16:25-27 Closing Benediction

16:25-27 Closing Benediction

Romans

INTRODUCTION

Authorship. All *New Testament scholars accept this as a genuine letter of Paul. Churches naturally preserved letters of Paul; it would have been unnatural for anyone to have forged letters in his name during his lifetime or until long after his genuine letters had become widely known and circulated as authoritative. On the basis of letters clearly written by Paul to address specific situations of his day (e.g., 1 Corinthians) and other letters that share a common style with them, even the most critical New Testament scholars rarely dispute the Pauline authorship of particular letters (including Romans, Galatians, 1–2 Corinthians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon).

Rome’s Jewish Community. Rome may have had a million inhabitants; supported by its empire, it imported at least two hundred thousand tons of grain annually. Estimates of the Jewish community in this period range between roughly twenty thousand and fifty thousand, thus (by the usual educated guesses) perhaps five percent of the population. Rome’s Jewish community was predominantly poor, although some groups of Jewish people there were wealthier than others and better educated. Different groups lived in different parts of the city (mostly in ethnically segregated communities) and had their own leaders. It is thought that many of the predominantly Jewish house *churches existed in the Jewish ghetto across the Tiber, many Jewish residents working on the docks there. Rome included a community of Jewish Roman citizens, mostly descended from Judeans enslaved by Pompey and then freed by other Jews in Rome (*Philo, Embassy to Gaius 155). More than half of the Jewish residents of Rome had Latin names.

The primary language of the Jewish community in Rome, however, was not Latin but Greek, the language in which Paul writes (seventy-six percent of their burial inscriptions are in Greek, twenty-three percent in Latin and one percent in Hebrew or *Aramaic). Many Roman conversions to Judaism created resentment among other aristocratic Romans and led to tension between the Jewish and *Gentile elements in the city. Relevant to this letter, ancient literature suggests that many Romans looked down on Jewish people especially for circumcision (cf. Rom 2:25-29; 4:9-12), Sabbath-keeping (cf. 14:5-6) and food customs (cf. 14:2-23).

Jewish soteriology. Jewish beliefs in the empire in Paul’s day were diverse on many points, but most agreed on central issues such as the value of circumcision, Torah, and the temple for Jewish identity. E. P. Sanders challenged many earlier readings of Paul that assumed pervasive Jewish legalism, but the emerging “new perspective” has yielded a conglomeration of different solutions rather than a unified understanding of Paul. Sanders persuasively made the case for *grace in ancient Judaism, but other scholars note that Judaism was diverse, and even a religion insistent on grace (such as Christianity) has its share of legalists. (Merely emphasizing reward or punishment for deeds, however, is not necessarily legalistic, also appearing in Paul, e.g., 2 Cor 5:10.)

Paul’s depiction of opposing positions follows standard *rhetorical conventions for polemic in his day, caricaturizing his opponents for the purpose of reductio ad absurdum. His argument is rhetorically designed to persuade a first-century audience, even though today he might need to argue differently for a different audience. (For example, Rom 2:17-24, condemning an extreme Jewish teacher, and more general Psalms verses cited in 3:10-20, would not technically make all Jewish individuals sinful. Paul does believe that all people have sinned, but his supporting arguments use the rhetoric that was effective in his setting.)

Paul thus challenges not Jewish people or Jewish views as a whole but some Jewish attitudes and practices. He does this most often in letters such as Romans and Galatians where he addresses the relationship of Gentile believers to Israel’s heritage. For the Jewish people, observance of the *law was a matter of culture regardless of views about salvation. For Gentile converts, however, imposing observance of the law’s Israel-specific markers as a condition of belonging to Christ’s community raised starkly the question of what believers rely on for salvation. Paul recognized Christ as the way of salvation and dependence on him as its necessary condition. For Paul, the *Spirit provides the inward circumcision and law that meets what outward circumcision and observance of ancient regulations could only symbolize or approximate (cf. Jer 31:31-34; Ezek 36:26-27).

Situation. Although Jesus’s movement in Rome started among Jewish believers (cf. Acts 2:10), most of the believers in Rome by the time Paul writes were probably Gentiles (cf. Rom 1:5; 11:13; 16:4; esp. 1:13), possibly because many of the Jewish Christian leaders had been temporarily expelled for half a decade (see comment on Acts 18:2). Sometime in the 40s A.D., probably in 49, the emperor Claudius expelled some or much of the Jewish community from Rome, apparently over debates about the *Christ (cf. Suetonius, Life of Claudius 25.4). The Roman church was thus composed largely of Gentiles until Claudius’s death in A.D. 54, when his edict was automatically repealed, and a number of Jewish Christians returned to Rome (Rom 16:3). Jewish and Gentile Christians (as well as Gentiles influenced by Jews, and lax Jews less observant of the law) had different cultural ways of expressing their faith in Jesus (cf. Rom 14); Paul thus uses the *gospel to address, among other matters, a church experiencing tension between two valid cultural expressions of the Christian faith.

Paul probably wrote Romans around 55–58 (I tend to favor closer to 58), shortly after Claudius’s death. A decade after Claudius’s death and perhaps six years (give or take two) after Paul wrote this letter, Christians of all ethnic backgrounds would suffer together in Rome (*Tacitus, Annals 15.44). That the church remained strong after Nero killed hundreds testifies to how much the movement had grown.

Theme. Paul’s gospel, or good news, was the message about Jesus that could save Jew and Gentile alike (Rom 1:16-17). Given the situation noted above, what the Roman Christians needed was what we could call ethnic reconciliation and crosscultural sensitivity in Christ. Paul reminds Jewish hearers that they are as damned without *Christ as Gentiles (chaps. 1–3); that spiritual, not ethnic, descent from Abraham is what matters with respect to personal salvation (chaps. 4, 9); that all people (including Abraham’s ethnic descendants) are also descended from the sinner Adam (5:12-21); and that the law does not justify Israel (chaps. 7, 10). He reminds Gentiles that they were grafted into Judaism and therefore dare not be anti-Jewish (chap. 11) and that they must respect the practices of their Jewish siblings (chap. 14). Christ (15:1-13) and Paul (15:14-33) are agents of ethnic reconciliation, and unity (16:17-20) is the paramount issue. Paul wants them to accept each other and glorify God together (15:5-12; in 15:9-12 he offers his strongest and climactic texts supporting Gentile salvation).

Paul also explains in this letter that he has not yet visited them because his mission to the unreached is urgent (Rom 15:20-22); the same mission will require him to move beyond them to reach Spain (Rom 15:23-24; cf. 1:13-14). Both of these missions, however, are also part of Paul’s vision of reaching all peoples for Christ.

Genre. Some scholars have argued that Paul’s letter to the Romans is a letter-essay, explaining his gospel without relating to the specific needs of the Roman church. In view of the previous discussion of situation and theme, however, it seems that Paul lays out the facts of the gospel in chapters 1–11 and then summons his readers to reconciliation and mutual service in chapters 12–15; thus the letter functions more like “deliberative” rhetoric, an argument intended to persuade the readers to change their behavior.

Subsequent History. Protestants have traditionally stressed justification by faith, a doctrine emphasized in Romans and Galatians, because Luther found this doctrine helpful in addressing indulgences and other ecclesiastical corruptions in his day. But it is important to understand not only this doctrine but also why Paul needs to stress it. Most Jews already believed that the Jewish people as a whole were saved by God’s grace, and most Jewish Christians recognized that this grace was available only through Christ; the issue was on what terms Gentiles could become part of God’s people. Did they need to become ethnically Jewish (adopting circumcision and Israel-specific laws) to become spiritual children of Abraham? In arguing for the ethnic unity of the body of Christ, Paul argues that all people come to God on the same terms, no matter what their background. Not even outward observance of God’s law can make one right before God’s justice; only through Jesus can people be righted. Paul may stress justification by faith, a truth most of his readers would know, in part so he can emphasize reconciliation with one another, a reality they still need to learn.

Commentaries. Detailed commentaries providing significant background include Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary, with Roy D. Kotansky, ed. Eldon Jay Epp, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007); James D. G. Dunn, Romans, WBC 38A and B, 2 vols. (Dallas: Word, 1988); Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB 33 (New York: Doubleday, 1993); Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996); and Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans, BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998). Works on a mid-level range include Brendan Byrne, Romans, SP 6 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996); Charles H. Talbert, Romans, SHBC (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2002); and Thomas H. Tobin, Paul’s Rhetoric in Its Contexts: The Argument of Romans (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004). A helpful shorter commentary with background is Craig S. Keener, Romans NCC 6 (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2009); for an introduction to issues in the book, see, e.g., Richard N. Longenecker, Introducing Romans: Critical Issues in Paul’s Most Famous Letter (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011). For views on the background, see especially Karl P. Donfried, ed., The Romans Debate, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1991); Krister Stendahl, Paul Among Jews and Gentiles and Other Essays (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976). E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), provides a helpful corrective to earlier criticisms of Jewish views on the law, although some details of his approach are now much debated; for Paul’s view on the law in Romans, see, e.g., C. Thomas Rhyne, Faith Establishes the Law, SBLDS 55 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1981).

1:1-7

Introduction

Letters customarily opened with the name of the sender, the sender’s titles (if any were necessary), the name of the addressees and a greeting. For example: “Paul . . . to the church at . . . greetings.” Persuasive speeches often began by establishing the speaker’s credibility, what the Greeks called ethos. This beginning did not prove the speaker’s point but disposed the audience to hear him respectfully.

1:1. Paul’s name was normally a cognomen held by Roman citizens, rarely if ever used by Jews who were not Roman citizens, so his citizenship would likely be assumed (cf. Acts 16:37). A slave of someone in high position had more status, authority and freedom than a free commoner; the emperor’s slaves were some of the highest-ranking people in the empire, as the Roman Christians would know. In the *Old Testament, prophets from Moses on were generally called “servants” or “slaves” of God.

The ideas of being “called” and “set apart” go back to Old Testament language for Israel and, more important here, Israel’s prophets; for “*apostle,” see the glossary.

1:2-3. When Israel’s prophets proclaimed “good news,” they could associate it with the restoration of God’s people (Is 52:7), which the prophets elsewhere associated with the ultimate Davidic ruler and the *resurrection (Ezek 37:1-14). “Through his prophets” concurs with the Jewish doctrine of the Old Testament’s inspiration and final authority; “according to the flesh” (NASB) means simply that Jesus was physically descended from David.

1:4. “Spirit of holiness” was a common Jewish name for the *Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God. A regular *synagogue prayer regarded the future resurrection of the dead as the ultimate demonstration of God’s power. Although Romans could hear the phrase “*Son of God” as portraying Jesus as a rival to the emperor, this letter is full of quotations from the Old Testament, where it referred to the Davidic line, thus ultimately to the promised Jewish king (see 1:3; cf. 2 Sam 7:14; Ps 2:7; 89:27). Paul here regards Jesus’ resurrection as the Spirit’s coronation of him as the *Messiah and as humanity’s first taste of the future resurrection and *kingdom.

1:5-6. The prophets promised that a representative remnant from among the nations would turn to God (Is 2:2; 11:10; 19:23-25; 42:1, 6; 49:6; Zech 2:11). Paul applies to these believers biblical language for God’s people, such as “called” (1:6-7) and “consecrated ones” (1:7).

1:7. “*Saints” or “those who have been set apart” or “consecrated” goes back to the Old Testament image of God’s people as set apart for himself. Like Paul (see comment on 1:1), they too are “called” (1:6-7); Paul embraces them as fellow heirs in the mission, not as inferiors.

The standard Greek greeting was “greetings” (chairein—Jas 1:1), a term related to “*grace” (charis); Jewish people greeted one another with “peace,” and Jewish letters sometimes began, “Greetings and peace” (2 Maccabees 1:1; for “mercy and peace,” see *2 Baruch 78:2-3). Paul adapts this standard greeting, a well-wishing, into a Christian prayer: “The grace and peace of God and Jesus be with you.” (On “wish-prayers,” see comment on 1 Thess 3:11.) Placing the Father and Jesus on equal footing as providers of grace and peace elevated Jesus above the role given to any mere human in most of Judaism. “Father” was also a title for God in Judaism (usually “our Father”).

1:8-17

Paul’s Thanksgiving

Although less pervasive than prayers and reports of prayers, thanksgivings sometimes appeared in the openings of the bodies of ancient letters; when Paul omits one (Galatians) it is conspicuous.

1:8. “All roads lead to Rome”; due to the connections of the whole empire with Rome, Christians everywhere knew about the faith of believers in the capital.

