Paul grieves for the Jews 1 I SPEAK the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit: 2 That I have great sadness, and continual sorrow in my heart. 3 For I wished myself to be an anathema from Christ, for my brethren, who are my kinsmen according to the flesh, 4 Who are Israelites, to whom belongs the adoption as of children, and the glory, and the testament, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises: 5 Whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ, according to the flesh, who is over all things, God blessed for ever. Amen.
God's election depends on His free choice 6 Not as though the word of God has miscarried. For all are not Israelites that are of Israel: 7 Neither are all they that are the seed of Abraham, children; but in Isaac shall your seed be called: (Gen 21:12) 8 That is to say, not they that are the children of the flesh, are the children of God; but they, that are the children of the promise, are accounted for the seed. 9 For this is the word of promise: According to this time will I come; and Sara shall have a son. (Gen 18:10,14) 10 And not only she. But when Rebbecca also had conceived at once, of Isaac our father. 11 For when the children were not yet born, nor had done any good or evil (that the purpose of God, according to election, might stand,) 12 Not of works, but of him that calls, it was said to her: The elder shall serve the younger. (Gen 25:23) 13 As it is written: Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated. (Mal 1:2-3)
God is not unjust, though He has mercy n whom He chooses 14 What shall we say then? Is there injustice with God? God forbid. 15 For he says to Moses: I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy; and I will show mercy to whom I will show mercy. (Ex 33:19) 16 So then it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy. 17 For the scripture says to Pharaoh: To this purpose have I raised you, that I may show my power in you, and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth. (Ex 9:16) 18 Therefore he has mercy on whom he will; and whom he will, he hardens. 19 You will say therefore to me: Why does he then find fault? for who resists his will? 20 O man, who are you that replies against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it: Why have you made me thus? 21 Or has not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump, to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? 22 What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath, fitted for destruction, 23 That he might show the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he has prepared unto glory? 24 Even us, whom also he has called, nor only of the Jews, but also of the Gentiles.
Witness of the Old Testament 25 As in Hosea he says: I will call that which was not my people, my people; and her that was not beloved, beloved; and her that had not obtained mercy, one that has obtained mercy. (Hos 2:23) 26 And it shall be, in the place where it was said unto them, You are not my people; there they shall be called the sons of the living God. (Hos 1:10) 27 And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: If the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved. 28 For he shall finish his word, and cut it short in justice; because a short word shall the Lord make upon the earth. (Is 10:22-23) 29 And as Isaiah foretold: Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been made as Sodom, and we had been like unto Gomorrah. (Is 1:9)
Jew's refusal to believe 30 What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who followed not after justice, have attained to justice, even the justice that is of faith. 31 But Israel, by following after the law of justice, is not come unto the law of justice. 32 Why so? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were of works. For they stumbled at the stumblingstone. 33 As it is written: Behold I lay in Sion a stumblingstone and a rock of scandal; (Is 8:14) and whosoever believes in him shall not be confounded. (Is 28:16)
Commentary on Romans 9
9:3 kinsmen according to the flesh: For Paul was from the tribe of Benjamin. (Interlinear Gloss)
9:4-5 Although the salvation, which was to come through Christ, was prepared for all nations, yet it was necessary that Christ should be born of one people, which, for this reason, was privileged above other peoples. (St. Thomas Aquinas Sum Theo 2.98.4.r1)
9:6 All are not Israelites: Not all, who are the carnal seed of Israel, are true Israelites in God's account: who, as by his free grace, he heretofore preferred Isaac before Ismael, and Jacob before Esau, so he could, and did by the like free grace, election and mercy, raise up spiritual children by faith to Abraham and Israel, from among the Gentiles, and prefer them before the carnal Jews. (Bishop Richard Challoner)
9:11 Not yet born: By this example of these twins, and the preference of the younger to the elder, the drift of the apostle is, to show that God, in his election, mercy and grace, is not tied to any particular nation, as the Jews imagined; nor to any prerogative of birth, or any forgoing merits. For as, antecedently to his grace, he sees no merits in any, but finds all involved in sin, in the common mass of condemnation; and all children of wrath: there is no one whom he might not justly leave in that mass; so that whomsoever he delivers from it, he delivers in his mercy: and whomsoever he leaves in it, he leaves in his justice. As when, of two equally criminal, the king is pleased out of pure mercy to pardon one, whilst he suffers justice to take place in the execution of the other. (Bishop Richard Challoner)
9:12 With what intent then did God say this? Because He does not wait, as man does, to see from the issue of their acts the good and him who is not so, but even before these He knows which is the wicked and which not such. (St. John Chrysostom) Although God knew what would happen, he is not a respecter of persons, and condemns nobody before he sins, nor does he reward anyone until he conquers. (Ambrosiaster)
