Grk “my sorrow is great and the anguish in my heart is unceasing.”

[9:3]  ⁴ tn Or “For I would pray.” The implied condition is “if this could save my fellow Jews.”

[9:3]  ⁵ tn Grk “brothers.” See BDAG 18-19 s.v. ἀδελφός 2.b.

[9:3]  ⁶ tn Grk “my kinsmen according to the flesh.”

[9:4]  ⁷ tn Grk “of whom.” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[9:4]  ⁸ 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.”

[9:4]  ⁹ tn Or “cultic service.”

[9:5]  ¹⁰ 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.

[9:5]  ¹¹ tn Grk “from whom.” Here the relative pronoun has been replaced by a personal pronoun.

[9:5]  ¹² tn Grk “according to the flesh.”

[9:5]  ¹³ tn Or “Messiah.” (Both Greek “Christ” and Hebrew and Aramaic “Messiah” mean “one who has been anointed.”)

[9:5]  ¹⁴ 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.

[9:6]  ¹⁵ tn Grk “For not all those who are from Israel are Israel.”

[9:7]  ¹⁶ tn Grk “be called.” The emphasis here is upon God’s divine sovereignty in choosing Isaac as the child through whom Abraham’s lineage would be counted as opposed to Ishmael.

[9:8]  ¹⁷ tn Grk “That is,” or “That is to say.”

[9:8]  ¹⁸ tn Because it forms the counterpoint to “the children of promise” the expression “children of the flesh” has been retained in the translation.

[9:9]  ¹⁹ tn Grk “For this is the word of promise.”

[9:9]  ²⁰ tn Grk “About this time I will return.” Since this refers to the time when the promised child would be born, it would be approximately a year later.

[9:9]  ²¹ sn A quotation from Gen 18:10, 14.

[9:10]  ²² tn Or possibly “by one act of sexual intercourse.” See D. Moo, Romans (NICNT), 579.

[9:11]  ²³ tn Grk “God’s purpose according to election.”

[9:11]  ²⁴ tn Or “not based on works but based on…”

[9:11]  ²⁵ tn Grk “by the one who calls.”

[9:12]  ²⁶ sn Many translations place this verse division before the phrase “not by works but by his calling” (NA²⁷/UBS⁴, NIV, NRSV, NLT, NAB). Other translations place this verse division in the same place that the translation above does (NASB, KJV, NKJV, ASV, RSV). The translation has followed the latter to avoid breaking the parenthetical statement.

[9:12]  ²⁷ sn A quotation from Gen 25:23.

[9:13]  ²⁸ sn A quotation from Mal 1:2-3.

[9:15]  ²⁹ sn A quotation from Exod 33:19.

[9:16]  ³⁰ sn There is a double connective here that cannot be easily preserved in English: “consequently therefore,” emphasizing the conclusion of what he has been arguing.

[9:16]  ³¹ tn Grk “So then, [it does] not [depend] on the one who desires nor on the one who runs.”

[9:17]  ³² sn Paul uses a typical rabbinic formula here in which the OT scriptures are figuratively portrayed as speaking to Pharaoh. What he means is that the scripture he cites refers (or can be applied) to Pharaoh.

[9:17]  ³³ sn A quotation from Exod 9:16.