1:9. Letters commonly included an opening prayer (cf. 1:7) or the report of prayer. For “in my spirit” (NASB; NIV) the modern idiom would be “from the bottom of my heart,” “with all my heart” (GNT; NLT). It was common to call as witness the one who knew one’s heart—God. Recurrent prayer was sometimes described as “remembering,” “reminding” or making mention to God.

1:10. On “by God’s will” or “if God wills,” see comment on Acts 18:20; on Paul’s plans to go to Rome, see Acts 19:21 (the following chapters of Acts relate how he finally got there).

1:11-12. Longing to see a friend was a conventional matter to mention in ancient letters, which were used to convey a sense of one’s presence when the writer and reader were (as often) far apart.

1:13. Addresses such as “beloved” or “brothers and sisters” were common in letters. On “*Gentiles,” see comment on 1:5-6, although in 1:13-15 one should keep in mind Paul’s special call to the Gentiles (11:13). Earlier the banning of Jews or at least prominent Jewish Christians from Rome (Acts 18:2) could have delayed Paul’s coming, but ultimately the delay stems from his mission (Rom 15:20-22).

1:14-15. Gentiles (1:13) included two categories, by the Greek division: Greeks considered everyone else in the world “barbarians” (cf. “non-Greeks”—NIV); they also often considered themselves wise and others foolish. Some educated Jewish people classed themselves as Greeks, but Greeks considered them barbarians. Paul will introduce the Jewish division of humanity in verse 16, but here he uses the Greek one; in both cases, he affirms that God is for all peoples.

1:16. Verses 16-17 seem to be the propositio, or thesis statement, which begins Paul’s argument. Paul stresses that the good news of salvation (especially Israel’s deliverace in Is 52:7) is for all peoples (see discussion of the situation in the introduction to Romans); if to both Jews and Greeks (Greeks were often the most anti-Jewish), then to all peoples between Jews and Greeks.

1:17. In Greek the term translated “righteousness” often means “justice.” With reference to God, in the *Old Testament and in the *Dead Sea Scrolls, “God’s righteousness” includes that aspect of his character on account of which he vindicates his people and shows their faithfulness to him to be right; sometimes it also expresses his mercy (e.g., Dan 9:16). Thus it relates to “justification,” or legal acquittal and vindication. (In Romans, many English versions translate the same Greek word as both “righteousness” and “justification.”) Because God’s creative word brings into being, his verdict in practice is also transformative.

The Hebrew and Greek versions of Habakkuk 2:4 differ on a pronoun, which Paul thus omits (since the disputed detail is irrelevant to his argument anyway). In the context of Habakkuk 2:4, the righteous are those who will survive the judgment because they have faith (i.e., are faithful to God). (Biblical saving faith was not passive assent but actively staking one’s life on the claims of God. It was a certainty sufficient to affect one’s lifestyle; cf. Rom 1:5.) Paul apparently applies this text to those who trust in *Christ and so are saved from the final judgment. That his contemporary readers would understand his application is made clear by the similar application of Habakkuk 2:4 in the Dead Sea Scrolls.

1:18-23

Willful Idolaters

Paul’s argument is similar to one in the Wisdom of Solomon, a popular Jewish work widely circulated by this period. His arguments would thus have been easy for his readers to follow. Jewish people viewed idolatry (1:18-23) and sexual misconduct (1:24-27), particularly homosexual intercourse (1:26-27), as sins committed by *Gentiles; Paul sets them up for condemnation of vices they too may have shared in 1:28-32.

1:18. “Heaven” was a Jewish circumlocution for God, and the phrase here is a typically Jewish way of saying “God is angry.” (That wrath is “revealed” parallels the revealing of God’s merciful righteousness in the *gospel in v. 17.) The truth that the wicked suppress is the truth of God’s character (1:19-20), which they distort by idolatry (1:23).

1:19-22. *Stoic philosophers argued that the nature of God was evident in creation; most Gentile intellectuals affirmed divine design in nature. *Cicero at that time could even assert that no race of humanity was so uncivilized as to deny the existence of the gods, and along with others he argued that the human mind points to what God is like. Jewish people scattered throughout the Greco-Roman world used this sort of argument to persuade pagans to recognize the true God. Even later *rabbis tell delightful stories about how Abraham reasoned back to the first cause and showed his fellow Gentiles that there was really only one true God. According to Jewish tradition, God had given seven laws to Noah, for which all humanity was responsible (including the prohibition of idolatry). But unlike Israel, who had to keep all 613 commandments in the *law (according to later rabbinic count), most Gentiles disobeyed even the laws of Noah. In a social world built around benefaction and honor, ingratitude (1:21) was one of the worst offenses, and grateful expressions of honor the one obligation expected of recipients of gifts.

1:23. Even Greeks disdained animal images of deities (practiced by the Egyptians), but Greeks worshiped deities in human form. In later Jewish tradition, idolatry was the final stage of sin to which the evil impulse (see comment on 7:10-11) would reduce a person; it was one of the worst sins. Yet the language Paul uses to describe pagan idolatry is drawn from *Old Testament passages about Israel’s idolatry (Deut 4:16-20; Ps 106:20; Jer 2:11); this is a setup for his argument for Jewish readers in chapter 2.

1:24-32

Other Pagan Deeds

Pagan gods acted immorally in the popular myths; one who worshiped them (1:23) would end up acting the same way. Having distorted God’s image (1:23), which was originally in male and female humans (Gen 1:26-27), humanity now distorted its own sexuality (Rom 1:24-27). Ancient Jewish people recognized that both idolatry and sexual immorality characterized *Gentiles.

1:24-25. The refrain “God gave them over” (1:24, 26, 28) suggests how God’s wrath (1:18) works: he lets people damn themselves as they warp their own humanity. As in the *Old Testament, God can turn people over to their own hardness of heart (e.g., Is 6:9-11; 29:9-12; Jer 44:25-27; some writers have called this “penal blindness”); cf. Psalm 81:12 (about Israel).

1:26-27. Greek men were often bisexual; not only was homosexual behavior approved (some writers, like speakers in *Plato’s Symposium, preferred it to heterosexual behavior), but elements of the culture socialized boys in this direction. Probably due to a deficiency in the number of women (which many attribute to female infanticide), marriages were often made between thirty-year-old men and women who were eighteen or even younger; husbands usually did not respect them. Men had access to only three forms of sexual release until such late marriages: slaves, prostitutes and other males. Men often preferred boys on the edge of puberty or adolescents. Lesbianism, though less widely reported, is also attested.

Although many upper-class Romans were affected by Greek ideals, some other Romans, including a number of Roman philosophers, disliked homosexual practice. Greco-Roman moralists sometimes opposed gender reversal as “against nature,” which would resemble the Jewish argument from God’s original purposes in creation (Gen 2:18). This argument appealed to the procreative function of intercourse in nature and the way that male and female organs fit together. Jewish people, whose Scriptures already condemned homosexual acts wherever they were mentioned (including Lev 18:22; 20:13), also borrowed the argument that homosexual acts were “against nature” (cf., e.g., *Philo, Life of Abraham 135-37; Special Laws 3.37-39; *Josephus, Against Apion 2.273-75; *Pseudo-Phocylides 190-92). Although Jewish texts speak of Jewish adulterers and thieves, they nearly always treat homosexual behavior as a Gentile practice. (Socialization affected sexual development.)

Paul did not choose this example of sin to be controversial with his readers; his Jewish and Roman Christian readers alike would have agreed with him that both idolatry and homosexual behavior are sinful. But this example is a setup for his critique of sins less often denounced (Rom 1:28-32).

1:28-32. Ancient writers (Greek, Roman, Jewish; cf. also Lev 18) sometimes employed “vice lists,” as here. Like skillful ancient speakers, Paul drives home the point with both repetition and variation: “filled with” four fundamental evils; “full of” five kinds of sin; listing eight samples of sinners; and noting that they lack four crucial virtues. But unlike idolatry and homosexuality (Rom 1:18-27), sins like greed, jealousy, slander, arrogance and ignorance also occur in Jewish lists as sins some Jewish people committed. Like Amos (see Amos 1–2), Paul here sets up his readers for chapter 2: Gentiles are not the only ones who are damned.

2:1-11

No Partiality

Not only *Gentiles (1:18-32) but also Jewish people (2:1-29) sinned. Paul engages in a lively *diatribe style (a common ancient teaching style), by using rhetorical questions and especially by challenging an imaginary opponent. Paul thus demolishes possible objections to his position in a vivid manner.

2:1-3. Speakers often argued on the basis of syllogisms, which consisted of a major premise (here, 2:1), a minor premise (2:2) and a conclusion (2:3). Both philosophers and Jewish teachers accepted that people should live what they preach, hence few could dispute Paul’s point. Philosophers saw sin as a moral folly, and Jewish teachers saw it as an affront to God but as universal. Paul demands that people be consistent with their denunciations, which meant taking sin more seriously than most people did. Skilled speakers would sometimes single out a hearer (2:1, 3); cf. Isaiah 22:17; Micah 6:8.

2:4. The *Old Testament and Judaism agreed that only God’s *grace made *repentance possible (e.g., Deut 30:6). This principle never denied a person’s responsibility to respond to that grace once it was offered (e.g., Deut 5:29; 10:16).

2:5. The Old Testament prophets often referred to “the day of wrath” (the “day of the Lord”), when God sat as judge in his court and judged the world by his justice (e.g., Is 2:11-12; 13:6, 9, 13; Ezek 7:19; 30:2-3; Joel 1:15; 2:1-2, 31; 3:14; Amos 5:18-20; Obad 15; Zeph 1:7; 1:14–2:2; Mal 3:2; 4:5). Some Jewish traditions speak of treasuring up good works for the future, but the *rhetorical opponent Paul addresses here has stored up the opposite (cf. Deut 32:34-35; Hos 13:12).

2:6-11. On verse 6, cf. Psalm 62:12 and Proverbs 24:12. The structure of this passage is chiastic (i.e., inverted parallelism, an ancient literary form): God’s impartiality (vv. 6, 11); to doers of good (vv. 7a, 10b), future rewards (vv. 7b, 10a); to the wicked (vv. 8a, 9b), punishment (vv. 8b, 9a).

Justice in judging was widely emphasized, and Judaism commonly stressed God’s impartiality (although Israel’s preferential treatment at the day of judgment was also explained as righteous); cf. Deuteronomy 10:17. Judaism also acknowledged that the wise person worked for long-range rewards (Rom 2:7; cf. Prov 21:21; 22:4).

2:12-16

Stricter Judgment

Paul’s point is that everyone should know better than to sin, but those with more access to the truth will be judged far more strictly than those without. Woe to those who thought themselves righteous by comparing themselves with others! Judaism was right that most pagans did evil; but Jewish people knew God’s standard better than the pagans and still did evil. This point underlines Paul’s argument of the common predicament of Jews and Gentiles under sin.

2:12. Paul is stricter than most of Judaism here. Most Jews acknowledged that Gentiles could be saved simply by keeping the most crucial commandments (what some traditions called the Noahide commandments; see comment on 1:19-20), because they did not have the whole *law. Paul argues that anyone who has sinned with or without the law will be strictly judged (unless *atonement for the sin is accepted in Christ, as he argues in 3:24-26).

2:13. Jewish teachers agreed that hearing the law was not enough; one must also obey it. Few would challenge Paul’s argument on this point.

2:14-16. Paul plays on the Greco-Roman philosophical view of the law of nature written in people’s hearts, according to which all people had some measure of innate knowledge of right and wrong, although it was less explicit than the written law. (Greek moralists and especially *Stoic thinkers heavily emphasized the knowledge of the “conscience.”) That they could know enough to do right some of the time renders them without excuse for ever doing wrong. Only when God’s law is fully written on the heart in *Christ (8:2; Jer 31:33) will it be internalized enough for people to live out God’s righteousness.

2:17-24

Disobeying the Law

This *diatribe style often used by philosophers was meant to teach and exhort rather than to attack; the imaginary opponent represents an idealized wrong position, which the speaker or writer destroys reductio ad absurdum (by reducing it to its absurd logical conclusion). The opponent of 2:17-29 is the idealized hypocrite but points out the evils of any measure of hypocrisy. (Similar attacks were made on “pretentious philosophers” in Greco-Roman diatribes.)

2:17-18. Jewish sages often warned that sages should be humble and not boast in their knowledge. But Israel could boast in their sole possession of the *law, because they alone worshiped the one true God. Ancient communication valued repetition to drive home a point; in 2:17-20 Paul offers eleven claims for the interlocutor.