9:13 Esau I have hated: Now every one of God’s creatures are good (see 1 Tim 4:4), and every person is a creature, as a person, not as a sinner. God is therefore the creator of the body and the soul of a person. Neither of these two realities is evil, and God does not hate them, since he hates nothing that he has created. Now the soul is superior to the body. But God, author and creator of both, hates only sin in human beings. A person’s sin is disorder and perversion, that is, separation from the supreme Creator and attachment to inferior creatures. Therefore God does not hate Esau the man but Esau the sinner. (St. Augustine Various Ques to Simplianus 1.2.18)
9:15 This knowing, that what the blessed Paul aimed at was, to show by all that he said that God only knows who are worthy, and no man whatever knows, even if he seem to know ever so well, but that in this sentence of his there are peculiarities. For He that knows the secrets of the hearts, He only knows for a certainty who deserve a crown, and who punishment and vengeance. Hence it is that many of those, by men esteemed good, God convicts and punishes, and those suspected to be bad He crowns, after showing it not to be so; thus forming his sentence not after the judgment of us slaves, but after his own keen and uncorrupted decision, and not waiting for the issue of actions to look at the wicked and him who is not so therefrom. (St. John Chrysostom)
9:17-18 To this purpose: Not that God made him on purpose that he should sin, and so be damned; but foreseeing his obstinacy in sin, and the abuse of his own free will, he raised him up to be a mighty king, to make a more remarkable example of him: and that his power might be better known, and his justice in punishing him, published throughout the earth. He hardens: Not by being the cause or author of his sin, but by withholding his grace, and so leaving him in his sin, in punishment of his past demerits. (Bishop Richard Challoner) |
9:19-24 Wherefore I have always considered that the learned modesty and most wise humility of the seraphic Doctor St. Bonaventure were greatly to be admired and loved, in the discourse which he makes of the reason why divine providence ordains the elect to eternal life. "Perhaps," says he, "it is by a foresight of the good works which will be done by him that is drawn, insomuch as they proceed in some sort from the will: but distinctly to declare which good works being foreseen move God's will, I am not able, nor will I make inquiry thereupon: and there is no other reason than some sort of congruity, so that we might assign one while it might be another. Wherefore we cannot with assurance point out the true reason nor the true motive of God's will in this: for as St. Augustine says: 'Although the truth of it is most certain, yet is it far removed from our thoughts.' So that we can say nothing assuredly of it unless by the revelation of him who knows all things. And whereas it was not expedient for our salvation that we should have knowledge of these secrets, but on the contrary, it was more profitable that we should be ignorant of them, to keep us in humility, God would not reveal them, yea the holy Apostle did not dare to inquire about them, but testified the insufficiency of our understanding in this matter when he cried out: O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God!" Could one speak more holily Theotimus of so holy a mystery? Indeed these are the words of a most saintly and prudent Doctor of the Church. (St. Francis of Sales Treatise on the Love of God 7)
9:20-21 Paul takes this from Isaiah 29:16. (Interlinear Gloss)
9:25 Quote from Hosea 2:23. While this happened as a type under Zerubbabel, in reality it was after the Incarnation of Christ the Lord, when he also betrothed the Church forever; then it was also that those believing in him were truly styled a faithful people, and he was really called God of those believing in him. (Theodoret of Cyrus Com Hos 2:23)
9:26 Quote from Hosea 1:10. Even the apostles understood this as a prophetic testimony of the calling of the nations who did not formerly belong to God; and because this same people of the Gentiles is itself spiritually among the children of Abraham, and for that reason is rightly called Israel, therefore Hosea goes on to say, “And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together in one, and shall appoint themselves one headship, and shall ascend from the earth." (St. Augustine City of God 8.28)
9:27 Paul says this because Isaiah was crying out for those who believe in Christ. (Ambroisaster) only a remnant of them will be saved: that is, not all, not the majority, but a certain few who will be left. (St. Thomas Aquinas)
9:29 In other words, since Israel had worshipped idols, done away with prophets, denied Christ, or, rather, killed the Author of life, the God of all should have sentenced them to utter destruction of every kind. But since he is good beyond telling, he preserved the remnant, and they did not become exactly like the people of Sodom, who with all their families and homes were destroyed. (St. Cyril of Alexandria Com Is 1:9)
9:31 the law of justice: that is, the Law of Moses, which is the law of righteousness, if it is well understood, because it teaches righteousness. Or it is called the law of righteousness, because it does not make men truly, but only outwardly, righteous, as long as sins are avoided not from love but from fear of the punishment the Law inflicted. (St. Thomas Aquinas)
9:33 am laying in Sion a stumblingstone: that is, as a foundation, by which is meant that by divine command Christ was established as the foundation of the Church. (St. Thomas Aquinas) People usually stumble if their minds are distracted and they are not prepared to keep their eye on the path. This happened to the Jews, taken up with the vacuities of the Law, they were not prepared to recognize the stone foretold by the prophets, even though they clearly prophesied that the one believing in him would attain the greatest goods. (Theodoret of Cyrus) |
Catechism Cross-references
|