2:19-20. Some of Paul’s language here comes from the *Old Testament (Is 42:6-7; cf. 42:18-20).

2:21-23. Appealing to ancient *rhetoric and communication ideals, Paul in 2:21-23 drives home his point with antithesis (contrasting points) and the technique of starting and ending with parallel language (x . . . y/x . . . y). Diatribe often used brief, pointed rhetorical questions. Philosophers typically reviled the inconsistency of their hearers’ lifestyles. Temple robbery was considered one of the most impious crimes, and even though Jewish teachers warned against disturbing pagan temples, pagans sometimes thought Jews inclined toward such crimes (Acts 19:37). But those who would rob temples would have to value their contents.

2:24. In the context of Isaiah 52:5, *Gentiles blasphemed God because of Israel’s suffering; here they do so because of Israel’s sin (cf. Ezek 36:20-23). Jewish teachers complained that public sin profaned God’s name among the Gentiles; misbehaving Jews could bring reproach on the whole Jewish community. (A case in point, possibly known to much of Paul’s audience, was a charlatan in Rome a generation earlier whose behavior had led to the expulsion of Jews from Rome under Tiberius; *Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.81-84.)

2:25-29

True Judaism

Moses had complained that Israel was uncircumcised in heart (Lev 26:41), and the prophets had reinforced this conviction (Jer 4:4; 9:25-26; cf. Is 51:7). God’s people were responsible to circumcise their hearts (Deut 10:16), and someday God would circumcise their hearts (Deut 30:6). Later *rabbis commented little on this issue; Paul makes it central and defines religious Judaism in terms of possession of the *Spirit (Rom 2:29; an internalized law—8:2; cf. Ezek 36:27), the heart of God’s covenant to which outward circumcision could merely point as an external symbol. Both Jewish and Greco-Roman writers emphasized caring what the deity thinks, not what other people think (Rom 2:29). In verse 29, Paul might play on the meaning of “Judah” (“praise”), from which the title translated “Jew” comes.

3:1-8

God’s Justice: Why Then Israel?

Jewishness was special—but not for salvation. Some might object that Paul thinks God had been unfaithful to his covenant, in which case God would be unjust; but Paul argues that Israel, not God, had been unfaithful to the covenant.

3:1. These are the objections of the imaginary interlocutor, a common device for furthering one’s argument in a *diatribe (see comment on 2:1-11). The objections are reasonable: was not Israel a special, chosen people? Determining “profit” (KJV) or “benefit” (NASB) was a common device among philosophers for evaluating the worth of a behavior or idea.

3:2. *Digression, even long digression, was a normal part of Greco-Roman writing; Paul develops and completes this “first of all” only in chapter 9. Judaism often emphasized that God entrusted his *law to Israel, and Paul here agrees.

3:3. “What then?” (NASB) was a common *rhetorical question used to further the argument of a diatribe. God’s faithfulness to his covenant was good long-term news for Israel as a whole; as in the *Old Testament (e.g., in Moses’ generation, contrary to some Jewish tradition); however, it did not save individual Israelites who broke covenant with him.

3:4. “May it never be!” (NASB) or “Not at all!” (NIV) was also a common rhetorical retort to the rhetorical questions of imaginary opponents (especially in some philosophers like *Epictetus). It was used to show the absurdity of the opposing objection. Paul declares that God’s justice is ultimately unassailable, as wrongdoers must confess (quoting Ps 51:4). “Everyone is a liar” comes from Psalm 116:11; as part of the familiar Hallel psalms, it may have been recognized by his audience.

3:5-6. God’s “righteousness” here is his “justice” (NRSV), as defined in terms of his faithfulness to his covenant word to Israel (3:3).

3:7. “Sinner” was an awful insult in Jewish circles; for Paul to call everyone sinners (Rom 1–2) would be shocking. God could be glorified and his justice vindicated even by its contrast with human rebellion, but this point in no way vindicated the rebellion.

3:8. Philosophers also often had to clear up misrepresentations of their teaching. Cf. Acts 21:21.

3:9-18

Proof from Scripture

Some would string together texts (“pearl stringing”) with common elements at the opening of *synagogue homilies and in the *Dead Sea Scrolls, though rarely at such length as here. Paul draws especially passages from the Psalms, most linked by the common element of body parts mentioned, and some mentioning death. The Psalms passages apply mostly to enemies; only the quotation from Isaiah 59:7-8 (in Rom 3:15-17) contextually applied to all of Israel. Linking the texts *midrashically, however, allows Paul to draw on the language of all of them.

3:9. Another objection from the imaginary protester allows Paul to return to his argument that Jew and *Gentile are equally in need of salvation. To be “under” sin was idiomatic for being subject to its rule.

3:10-12. Here Paul quotes Psalm 14:1-3 (= 53:1-3; cf. 1 Kings 8:46; Ps 130:3; 143:2; Prov 20:9; Eccles 7:20). Because the psalm repeats twice the line “no one does kindness,” Paul changes one to “no one righteous” to connect with his larger argument; Jewish teachers commonly adapted the language of texts accordingly.

3:13-18. The principle for attaching these proof texts to one another is similar to the rabbinic principle of gezerah shavah (which linked Old Testament texts by a key word). All these verses mention body parts: throat, tongue, lips, mouth (3:13-14; respectively, Ps 5:9; 10:7; 140:3), feet (Rom 3:15-17; Is 59:7-8) and eyes (Rom 3:18; Ps 36:1). Jewish teachers emphasized that the evil impulse (see comment on 7:10-11) ruled all the parts of the body (by later enumeration, 248 parts). The preponderance of mouth-related sins here may be intentional, especially if Roman Christians are complaining about each other (see chap. 14).

3:19-31

The Law and Righteousness

3:19. Paul’s use of Scripture shows that Jews as well as *Gentiles are sinful. The Jewish people were those “under” (see comment on v. 9) the *law; “the law” could loosely include the Psalms and the Prophets (the rest of the *Old Testament), as in 3:10-18. People were “silenced” in a law court when they could raise no objections in their own defense (cf. Ps 107:42; Job 40:4-5; 42:6).

3:20. Most of Judaism also agreed that all people sinned sometimes and that they needed God’s *grace; although some Jews suggested exceptions, they considered them extremely rare. Paul here forces his readers to be consistent and to recognize that Gentiles would thus be saved on the same terms as Jews. This verse echoes Psalm 143:2, which pleads for God’s mercy based on his righteousness and faithfulness (143:1). The Greek text has literally “all flesh will not be justified” (for which most translations use some variant of the less awkward English “no flesh will be justified”—NASB); “all flesh” is a standard Hebrew expression for all humanity (or, in some contexts, for all creatures). The sense of “works of the law” is debated here, as in a *Qumran text (4QMMT); probably it evokes biblical language about “doing” the law, hence remains general, though Jewish distinctives would reinforce Paul’s point the most.

3:21. “The Law and the Prophets” was one way to speak of the whole Old Testament; in chapter 4 Paul will argue how these texts teach righteousness by faith (v. 22). But God’s justice is not dependent on human performance of the law and thus not based on an advantage available only to Israel (3:2). Jewish teachers believed that Israel was special with regard to salvation and that their reception of the law at Sinai vindicated God’s choice of them.

3:22. “No distinction” (NASB, NRSV) among sinners refers to Jew and Gentile; both must approach God on the same terms, through Jesus Christ. This statement challenges the values behind the tensions in the Roman *church (see discussion of the situation in the introduction to Romans).

3:23. Judaism viewed “sin” as a moral offense against God (in contrast to the less dramatic usual Greek sense of the term). Jewish sources agreed that everyone sinned (with rare exceptions, like a young child); Greek moralists said that some faults were inevitable. Although the matter may be debated, “falling short of God’s glory” here might allude to the Jewish idea that humanity lost God’s glory when Adam sinned (cf. 5:12-21).

3:24. “Redemption” (freeing a slave) was a standard Old Testament concept; the Old Testament terms often involve the paying of a price. God “redeemed” Israel, making them his people by grace and by paying a price for their freedom (the Passover lamb and the firstborn of Egypt), before he gave them his commandments (cf. Ex 20:2). In Paul’s day, the Jewish people were looking forward to the messianic redemption, when they would be delivered from earthly rulers; but the malevolent ruler here is sin (3:9).

3:25. The term here translated “propitiation” (NASB) or “sacrifice of *atonement” (NRSV) refers to the mercy seat, the cover of the ark of the covenant (in the *Septuagint). This site was consecrated to God by blood each year on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16:14-15); “blood” here therefore presumably interprets Jesus’ death as an atoning sacrifice. Some other early Jewish sources used the image for a person’s death that turned away God’s wrath from Israel (*4 Maccabees 17:22). Although in Jewish tradition prayers, alms and other good deeds could turn away wrath (Sirach 3:3, 20; 32:1-3; Wisdom of Solomon 18:20-21), the law also required bloodshed: something had to die to appease the wrath properly due a person’s sin. God mercifully “passed over” (Ex 12:13) sins before the cross, in anticipation of the sacrifice that would take place there. (One might compare the rabbinic view that *repentance defers judgment until the Day of Atonement atones for sin, although nothing in the text suggests that Paul has this idea in mind here.)

3:26. To the Greek mind, justice meant “fair [but not necessarily equal] distribution” (the inequality of justice may be illustrated in that Roman justice assigned higher penalties to lower social classes); it was nevertheless agreed that magistrates should rule according to “justice.” Judaism emphasized God’s justice and recognized that he, like a just judge, could not simply acquit the guilty. Later rabbis in time developed a rift in God’s character: his attribute of mercy pleaded before him on Israel’s behalf, triumphing over the accusations of his attribute of justice.

Paul allows no such rift; he says that God could be just and simultaneously vindicate as just those who depend on Jesus, only because the sentence of wrath was executed on Jesus in their place (3:25). The rest of Judaism believed in God’s grace; the differences between Paul and his Jewish contemporaries here are that Paul insists that this grace came at such a great price to God, and that Gentiles can receive it on the same terms as Jewish people.

3:27-28. “Principle” (in an older version of the NIV) read a particular theological position into the translation in spite of the context. Instead, Paul probably poses two ways of approaching the “law” (NASB; current NIV): by human effort or by faith (cf. 7:6; 8:2; 9:31-32). Faith is the right way, which the law itself teaches (3:21, 31).

3:29-30. The basic confession of Judaism was God’s oneness (Deut 6:4). Paul thus argues: if there is only one God, he must also be God of the Gentiles (see Is 45:21-25).

3:31. Jewish teaching contrasted “annulling” and “establishing” the law. Ancient writers often used transitions between preceding and following points. Because the law teaches righteousness by faith (as Paul goes on to argue in chap. 4), anyone who teaches this idea upholds the law.

4:1-22

Abraham Made Righteous by Faith

As Israel’s ancestor, Abraham was regarded as the model for their faith; later *rabbis also regarded him as the model *proselyte (convert to Judaism), because he was considered a *Gentile before his circumcision. Jewish readers believed that they had been chosen in Abraham and that virtually every Israelite would be saved by God’s *grace if they maintained the covenant. Gentiles who wished to become part of the chosen community, however, had to be circumcised and join Israel in doing the righteous deeds of the *law, as Abraham did.

This section is a good Jewish *midrash, or commentary, on Genesis 15:6. Jewish and Greco-Roman debaters often proved their cases by examples, and this text was a favorite example used by ancient Jewish teachers.

4:1. *Diatribes typically used *rhetorical questions such as “What shall we say then?” as transitions to the next point. Jewish tradition spoke repeatedly of “our father Abraham.”

4:2. If anyone was righteous in Jewish tradition, it was surely Abraham. The model *Pharisee, he served God from love; the model proselyte, he brought many other Gentiles to faith in the one true God. He destroyed idols and stood for God’s truth. These extrabiblical Jewish traditions often declared that Abraham’s merit sustained or rescued Israel in subsequent generations.

4:3. Rabbis regularly offered biblical citations, sometimes prefacing them with, “What does Scripture say?” Jewish teachers often commented on Abraham’s faith as reflected in Genesis 15:6, which they read as “faithfulness,” one of his works. Paul reads it contextually as dependence on God’s promise and stresses the word “reckon” (NASB) or “credit” (NIV), a bookkeeping term used in ancient business documents for crediting payment to one’s account.

4:4-5. Still expounding Genesis 15:6, Paul refers here to Abraham. As just judge, God was not believed to acquit the guilty (Ex 23:7), so Paul’s declaration is rhetorically provocative, calling attention to transformed status in Christ. When God the just judge “reckons righteousness” to someone, he acquits them as not guilty. But this idea is not merely legal: when God speaks, he creates a new reality (Gen 1:3); see Romans 6:1-11.

4:6-8. Using the Jewish interpretive principle gezerah shavah, which links different texts containing the same key word or phrase, Paul introduces Psalm 32:1-2, which he uses to explain what “reckons” means. Omitting the next line on moral righteousness (not yet relevant to his point), Paul recognizes that the “reckoning” of the psalm is based on God’s grace rather than on the psalmist’s perfection (Ps 32:5). Psalm 32 was ascribed to David; Paul now has both Abraham and David as witnesses to his case.

4:9. The “blessedness” (NIV) or “blessing” (NASB) here is that of which 4:7-8 spoke; in standard Jewish fashion, Paul expounds the details of the text he has cited.

4:10. Here Paul appeals to another Jewish interpretive rule (one we also value today)—context. Abraham was made righteous by faith over thirteen years before he was circumcised (Gen 15:6; 16:3-4, 16; 17:24-25; some Jewish interpreters made this even longer—twenty-nine years). This fact challenged the great significance Judaism gave to circumcision, although Jewish teachers were correct that the *Old Testament had used it as the mark of the covenant. Abraham’s faith was surely greater years later when he offered up Isaac, and presumably also at the circumcision, but he already had justifying faith before God in Genesis 15:6.

4:11-12. Circumcision was the “sign” of the covenant (Gen 17:11; *Jubilees 15:26); but Paul interprets it also as a sign of Abraham’s prior righteousness according to Genesis 15:6. It was a sign of the covenant and not the covenant relationship itself. Many Jewish ears would recoil at Paul’s argument, which makes Gentile Christians full heirs of Abraham without either circumcision or ethnic descent from Abraham. It is one thing to say that uncircumcised Gentiles could be saved if they kept basic Noahide laws, as many Jews believed (especially avoiding idolatry and immorality); it is quite another to put them on the same level as the Jewish people—apparently treating them as proselytes without circumcision. People often spoke of those whose ways one imitated as one’s figurative ancestors.

4:13. Abraham was told that he would inherit the “land”; but in Hebrew the word for “the land” also means “the earth,” and Jewish interpreters had long been declaring that Abraham and his descendants would “inherit” the whole world to come.

4:14-16. Paul forces the reader to choose between completed righteousness by faith (based on God’s grace; Judaism acknowledged grace) and completed righteousness by a knowledge of the law, which would have made Israel more righteous than the Gentiles, regardless of faith.

4:17. Judaism agreed that God could speak things into being (e.g., Gen 1:3). Paul says that God’s promise to Abraham was thus enough to transform Gentiles into his children (especially because God decreed Abraham father of many nations just before telling him to be circumcised—Gen 17:5).

4:18-22. Faith as defined in Abraham’s experience is not passive assent to what God says; it is an enduring dependence on God’s promise, on which one stakes one’s life and lives accordingly. On the level of meaning, Paul and James (Jas 2:14-26) would agree. Faith stronger than death (4:19) prepares for the application in 4:24.

4:23–5:11

The Believer Declared Righteous

No one could boast before God (2:17; 3:27; 4:2), but there is cause for a different kind of boast in hope of restored glory (5:2; cf. 3:23), in tribulation (5:3) and in God through *Christ (5:11).

4:23-25. Paul begins to apply his exposition about Abraham to his readers (the application carries through 5:11). Ancient teachers (Jewish and Greco-Roman) often used examples to exhort their hearers or readers to think and act differently. Paul might allude here to language from Isaiah 53:5-12. The two clauses of 4:25 are rhetorically balanced, but they address different kinds of causes (the second being a goal, what some ancients considered a teleological cause).

5:1. “Peace” meant a relationship of concord between two persons much more often than it meant individual tranquility; thus here Paul means that the believer is always on God’s side.

5:2. “Hope of God’s glory” might imply the restoration of Adam’s “glory” (3:23; 5:12-21); it probably also evokes the *Old Testament prophecies that God would be glorified among his people (e.g., Is 40:3; 60:19; 61:3; 62:2).

5:3-4. Progressions like this one (tribulations, endurance, character, hope) represent a special literary and rhetorical form called concatenation (or climax, or sorites), also found in other texts. Again Paul demonstrates his skill in making his point in culturally relevant ways. Philosophers emphasized that hardships proved the quality of the wise person, who knew better than to be moved by them; the truly wise person should be tranquil in hardships. The Old Testament and Jewish tradition show men and women of God tested and matured by trials; nevertheless, the Old Testament also includes the internal struggles of its heroes, like Abraham, Sarah, David, Elijah and Jeremiah, rather than their continual tranquility.

5:5. Jewish people viewed the *Holy Spirit especially as the Spirit who had enabled the prophets to hear and speak for God. In this context, Paul means that the Spirit points to the cross (5:6-8) and so enables Christians to hear God’s love for them. In many Jewish traditions, the Spirit was available only to those most worthy; here the Spirit is bestowed as a gift (cf. Wisdom of Solomon 9:17). On the Spirit being “poured out,” see Joel 2:28; on not being ashamed of hope, cf. perhaps Psalm 119:116.

5:6-9. Well-educated Greco-Roman readers were aware of the Greek tradition in which “the good man” was extremely rare. Greeks considered laying down one’s life for someone else (especially a friend) heroic, but such sacrifice was not common; among Jewish people it was not particularly praised. Blood was not a dominant part of death by crucifixion, so its mention probably evokes sacrifice; blood propitiating a deity (to turn away wrath, 5:9) was intelligible in ancient Israel, among Jews, Greeks and others.

5:10-11. Greeks spoke of people in opposition to one another being “reconciled,” being made friends again, but did not speak of people being reconciled to God. The Jewish members of the Roman *church could be more familiar with this sort of language (from some early Jewish texts like 2 Maccabees 8:29). Sometimes *Gentiles sought to be “reconciled” to a deity by payments or reparations, but for the offended party, especially the all-powerful deity, to initiate reconciliation was highly unusual. Jewish teachers often used the “how much more” (5:10) form of argument.

5:12-21

A Common Heritage in Sin and Righteousness

Paul’s Jewish readers might have argued for their unique descent from Abraham the righteous (4:1–5:11), but Paul points them instead to their common descent with the *Gentiles from the line of Adam the sinner. His argument would have greater force to his Jewish readers than Genesis alone might imply, because their traditions had made Adam much more prominent than he had been in the *Old Testament (where he is rarely mentioned outside Genesis).

Jewish people in this period believed that Adam’s sin introduced sin and thus death into the world, and most believed that all his descendants replicated his rebellion by sinning (*4 Ezra 3:21; *2 Baruch 18:1-2; 54:15, 19). Jewish interpreters generally believed that Adam’s glory, lost at the Fall, would be restored to the righteous in the world to come. Later *rabbis expounded on Adam’s immense size (some even claimed that he filled the whole earth!). (The structure of Genesis, from Adam to Noah [5:29; 9:1-2, 7] to Abraham [12:1-3] and so on, suggests that God was working to restore humanity, and from Abraham’s line the deliverer of Gen 3:15 would finally come.)

5:12-14. “All sinned” (v. 12), even those who, unlike Adam (v. 14), had no direct law to disobey (v. 13). Paul is not, however, denying personal responsibility for sin on the part of Adam’s descendants. Jewish writers claimed that Adam brought sin and death into the world (4 Ezra 7:118; 2 Baruch 54:15), but they also believed that each of his descendants made his or her own choice to follow in Adam’s footsteps (4 Ezra 3:21; 7:118-26; 2 Baruch 18:1-2; 54:15), becoming each “our own Adam” (2 Baruch 54:19). Personification was a frequent literary technique, possibly applied here to Sin and Death.

5:15. Comparison of characters (not always of equal weight) and paired antitheses were familiar in ancient *rhetoric; as the letter was read allowed, this section would build to a rhetorical crescendo. The fivefold repetition of the term translated “transgression” or “trespass” in 5:15-20 would rhetorically reinforce the point. Biblical tradition sometimes viewed people in terms of corporate personality, one standing for many. All who were in Adam by birth became sinners; all who were in *Christ by true *baptism (6:4) became righteous.

5:16-21. On comparisons here, see comment on 5:15; comparisons were not, however, always between equals. Much of the argument of 5:15-21 is a standard Jewish argument, qal vahomer, an argument from lesser to greater (“how much more”). Greco-Roman logic also used this interpretive technique; many Jewish ways of arguing from Scripture were part of the general interpretive methodology of antiquity.

Jewish people believed that Israel would reign in the life of the world to come (cf. 5:17; Dan 7:22), as Adam and Eve reigned before the Fall (Gen 1:26-27).

6:1-11

Dead to Sin

6:1-5. This passage develops the implications of corporate personality in 5:15-21. For Jewish people, *baptism was the act by which non-Jews converted to Judaism, the final removal of *Gentile impurity; by it one turned one’s back on life in paganism and sin, vowed to follow God’s commandments, and became a new person with regard to Jewish *law. A person who became a follower of Jesus likewise gave up his or her old life; through participation with Christ’s death, Paul says, their death to the old life in sin, which was crucified in Christ, is an accomplished fact.

6:6-7. The “old man” (“old self” in many translations) is life in Adam versus life in *Christ (5:12-21). Ancient sages often warned against slavery to passions, false ideas and the like. Manumission, or freeing slaves, was a very common practice in antiquity; death, of course, ended all obligations (as in 7:2-3). (Some note later rabbinic teaching that conversion to Judaism ended a Gentile’s previous relationships, so that Jewish owners had to allow slaves’ conversion only under special circumstances.)

6:8-10. Paul applies the implications of corporate union with Christ in 5:15-21. He might also think of the *eschatological character of faith in Christ (cf. 6:5); the end time would overthrow sin. (Later teachers believed that the “evil impulse” [see comment on 7:14-25] would trouble even the most pious until the time of the *Messiah, when the evil impulse would be slain.) For Paul, the Messiah has come, and sin’s power has been killed.

6:11. The finished work of Christ means that the believer has already died to sin and now needs to acknowledge this—to “reckon” it done in faith (6:11; this is the same term for God’s reckoning righteousness in chap. 4). Ancient philosophers often believed that the most fundamental issue was reason, knowledge or understanding. They urged people to embrace the truthful view of reality, accepting wisdom. For Paul, this true wisdom is in Christ, and efficacious not by virtue of preconversion human character but because of what Christ has accomplished. One should embrace one’s identity in terms of one’s destiny with Christ, not one’s past in Adam.

6:12-23

Free from Sin, Servants of Righteousness

As noted above, ancient sages often warned against slavery to passions, false ideas and the like.

6:12-13. In some contexts, “instruments” (NASB, NIV) could be translated “weapons,” as in 13:12 (the sense here is debated).

6:14-21. Some scholars have seen here the idea of “sacral manumission”: a slave could be freed from the service of one master by officially becoming the property of a god and the god’s temple. What is much more clear is that many philosophers regularly used “slavery” and “freedom” in the sense of slavery to false ideas and pleasure, and freedom from such ideas and pleasure as well as from their consequences, like anxiety. Philosophers often emphasized being one’s own master.

Judaism could speak of being free from sin. Later Jewish teachers believed that because Israel had the *law, the evil impulse that made the Gentiles sinful could not enslave them. They also taught that Israel had become God’s slaves when they were freed from slavery in Egypt.

6:22. In the *Old Testament, Israel was “sanctified” (NASB, NRSV) or set apart as special for God; in standard Jewish teaching, *eternal life was the life of the world to come, inaugurated at the *resurrection from the dead.

6:23. Slaves could and often did receive some “wages.” Although the slave’s owner legally owned the slave’s possessions, the slave could use this property or money (called a peculium), sometimes even to purchase freedom. That such wages were normally a positive symbol makes Paul’s words here all the more striking. The “free gift” contrasts with such wages.

7:1-6

Dead to and Freed from the Law

The Jewish people believed that they were saved by God’s gracious choosing, not by meticulous observation of the commandments. Nevertheless, most sought to keep the commandments as best they knew how, as part of their culture, and this set them apart from *Gentiles. Paul here addresses another major divider between Jew and Gentile in his effort to bring the two together (see the introduction to Romans), because even a Gentile who converted to Judaism would take years to know the *law as well as a Jewish person who had been raised in it did.

7:1. Some later Jewish teachers argued that one who converted to Judaism was a new person—to such an extent that one’s former relatives no longer counted as relatives. Paul can use this line of reasoning differently: just as a person became dead to his or her old master (here, sin) at conversion (see comment on 6:1-5), that person became dead to the old law in which he or she was held.

7:2-4. According to biblical law, both death and divorce severed previous relationships; Paul emphasizes the one that fits his analogy in the context. (Because one never spoke of a woman’s former husband as her “husband” after the divorce, no one would have understood Paul’s words here as annulling certain kinds of divorce; cf. 1 Cor 7:15.) If Paul knew that some Jewish teachers envisioned the law as God’s daughter, he shifts the image here; moreover, it is the believer, not the law, who has died (6:2-5). United with Christ’s *resurrection and probably envisioned as now the bride of Christ, believers bear not physical offspring but “fruit.”

7:5. Philosophers often contrasted reason (which was good) with the passions (which were bad); Jewish teachers came to speak of these in terms of the good and evil impulse. See comment on 7:15-25.

7:6. Most Jewish people felt that the full power of the *Spirit had departed from Israel with the prophets and would only return with the *Messiah’s coming; here Paul contrasts the new act of God in the coming of the Spirit with the old instructions only written on tablets (see Ezek 36:26-27; cf. Jer 31:31-34). Greek interpreters had traditionally distinguished between interpreting laws according to principles and according to exact wording; Palestinian Jewish interpretation was very interested in the exact wording (sometimes even literally to “letters” and spellings of words).

7:7-13

Sin Unfairly Exploited the Law

Scholars dispute whether Paul here refers literally to his own past life or uses “I” generically for sinners (or *Gentiles, or perhaps more likely, Israel) under the *law. Because there is more precedent for teachers using themselves in illustrations (e.g., Phil 3:4-8) than for them using “I” (as opposed to a *rhetorical “you” or “one”) generically (but cf. 1 Cor 13:1), it is possible that Paul uses his own previous experience under law, viewed in retrospect, to illustrate life under law in general. What is clear is that Paul regards the law as good; the problem is human sin, and trying to make the law an instrument of self-improvement or salvation rather than a teacher of righteousness.

7:7-8. The opening rhetorical question is the natural one after the parallelism of 6:1-23 with 7:1-6. “You must not covet” is the tenth of the Ten Commandments, the only one that goes directly beyond one’s actions to the state of one’s heart. The point is that one might not regard coveting as transgressing God’s law if one were not so informed by the law.

7:9. When a Jewish boy came of age around thirteen (as in the later bar mitzvah, similar to Roman coming-of-age rituals), he became officially responsible for keeping the commandments. Paul may refer to something even earlier in his life, because consciousness of violation would have preceded this; for example, many Jewish boys in financially secure Judean homes began to be schooled in the law at age five.

7:10-11. Jewish teachers recognized the power of human sin (the evil impulse), but said that study of the law enabled one to overcome it and (following, e.g., Deut 4:40; 8:1; Baruch 3:9; 4:1-2) that the law brings life. Paul says that the law became instead the vehicle of his death. (Some scholars think that “deceived” alludes to Eve in Gen 3:13. If Adam were speaking in the verse, it would fit Rom 5:12-21 better. Although “sinned and died” alludes back to 5:12-21, it is less clear that Paul alludes to Adam here. The verb for Eve’s deception is common and differs from here.)

7:12-13. Paul argues in Romans that Jew and Gentile come to God on the same terms (see the introduction to Romans), and that the law is not a direct advantage for salvation (2:12-15), although it is valuable for knowing more about salvation (3:2, 31). His whole purpose in this section is to explain that the problem is not the law; it is human sinfulness that leads people to disobey the law in their hearts.

7:14-25

The Struggle of Human Effort Under the Law

Many commentators have thought that 7:14-25 describes Paul’s struggle with sin at the time he was writing the passage, because he uses present-tense verbs; a majority of scholars, however, currently demur. *Diatribe style, which Paul uses in much of Romans, was graphic, and its historical presents create vividness and Paul has been describing his past life under *law (7:7-13). A number of scholars today also argue that this passage is prosopopoiia, in which one rhetorically speaks with the voice of another character, “impersonating” a person or thing, in this case Adamic humanity or (perhaps more likely) Israel under the law. (For a rhetorical use of “I,” cf. 1 Cor 8:13; 10:29-30; 13:1-3, 11-12; perhaps Gal 2:18-21; “we” in Rom 6:1.) On this view, Paul could contrast the spiritual worthlessness of self-centered religious introspection (count the “I’s” and “me’s”) in Romans 7 with the life of the Spirit by *grace in Romans 6 and 8.

Many philosophers (particularly *Stoics) portrayed a conflict between one’s reason and one’s bodily passions; they believed that proper knowledge produced change. Many *Diaspora Jews believed that learning the law helped them subdue passions. Jewish people spoke of an evil impulse, and later teachers of the law insisted that learning the law enabled one to overcome the evil impulse. In contrast to all such proposed solutions, Paul replies that knowing moral truth had not freed him from sin. But Jewish people also expected sin to be eradicated in the day of judgment. As some *rabbis later put it, “God will take the evil impulse out in the sight of the nations and slay it”; or as Paul put it, Christians are dead to sin and freed from its power (chap. 6). Paul’s point in the context is that one must receive righteousness (including the power to live rightly) as a gift of God’s grace, not as an achievement by human effort (cf. 1:17; 8:4). (This reading of the passage accords with most Greek, as against most Latin, church fathers.)

7:14. On “flesh” (NASB, NRSV) in the sense of human sinfulness, see comment on 8:1-11. The *Old Testament spoke of God’s selling his people into bondage to their enemies, and of God’s redeeming his people from slavery to their enemies. Selling into bondage is the opposite of redemption, of freedom from sin in 6:18, 20 and 22. That the law is “spiritual” means that it is inspired by the *Spirit (see comment on Spirit in 8:1-11).

7:15-22. Philosophers spoke of an internal conflict between the reason and the passions; Jewish teachers spoke of a conflict between the good and evil impulse. Either could identify with Paul’s contrast between his mind or reason—knowing what was right—and his members in which passions or the evil impulse worked. The language of moral helplessness here resembles some tragic depictions of passion overpowering reason (e.g., in dramas about Medea, who wickedly killed her children). See further comment in the introduction to 7:14-23.

7:23. Other moral teachers also described the struggle between reason and passions (or against the evil impulse) in military terms and spoke of waging war against the passions; see comment on 13:12 (cf. also 7:8, 11: “opportunity” was sometimes used in terms of military strategy).

7:24. “Wretched person that I am!” was a standard cry of despair, mourning or self-reproach; it often appears in tragic laments. Some philosophers complained that this was their state, imprisoned in a mortal body. When they spoke of being freed from their mortal bodies, however, they meant that they would be freed simply by death; Paul’s freedom came by death with *Christ (6:1-11).

7:25. Paul probably summarizes 7:7-24 here: the dual allegiance of the person trying to achieve righteousness only by human effort, without becoming a new creation in Christ.

8:1-11

People of the Spirit Versus People of the Flesh

In the *Old Testament “flesh” (e.g., NRSV, NASB) could designate any mortal creature but especially designated human beings. It connoted weakness and mortality, especially when contrasted with God and his *Spirit (Gen 6:3; Is 31:3; cf. Ps 78:39). By the *New Testament period, this connotation of weakness was extended to moral weakness, as in the *Dead Sea Scrolls, and could involve “human susceptibility to sin,” or “self-centeredness” as opposed to “God-centeredness.” A life ruled by the flesh is a life dependent on finite human effort and resources, a selfish life as opposed to one directed by God’s Spirit. Paul’s use of “flesh” and “Spirit” refers to two spheres of existence—in Adam or in Christ—not to two natures in a person.

“Flesh” per se is not evil in the New Testament writings; *Christ “became flesh” (Jn 1:14), though not “sinful flesh” (Rom 8:3), and we live “in the flesh” in the sense of “in the body” (Gal 2:20). (The earlier NIV translation “sinful nature,” usually corrected in the current version, was potentially misleading, because some people today think of spirit and flesh as two natures within a person, whereas “Spirit” here is God’s Spirit—it is not a special part of a person but the power of God’s presence. Romans 7:15-25 describes a struggle of two aspects of human personality—reason and passions—trying to fulfill divine morality by human effort; but this struggle is not in view here, where people either live that struggle by the flesh or accept God’s gift of righteousness by the Spirit. Although “flesh” may be connected with bodily existence, the radical bifurcation of a human being into a morally upright “spiritual” part versus an immoral “bodily” part is a Neo-Platonic or *Gnostic idea foreign to Paul.)

But flesh, mere bodily existence and human strength, is mortal and inadequate to stand against sin (which abuses bodily members that could have been harnessed instead by the Spirit). Although the term is used flexibly in the Bible, in one sense we are flesh (especially in the Old Testament use of the term); the problem is not that people are flesh but that they live life their own way instead of by God’s power and *grace. Flesh is an arena of existence, but life there should be led not by bodily passions, like animals, but by God’s Spirit.

The Spirit especially anointed God’s people to prophesy in the Old Testament but also endowed them with power to do other things. Here, as in the Dead Sea Scrolls and occasionally in the Old Testament, the Spirit enables a person to live rightly (see especially Ezek 36:27). In Judaism, the Spirit indicated God’s presence; here the Spirit communicates the very presence, power and character of Christ.

8:1-4. Whether the *law brings life or death depends on whether it is written in one’s heart by the Spirit (Ezek 36:27) or practiced as an external standard of righteousness, which is unattainable by human effort (cf. 3:27; 9:31-32; 10:6-8). The expression “to deal with sin” (8:3 NRSV) probably evokes a *Septuagint phrase for “an offering for sin” (NASB), fitting the images of *atonement (cf. 3:25; 5:9) and sacrifice (cf. 1 Cor 5:7).

8:5-8. Philosophers often urged people to set their minds on eternal, heavenly or divine things rather than on the passions and transitory affairs of this world. *Philo condemned those whose minds were taken up with the matters of the body and its pleasures. Some philosophers urged their adherents to neglect bodily matters anchored in mortality, meditating on heavenly matters; for Paul, however, it is God’s Spirit that enables this new framework. Philosophers valued tranquility, but Paul’s wording follows Isaiah 26:3: it is the mind that trusts God that has peace (cf. also *resurrection life in Is 26:19).

Philosophers divided humanity into the enlightened and the foolish; Jewish wisdom literature and the *Qumran scrolls divided humanity into righteous and wicked. In articulating such different ideal types, the writers did not normally claim that anyone, including themselves, was perfectly wise or perfectly righteous. Paul here divides humanity into two classes: those who have the Spirit (Christians) and those left to their own devices. As with other such divisions of humanity, Paul is not claiming that people of the Spirit act perfectly, but rather that they belong to a different sphere than those who lack the Spirit.

The “frame-of-mind of (dominated by) the flesh” in 8:5 probably summarizes the state of the person in Rom 7:22-23. Some people believed that inspiration came only when the human mind was emptied, as in some Eastern mysticism. But Paul speaks of the “mind of the Spirit” as well as the “mind of the flesh.” Instead of opposing reason and inspiration, he contrasts a frame of mind that is merely human (and thus susceptible to sin) with a frame of mind that is directed by God’s inspiration.

8:9. Most Jewish people did not claim to have the Spirit; they believed that the Spirit would be made available fully only in the time of the end. After the *Messiah had come, all those who were truly God’s people would have the Spirit working in them (cf. Is 44:3; 59:21; Ezek 39:29).

8:10. Jewish people in this period often distinguished soul and body, just as the Greeks did, although for Jews the division usually functioned only at death. (Some Jewish writers were more influenced by Greek categories than others.) But Paul does not say here that the (human) “spirit is alive” (NASB); literally, he claims that the “Spirit is life” (KJV, NRSV, GNT). Thus he means that the body was still under death’s sentence, but the Spirit who indwells believers would ultimately resurrect their bodies (8:11). God’s Spirit would raise the dead (Ezek 37:14).

8:11. Jewish people believed that God would raise the dead at the end of the age. Paul modifies this teaching by only one step: God has already raised Jesus, and this event is a sure sign that the rest of the resurrection will happen someday.

8:12-17

Led by the Spirit

The Jewish people looked back to their deliverance from Egypt as their first redemption and some looked forward to the *Messiah’s coming as a new exodus, God’s ultimate act of salvation. In this hope they were prefigured by the prophets, who sometimes portrayed the future deliverance in terms of the exodus from Egypt (e.g., Hos 11:1, 5, 11).

8:12-13. Those who lived according to the flesh (as bodily creatures in their own strength) would die, but those who lived by the *eschatological Spirit (who in most Jewish thought and often in the *Old Testament prophets characterizes the life of the *age to come; Ezek 36:27, 37) would be resurrected by him; see introduction to 8:1-11 and comment on 8:10-11.

8:14. The Old Testament often comments that God “led” Israel through the wilderness (Ex 15:13; Deut 3:2; Ps 77:20; 78:52; 106:9; 136:16; Jer 2:6, 17; Hos 11:4; Amos 2:10; for the new exodus, see Is 48:20-21; Jer 23:7-8) and called Israel his “sons” or “children” when he redeemed them from Egypt (Ex 4:22; Deut 14:1; 32:5, 18-20; Ps 29:1; Is 1:2, 4; 43:6; 45:11; 63:8; Jer 3:19, 22; Hos 1:10; 11:1, 10). In both devotional and historical language, God’s leading was sometimes associated with his Spirit (Neh 9:20; Ps 143:10; Is 63:14).

8:15. Here Paul again plays on the idea of the exodus from Egypt; God’s glory led his people forward, not back toward slavery (cf. Ex 13:21; Neh 9:12; Ps 78:14; for new exodus, Is 58:8; Zech 2:5). He adopted them as his children (cf. 9:4). Here the Spirit, often associated with inspiration in ancient Jewish sources, inspires the believer to experience their intimate relationship with God. On “Abba,” see comment on Mark 14:36; although only a few Roman Jews spoke *Aramaic, they probably knew Jesus’ special address for his Father as “Papa” in his time of suffering (Mk 14:36; cf. Gal 4:6). Roman adoption—which could take place at any age—canceled all previous debts and relationships, defining the new son wholly in terms of his new relationship to his father, whose heir he thus became.

8:16. Philosophers spoke of conscience testifying (cf. 2:15; 9:1); Jewish people believed that the Spirit had testified to God’s truth against Israel and the nations by the prophets. But here the Spirit’s prophetic message is good news to the believer’s heart. As a legal act, Roman adoption (cf. 8:15) had to be attested by witnesses; the Spirit is here the attesting witness that God adopts believers in Jesus as his own children.

8:17. God had promised Israel an “inheritance” in the Promised Land, and Jewish people spoke of “inheriting the world to come”; on inheritance and adoption, see comment on 8:15. Many Jewish people believed that a period of suffering would precede God’s revelation of glory at the end.

8:18-27

Birth Pangs of a New World

8:18. Many Jewish people contrasted the present age with the *age to come, when God would reign unchallenged. Paul’s Jewish contemporaries would agree with him that the righteous would be greatly rewarded for any sufferings in this world.

8:19. Following *Old Testament tradition (Is 65:17-18), Jewish people generally believed that the whole world order would be transformed at the time of the end (although not all believed that it would be cosmic in scope or that the present order would perish in a cataclysmic manner). In Greek, Paul’s repetition of three words beginning with apok- or apek- would be *rhetorically appealing.

8:20. Greek tradition declared that the world had been declining from its past Golden Age to the present. Jewish tradition debated whether it was good that humanity had been created and suggested that Adam’s sin had brought harm and the domination of evil powers to all creation. *Stoic philosophers believed that the elements would come unraveled and nothing but the primeval fire was really eternal. Cosmic pessimism was rampant in the first few centuries A.D.; many people believed that decay and Fate reigned supreme.

8:21. The Greco-Roman world dreaded “corruption” (NASB) or “decay” (NIV); only the eternal, unchanging things in the heavens would last—the human body and everything else on earth would decompose. The language of “being set free from slavery” (NASB, GNT), “God’s children” and probably “glory” may allude to the Old Testament exodus *narrative, which prefigures the future salvation (see comment on 8:12-17).

8:22. In Exodus, God’s people “sighed” or “groaned,” and their groaning under hardship was an unintended prayer that hastened God’s redemption of them (Ex 2:23). Paul also connects “groaning” (Rom 8:22, 23, 26) with birth pangs here. Some Jewish traditions portrayed the time just before the end as birth pangs (see comment on Mt 24:6-8), the great suffering that would bring forth the *Messiah and the messianic era. For Paul, the sufferings of the whole present time are birth pangs, meaningful sufferings that promise a new world to come.

8:23-25. “Firstfruits” was the actual beginning, the first installment, of the Judean harvest (Lev 23:10); the presence of the Spirit in believers is thus the actual beginning of the future world. Believers had experienced redemption (Rom 3:24) and adoption (8:15) but still awaited the fullness of that experience at the *resurrection of their bodies by the Spirit (8:11).

The Israelites were redeemed from Egypt, but the consummation of their salvation was delayed a generation by their disobedience in the wilderness; it was nearly forty years before they entered the Promised Land. Paul can explain Christ’s salvation in the same way, because it is a new exodus (see comment on 8:12-17): the beginning and completion of salvation are separated by the period of God’s leading through the tests of the present age (8:14, 18).

8:26. Judaism usually viewed the Spirit as an expression of God’s power rather than as a personal being; like John (chaps. 14–16), Paul views the Spirit as a personal being (cf. 2 Cor 13:14). Jewish teachers portrayed God’s personified mercy or angels like Michael as intercessors for God’s people before his throne; Paul assigns this role to Christ in heaven (Rom 8:34) and to his Spirit in his people (8:26). The Spirit joins here in the birth pangs, no less eager for the new creation than God’s children are (see comment on 8:22-23).

8:27. All Jews agreed that God searches hearts (1 Kings 8:39; 1 Chron 28:9), an idea that occurs often in the New Testament, and in some later rabbinic texts even appears as a title for God (“searcher of hearts”).

8:28-30

God’s Eternal Purpose

8:28. *Stoic philosophers believed that everything would work out for the best—from the vantage point of God, although no other individual being (including lesser gods) would continue. Judaism believed that God was sovereign and that he was bringing history to a climax, when he would vindicate his people and turn their past sufferings to their advantage as he rewarded them (see comment on 8:18). For Paul, the ultimate good of these hardships is their work in conforming believers to Christ’s image in the end (8:29).

8:29. Some Greek thinkers emphasized becoming like the deity, but the “image” (“likeness”) idea is most prominent in Jewish sources. In Jewish thinking, Wisdom was God’s purest image (see, e.g., Wisdom of Solomon 7:26; comment on Col 1:15), but Jewish texts often also speak of Adam or humanity in general as made in God’s image (following Gen 1:26-27; for the sense in Genesis, cf. Gen 5:3). God’s children will all be conformed to the image of the firstborn of the new creation, the new Adam (Rom 5:12-21).

8:30. On predestination, see chapter 9. The predication of predestination on foreknowledge (8:29) need not cancel all free will; most of Judaism accepted both God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. (The idea that one has to choose between them is a post-New Testament idea.)

8:31-39

God’s Triumphant Love

Many believers in Rome had probably experienced expulsion less than a decade earlier (A.D. 49; see Acts 18:2), perhaps returning only around 54; presumably unknown to them and to Paul, many would have to give their lives in Nero’s persecution less than a decade later (A.D. 64). Before elaborating the point in 8:29-30, Paul offers an emotionally rousing climax to chapter 8. Ancient speakers could stir audiences with *rhetorical questions (8:31-35), lists of sufferings (8:35, 38-39) and repetition (in this case, an inverted parallel structure, or chiasm, in 8:35-39).

8:31. The *Old Testament often speaks of God being “with” or “for” his people (Ps 56:9; Is 33:21; Ezek 34:30; 36:9); therefore, the psalmist asks, what could anyone do to him (Ps 118:6)? Anyone who challenged them challenged him (see Is 50:8; cf. 54:17).

8:32. On the idea of inheriting all things in the world to come, see comment on 4:13; cf. comment on 5:17.

8:33-34. These verses echo Isaiah 50:8: because God vindicates the psalmist, who dares bring a case against him? Jewish texts express confidence that God would ultimately vindicate Israel, as he did each year on the Day of Atonement; Paul bases his confidence of believers’ vindication on the advocacy of Christ (see comment on 8:26). Jesus being at God’s right hand echoes Psalm 110:1.

8:35-36. Verses 35-39 form a *chiasmus (an ancient literary structure based on inverted parallelism): nothing can separate us from Christ’s love (8:35a, 39b), no matter what it is (8:35b-36, 38-39a), which makes believers more than overcome their opposition (8:37). Lists of hardships were common in Greco-Roman literature (especially used to show that the wise person had passed all tests and lived what he believed). “Nakedness” was applied to insufficient dress, not only to complete exposure. “Sword” was the standard mode of citizen execution in this period, and the citation from Psalm 44:22 (applied by second-century *rabbis to martyrdom) reinforces the certainty that martyrdom is in view here (8:36).

8:37. *Stoics valued remaining unbowed in suffering; Jewish people praised this fortitude in their tales of martyrs. Israel believed they would triumph in the day of judgment because God was for them; Paul assures believers that they triumph in their present tests because of what God has already done on their behalf (8:31-34).

8:38. Given the context of cosmic opposition here, we should probably take “principalities” and “powers” (KJV, NASB) here with “angels” as referring to the spiritual forces ruling the nations and bringing opposition against God’s people. Many ancient Jewish writers used these terms in this way.

8:39. “Height” and “depth” may well simply personify the heavens above and Hades (the realm of death) below (cf. Ps 139:8); taken together, this was a good Jewish way to encompass all creation (cf. Is 7:11). Some scholars have suggested that they are astrological terms; the spiritual forces who ruled the nations were often believed to do so through the stars, and many people in the Mediterranean world of the first few centuries A.D. feared the inevitable power of Fate working through the stars. For Paul, it is not Fate, the stars, angelic powers, or heaven or hell that determines the lives of believers; rather, the faithfulness of Jesus (8:31-34) does.

9:1-5

Israel’s Rightful Place

Romans 9–11 climaxes Paul’s argument so far that individual Jews and *Gentiles must come to God on the same terms (see the introduction).

9:1-3. Paul’s love and willingness to sacrifice himself for his people would remind his biblically informed hearers of Moses (Ex 32:32), although God did not permit Moses to sacrifice himself either (Ex 32:33-34; cf. Rom 8:39). A speaker’s or writer’s tears or sorrow was also ideally expected to move the audience or reader.

9:4-5. “Covenants” may be plural to include an allusion to God’s covenants with the patriarchs, or to his frequent renewing of his covenant with his people in the *Old Testament, also recognized in later Jewish texts.

The blessings Paul had assigned to believers in Jesus (8:2, 15, 18, 29) historically have belonged to Israel, according to the Old Testament. By recognizing *Christ as God (NIV and other translations of 9:5; cf. 1:25 for the same construction), Paul makes the point even more emphatically: God himself came to humanity through Israel. Paul’s list would please *rhetorically sensitive ancient hearers; in Greek, the pattern of feminine nouns in 9:4 end in -thesia, -a, -ai, -thesia, -a, -ai.

9:6-13

Not Saved by Ethnic Descent

It was not God’s promises (9:4-5) but the faithfulness of his people (9:1-3) that failed. Jewish people often believed that their people as a whole was saved, in contrast to the *Gentiles. Israel’s salvation began with God choosing Abraham (chap. 4). Paul argues here that ethnicity is insufficient grounds for salvation, as the *Old Testament also taught (e.g., Num 14:22-23; Deut 1:34-35; Ps 78:21-22; 95:8-11; 106:26-27); God can save on whatever terms he wishes.

9:6-9. Abraham had two sons while Sarah was alive, but only one received the promise (Gen 17:18-21), though both were blessed.

9:10-13. Isaac had two sons, but only one received the promise. This was determined before their birth (Gen 25:23; cf. Mal 1:1-3). Although God may have chosen Jacob because he foreknew Jacob’s heart (Rom 8:29), the point here is that God has the right to choose among the chosen line. Paul reminds his contemporaries that not all Abraham’s descendants received the promise, and he could have elaborated further had he so needed; the rest of the Old Testament was clear that many Israelites broke the covenant (Ex 32:33-35; Num 11:1; 14:37; 16:32-35; 25:4-5; Deut 1:35).

9:14-18

God’s Choice in Moses’ Time

9:14-15. In Exodus 33:19, God has the right to choose whom he wills. In the context, he has forgiven Israel as a whole because Moses has found favor in his sight (33:12-17), and God would show Moses his glory (33:18-23) because Moses is his friend (33:11). God’s choice of individuals, however, was not arbitrary but took into account people’s response to God (32:32-34), although God had initially called both Israel and Moses unconditionally.

9:16. Paul may echo biblical warnings that escape belongs not to the swift but depends on God’s favor (Eccles 9:11; Jer 46:6; Amos 2:14-15).

9:17-18. God showed mercy by not destroying Egypt (Ex 9:15-16), allowing Pharaoh to remain so God could further display his power. Paul makes the wording even more emphatic: God raised up or stirred this particular Pharaoh for the purpose of showing his power, that “the Egyptians may know that I am the Lord,” as Exodus repeatedly says (e.g., 9:16). God clearly hardened Pharaoh’s heart (Ex 9:12, 35; 10:27; 11:10), but not until Pharaoh had hardened his own several times (Ex 7:22; 8:15, 32). In other words, God elevated a particular person to fight against him; but that person also made his own choice, which God foreknew, before God punished him with a continuously hard heart (cf. Rom 1:24-25; 2 Thess 2:10-12). The *Old Testament affirms both God’s sovereignty (e.g., Deut 29:4) and human responsibility (e.g., Deut 5:29), assuming that God is sovereign enough to ensure both (although human choice could not nullify God’s word; cf., e.g., 1 Kings 22:26-30, 34-35).

9:19-29

God Chooses Gentiles

Jewish hearers might celebrate God’s right to harden Pharaoh (9:17), but Paul will shockingly exploit the principle to a different end: God can harden and show mercy as he wills, whether people are Jewish or *Gentile (9:24-33).

9:19-21. Paul here uses the language of Isaiah 29:16, 45:9 and 64:8, which the *Dead Sea Scrolls often used in prayers. The point is that God made people, and God can therefore do with them as he wills. In the context the application is especially that he can choose either Jews or Gentiles, not that his predestination is arbitrary.

Most Jewish people believed that their people as a whole had been chosen for salvation; they viewed predestination in corporate, ethnic terms. Paul here discusses predestination in the context of the salvation of Israel (9:1-13) and the Gentiles (9:23-29), emphasizing that because God can sovereignly choose to *elect whom he wills, that need not be on the basis of descent from Abraham. God’s sovereignty means that he is free to choose on another basis than his covenant with ethnic Israel (3:1-8); on some readings of this context, he can choose on the basis of (foreknown) faith in Christ (4:11-13; 8:29-30). Most ancient Jewish thinkers did accept both God’s sovereignty and human responsibility to choose rightly without viewing these as contradictory.

9:22-23. God endured vessels like Pharaoh for the sake of those who would receive mercy; honoring his name throughout the earth (Ex 9:16 in Rom 9:17), he could also save Gentiles.

9:24-26. In context, Hosea 2:23 and 1:10, which Paul cites here, refer to God’s restoring Israel, despite his temporary abandonment of them (1:9). If God could abandon but then restore Israel, he could also graft Gentiles into Israel if this were his will (cf. Rom 11:30-32).

9:27-28. Jewish teachers often linked texts based on a common key phrase; both Hosea 1:10 and the Isaiah quotation here note that Israel was “like the sand of the sea.” Here Paul quotes Isaiah 10:22-23: the prophet warned that only a remnant would survive and return to the land after judgment. If God saved only a remnant in the *Old Testament and promised that only a remnant would survive judgment, Paul questions why Jewish people of his own day would feel secure that their Jewishness would save them. (Paul adds “children of Israel” from Hos 1:10; blending texts was common in ancient citations.)

9:29. Now Paul cites Isaiah 1:9, which makes the same point as Isaiah 10:22-23 (which he just quoted). In the context in Isaiah, Israel has acted like Sodom, the epitome of sin (1:10); they are fortunate to have any survivors (1:7-9), because God demands justice (1:16-17), not mere sacrifices (1:11-15).

9:30–10:4

Israel’s Wrong Righteousness

Of the two approaches to righteousness and the *law in 9:30–10:10, only the way of faith saves sinful people. Why had Israel so often failed God in the *Old Testament, with only a remnant surviving? Because they pursued the law in terms of human effort (see comment on 9:29) instead of depending on God, who transforms the heart. Although the term “faith” is rare in translations of the Old Testament (Paul already used most of the references in 1:17 and 4:3), Paul believes that the idea permeates the Old Testament, where God’s people must respond to his *grace from their hearts.

9:30-31. Israel rightly sought the law but missed its point by stressing works rather than faith (see comment on 9:29)—faith was the law’s point (3:21, 31). The two approaches to the law (one right and the other wrong) are essential to Paul’s argument (3:27; 8:2; 10:5-8).

9:32-33. Here Paul follows a common Jewish interpretive practice of blending texts together (Is 8:14; 28:16), arguing that Israel failed because they did not follow the way of faith. Because Isaiah 28:16 probably alludes back to Isaiah 8:14, Paul’s blending of the two is especially reasonable, although perhaps only his more biblically literate hearers caught what he was doing. The point is that the same stone that caused Israel to stumble (Is 8:14, which also speaks of the stone as a sanctuary) would save those who believed (Is 28:16). Paul returns to not being ashamed in 10:11.

10:1-2. Jewish literature from this period often praises zeal for the law, even to the point of violently resisting those who wished to repress Jewish practice of the law.

10:3-4. On God’s righteousness, see comment on 1:17. “End of the law” can mean the “goal” or “climax” to which the law points, or that people should stop using the law in the wrong way.

10:5-10

Two Approaches to Righteousness

Educated Greeks and Romans often cited classical sources to support their arguments; like other Jewish teachers, Paul cites the Jewish and Christian canonical source, the Scriptures.

10:5. One approach is based on a particular Jewish interpretation of Leviticus 18:5: those who keep the commandments merit *eternal life. (Texts such as these—cf. also Deut 4:1, 26, 40; 5:33; 8:1; 16:20; 30:16, 20—originally promised long life on the land. But by Paul’s era Jewish interpreters understood these texts as promising eternal life, apparently holding this view alongside the view that God *elects Israel as a whole to be saved.) This kind of righteousness would prove difficult for *Gentiles without years of enculturation or study of the *law. Paul also established in Romans 1–3 and chapter 7 that this kind of righteousness does not work (see comment on 9:30-32).

10:6-7. Paul here does *midrash, expounding a text in good Jewish fashion. In context, “Who will ascend?” in Deuteronomy 30:12 means, “Who will ascend again, to bring the law down again?” (Moses ascended only to Sinai, but in Jewish tradition he ascended all the way to heaven to receive the law; in Deuteronomy, God provided the law from heaven.) “Who will descend?” in Deuteronomy 30:13 means “Who will descend into the Red Sea to cross it again?” (Although not in this text, the *Septuagint often translates “sea” as “abyss,” as Paul does here.) God had redeemed his people at the Sea, according to the *Old Testament and Jewish tradition; now, God has consummated his saving acts in Christ, and the same principle applies to him. (Paul adapts the opening wording slightly to work in a midrashic allusion to Deut 9:4, which, with Deut 9:5-6, reminds Israel that they are not righteous.)

Table 6. Paul’s Use of Deuteronomy 30:12-14 in Romans 10:6-10

Deut 30:12-14

Paul’s application of the principles in Rom 10:6-10

Do not say, “Who will ascend to heaven?” (to bring down God’s gift of the law; 30:12)

Do not say, “Who will ascend to heaven?” (to bring down God’s gift of Christ; 10:6)

Do not say, “Who will descend into the sea?” (for salvation; 30:13)

Do not say, “Who will descend into the abyss?” (for salvation; 10:7)

The word (the law) is near you (30:14)

The word (the gospel) is near you (10:8)

In your mouth and in your heart (30:14; probably recitation of the law, cf. Deut 6:6-7)

mouth

heart

10:8. Deuteronomy 30:14 refers to the law; as long as it is written in the heart (cf. 30:6; Ps 37:31; Is 51:7), God’s people could live out its righteousness (cf. Deut 30:11; Jer 31:31-34). Paul says that this principle applies all the more to the message of faith that the law teaches (3:31); *grace, not human effort, leads to righteousness (8:2-4).

10:9-10. Paul emphasizes “mouth” and “heart” here because he is expounding Deuteronomy 30:14 (cited in the previous verse), which speaks of the message of faith in one’s mouth and heart.

10:11-21

Salvation for All Peoples

10:11-12. Paul again cites Isaiah 28:16 (see Rom 9:33), which he is still explaining. His emphasis is on the “whoever” (NASB, GNT), by which he argues that the text must apply literally to *Gentiles as well as Jews.

10:13. Jewish teachers commonly expounded a text by citing other texts that shared the same key word; hence Paul ties in another verse (Joel 2:32) that has the word “whoever” to explain that in Isaiah 28:16 “not be disappointed” (NASB) or “not be put to shame” (NIV) means “be saved.”

10:14. Paul provides a *rhetorical chain in 10:14-15 that would have appealed to ancient hearers. He expounds the implications of Joel 2:32: salvation is meant for whoever will seek it, Jew or Gentile, but this availability of salvation presupposes that they must have the opportunity to hear the message.

10:15. Paul also has Scripture to verify that bearers of the good news must be “sent” (this term is the verb form of the noun translated “*apostle,” hence “apostled”); people are not saved without the opportunity to hear. Isaiah 52:7 announced that there was good news, but heralds still had to bring it to the people.

10:16. Several verses after Isaiah 52:7, Isaiah reports the response to the good news the heralds bring (53:1), and Paul’s readers probably know how this text continues: Israel rejected the good news (53:2-3) about one who would die on their behalf (53:4-12; cf. Rom 4:24-25).

10:17. Paul confirms his earlier interpretation of Deuteronomy 30:14 (in Rom 10:8): the saving message is none other than the proclaimed message of Christ.

10:18. Psalm 19:4 refers in context to the testimony of creation. If Paul refers to the context and is not simply making an analogy, it may be relevant that Jewish teachers often grappled with the question of whether Gentiles who had not heard the truth could be held responsible for it. They concluded that Gentiles could at least infer the oneness of God from creation and thus should avoid idolatry (see comment on 1:19-20). Even Gentiles may not have heard all of Christ’s message (10:17), but creation itself made them hear enough to be responsible for doing right. The Jewish *Diaspora had more knowledge than the Gentiles had; having the *law, they had every reason to believe, and word about *Christ had already begun to penetrate most Jewish centers of the ancient world.

10:19. God had promised in the law to provoke Israel to jealousy by another nation. Israel had rejected him for that which was not a god; God would reject them for that which would not be a people—to provoke them to jealousy (Deut 32:21; cf. Rom 11:11, 14).

10:20-21. Here Paul quotes Isaiah 65:1-2, which occurs in the context of God’s judgment on Israel (64:8-12), of Gentiles being accepted into God’s household (56:3-8; cf. 19:24-25) and of God restoring the remnant of Israel to himself (65:8-9).

11:1-10

Always a Remnant

“Remnant” does not presuppose any particular percentage; it is simply the current state of “some” Jewish people following Jesus, rather than “all Israel” (11:26). A few other groups of Jewish people, as represented in the *Dead Sea Scrolls, also felt that they alone were serving God and the rest of Israel was in apostasy. Because the early Christians believed that Jesus was the *Messiah, they believed that rejecting him was like rejecting the *law or the prophets, and like the prophets they accused their people of apostasy from Israel’s true faith.

11:1. Ancient writers often adduced examples for their arguments, sometimes using themselves. But Paul turns quickly to an example from Scripture (11:2-4).

11:2-4. The Elijah *narrative in 1 Kings 19:10, 14 and 18 indicates that at the time of Israel’s deepest apostasy, a remnant had still avoided idolatry. It might be relevant that some Jewish traditions presented Elijah as zealous for God but not patriotic enough for Israel.

11:5-7. Paul now expounds on 11:2-4: if there was a remnant even in Elijah’s day, there will always be a remnant (i.e., “how much more” now, a common form of argument in ancient times). That God chooses the remnant follows directly from 9:19-29 and from the other texts Paul will marshal in 11:8-10.

11:8. Here Paul blends Isaiah 29:10 (“spirit of deep sleep”) with the similar message of Deut 29:4 (“to this day . . . ears to hear”). In Isaiah, God silenced the prophets (Is 29:10) because Israel refused to hear them (30:10-11); thus God would make his message plain through the Assyrian invasion (28:9-13). Israel had become blind and deaf to God’s word (29:9-10), having excuses (29:11-12) and a pretense of righteousness (29:13-14); but someday they would see and hear again (29:18, 24). In Deuteronomy, Israel failed to learn from all God’s acts on their behalf.

11:9-10. Early Christians often applied Psalm 69, a psalm of a righteous sufferer, to Jesus, the righteous sufferer par excellence. In Psalm 69:22-23, the psalmist prays for the judgment of blindness on his persecutors, implying that God was sovereign over blindness—spiritual (Rom 11:8) as well as physical. Paul may also incorporate one “bonus” term from Psalm 35:8.

11:11-14

Provoking Israel to Jealousy

Jewish people sometimes used “stumble” for apostasy or sin. Paul here begins to expound Deuteronomy 32:21, which he cited in Romans 10:19. Some Jewish people expected *Gentiles to recognize Israel’s God at the time of the end (cf., e.g., Is 19:24-25; 60:3-12); Paul wants his people to recognize that it is through *Christ that this promise to Israel is being fulfilled. Turning Israel back to God is not the only purpose for the salvation of the Gentiles (cf. the missionary purpose of Israel in Gen 12:2-3), but it is one purpose in relation to Israel. Paul’s argument in Romans places Jew and Gentile on the same level with regard to salvation (see the introduction); but now he reminds the Gentiles to remember whose faith they have adopted. Ethnocentrism of any sort, Jewish or Gentile, opposes the message of the *gospel. Ancient *rhetoricians considered it acceptable to explicitly praise oneself only if one could justify it as stirring others to emulation (as here) or as defending oneself.

11:15-24

The Jewishness of the Christian Faith

Many Gentiles despised Jewish people for what they considered separatism and strange customs (see comment at Rom 14); Gentile converts to Jesus’s movement needed to avoid importing these prejudices into their new faith. Gentile Christians must remember that they are grafted into a Jewish faith, and that when they are grafted into the *Old Testament people of God, they accept not only Israel’s spiritual history as their own but also Jews as in some sense their siblings, even if those who do not follow Jesus are fallen siblings. Earlier in Romans Paul had opposed Jewish arrogance against Gentiles; here he opposes Gentile arrogance against Jewish people.

11:15. In the biblical prophets, the turning of the Jewish people back to God’s ways coincided with Israel’s restoration and the end time (which included the *resurrection of the dead).

11:16. The mention of “dough” alludes to the firstfruits of the dough offering in Numbers 15:20-21, which consecrates the whole batch; Israel’s beginnings were holy (Jer 2:3), and God had not forgotten his plans for them. Paul’s second illustration (root and branches), however, is the focus of 11:17-24. (Mixed metaphors were common in antiquity.)

11:17-24. Gentiles could and did become part of the people of God in the Old Testament (e.g., Ruth, Rahab, David’s Cherethite guards, etc.); but they were clearly a small minority. Now that Gentile Christians in Rome have begun to outnumber Jewish Christians, it is easier for them to forget their heritage in Israel’s history.

Jewish sources often described Israel as a plant or a tree, whose roots were the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob). (Sometimes they even used the image of an olive tree; indeed, at some point a *synagogue in Rome was apparently named the “olive tree.”) Contrary to standard Jewish teaching, Paul had argued that uncircumcised Gentiles could become part of that people of God through faith in the Jewish *Messiah (chap. 4)—like *proselytes, but without physical circumcision. Now he reminds Gentiles to respect the Jewish people, who had brought them their faith. It was easier for Jewish branches to be grafted back into the true form of their own faith than for polytheists who had worshiped idols before their conversion to understand the faith they were now accepting. Like other Jewish teachers of his day, Paul does not regard any particular person’s salvation as guaranteed from the human perspective till they have persevered to the end.

Grafting of trees (adding a shoot of one tree to another tree) is reported in both Jewish and Greco-Roman literature. Sometimes shoots from a wild olive tree would be grafted onto a domestic olive tree that was bearing little fruit in an attempt to strengthen or save the life of the tree. The unproductive original branches would be pruned off, and the new graft was considered “contrary to nature” (as in 11:24—NASB).

11:25-32

The Coming Salvation of Israel

God had promised that Israel as a whole (the surviving remnant after great afflictions) would someday turn to him (Deut 4:25-31; 30:1-6); at this time God would bring about the end (e.g., Hos 14:1-7; Joel 2:12-3:2). Paul’s view of the end time here presupposes this return.

11:25. Sometimes “mysteries” were previously hidden truths about the end time revealed to God’s servants (e.g., Dan 2:28-30; cf. Rom 16:25-26). Some *Old Testament prophets had predicted God’s witness spreading among the *Gentiles; because the final *repentance of Israel would usher in the end, God had delayed Israel’s final repentance until the fullness of the Gentile remnant could be gathered in (cf. Mt 24:14; 28:19-20; 2 Pet 3:9).

11:26-27. The future salvation of Israel is repeated throughout the Old Testament prophets. Jewish teachers commonly believed that “all Israel will be saved,” but at the same time could list which Israelites would not be saved (e.g., Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:1): the phrase thus means “Israel as a whole (but not necessarily including every individual) will be saved.” In other words, the great majority of the surviving Jewish remnant will turn to faith in Christ. Paul proves this point from Isaiah 59:20-21: the remnant of Jacob who turn from sin will be saved by the coming of the new redeemer, when he puts his *Spirit on them (Paul paraphrases, as was common in ancient citations; he may blend the Greek version of the passage with Ps 14:7, and may add, “when I take away their sins” based on the Greek version of Is 27:9 or Ezek 36:26).

11:28-29. Paul does not regard God’s promises to ethnic Israel as canceled—only deferred (cf. Deut 4:25-31); God still had a covenant with the ancestors (Deut 7:8). The grafting in of Gentiles (Rom 11:17) does not mean that they supplant the Jewish people (11:18), as if God has no further interest in the latter. The return of ethnic Israel as a whole to the covenant in the end time would join the grafted-in Gentiles and Jewish remnant that already participate in the covenant.

11:30-32. Ancient writers or speakers often summarized some themes of a section at its close. Gentiles and Israel exchanging roles of disobedience may allude back to 9:25-26 (cf. 10:21); mercy to 9:15-23. Paul’s point here is that all peoples have sinned and all peoples must come to God through his mercy in Christ, a point the Roman *church needed to hear (see the introduction to Romans).

11:33-36

Praising God’s Wisdom

Sometimes one would conclude a section with rousing *rhetoric; discussion of deity might especially invite exalted, almost poetic, rhetoric. Like the writers of some *Hellenistic Jewish documents, Paul concludes this section of his letter with a doxology, or praise to God. Using the language of Isaiah 40:13 and Job 41:11 (which refer to God’s sovereignty in and over creation), Paul praises God’s wisdom in designing history as he has so that salvation would be available to all peoples (chaps. 9–11).

*Stoic philosophers believed that God controlled all things and that all things would ultimately be resolved back into him. In this context Paul’s words in 11:36 mean instead what Jewish people normally meant by such words: God is the source and director of human history, and all things—even the evil choices of sinful humans—would in the end glorify him and the rightness of his wisdom. Philosophers distinguished various levels of causation with terms such as “from,” “through” and “for”; all the levels are applicable here.

12:1-8

Serve One Another

Having laid the theological groundwork for reconciliation in the Roman *church (chaps. 1–11), Paul now turns to practical counsel. (Some other ancient letters of exhortation followed this pattern.) He emphasizes that God’s will is for believers to think rightly: to recognize the equal value of all members of the body and to use all of one’s gifts to build up the body.

12:1. Ancient Judaism and some philosophical schools often used “sacrifice” figuratively for praise or for a lifestyle of worship; hence it would be hard for Paul’s readers to miss his point here. When he speaks of “your rational [cf. KJV ‘reasonable’; more to the point than ‘spiritual’—NASB, NRSV] service,” his word for “service” alludes to the work of priests in the temple, and “rational” to the proper way to think (as in 12:2-3). The *Old Testament called sacrifices that God accepted “pleasing” (NIV, GNT) or “acceptable” (Ezra 6:10; Ps 20:3; Is 56:7; Jer 6:20; Mal 3:4); people also spoke of sacrifices being “holy” (e.g., Lev 6:17, 25); but “living” sacrifices strains the metaphor in order to present the sacrificial lifestyle as a continual experience.

12:2. Judaism generally believed that evil powers dominated this age but that all peoples would acknowledge God’s rule in the *age to come. Here Paul says literally, “Do not be conformed to this age.” The “renewed” mind considers matters from the perspective of the coming era. Philosophers lacked this *eschatological perspective, but did emphasize making all decisions based on reason. Paul here emphasizes the proper use of the mind: those who discern what is good, acceptable (v. 1) and perfect will know God’s will, which also (in 12:3) provides self-understanding.

12:3. Philosophers emphasized proper self-understanding in the context of the rest of the cosmos; Paul emphasizes it in the context of Christ’s body (12:4-5). By affirming (in 12:3) that each member has “a measure of faith” (NASB; probably not “the measure of faith”—KJV, NRSV) apportioned for different functions (12:6-8), Paul affirms diversity within unity. He will apply this principle to the ethnic conflict in the church (see the introduction) in chapter 14.

12:4-5. That each class in society had a special function, like members of a body, had long been argued by thinkers defending the status quo of the state (often in support of hierarchy); *Stoic philosophers had also applied the image of head and body to God and the universe. But Paul applies the image in a fresh way, in which each member of the religious community has a special function within the one body, abolishing the priesthood-laity distinction of most ancient religions.

12:6. Most of ancient Judaism regarded *prophecy as supernatural in a way different from the other gifts Paul lists here. God could use the other gifts here, but most of ancient Judaism saw them as activities one did for God, whereas they thought of prophecy as a divine “possession” that was very rare in their own day. That Paul regards all these gifts as divine empowerments and prophecy as one among many suggests how thoroughly he expects the God who worked miracles in the *Old Testament to continue to work regularly in the life of the church.

12:7-8. Although “serving” may have a broad meaning (cf. 15:25), its position between prophecy and teaching might suggest that it refers to an office in the church (diakonos; see comment on 16:1). “Showing mercy” probably refers to charity—caring for the sick and the poor, and so forth; although all Christians did this work to some extent, some had a special gift for it.

12:9-21

General Parenesis

One of the styles ancient moralists used is called parenesis, which strings together various moral exhortations that have little connection among them. Paul uses parenesis here but has a general theme that applies to most of his exhortations: Get along with one another. This theme fits the situation of Romans (see the introduction). Many ancient moralists would have agreed with most of the exhortations Paul offers here. Ancients sometimes framed a section with parallel ideas; Paul emphasizes good versus evil in 12:9 and 21.

12:9-10. Ancient hearers would have appreciated Paul’s *rhetorical repetition in Greek here: –oi concludes three clauses in 12:10-11; –ontes or –ountes conclude seven clauses in 12:11-13. Ancient Mediterranean men often sought their own honor, competing with others for it. Soldiers swore never to “give preference to another” in honor above Caesar. Some philosophers recommended that “inferior” people prefer “superior” people above themselves. Paul’s admonition sounds more like that of Jewish teachers, who emphasized that each of their *disciples should look out for the others’ honor as much as for the disciple’s own.

12:11-13. Jewish people believed in taking care of needs in their community, and the Christians of Paul’s day no doubt agree (v. 13). In antiquity “hospitality” especially meant putting up travelers (without charge) in one’s home while they were in town; they would normally carry letters from those trusted by their hosts, attesting that they were to be accepted as guests.

12:14. Like some other exhortations in the context, this one may well echo Jesus’ teaching (Lk 6:28); it was common to repeat the sayings of famous teachers, and Jewish teachers often cited their own teachers and the *law. In a *Cynic or Stoic context, the exhortation would sound like a call to ignore suffering; but although Cynic philosophers disregarded reputation, they were adept at returning wisecracks. The counsel of Jesus and Paul has more to do with the Jewish conviction that God would judge justly and that believers could let matters rest with him (12:17-21).

12:15. Weeping with those who mourned was a proper expression of sympathy in most of ancient culture. Although philosophers and moralists often warned against weeping too much, because it “does no good,” Jewish weddings and mourning ceremonies (including funeral processions, in which the public joined) presupposed the principle Paul states here.

12:16. Humility was more a Jewish virtue than a Greek one, but even Greeks valued people of status showing compassion and mercy. Whereas many writers emphasized knowing one’s proper place, Christian literature goes beyond other ancient literature in suggesting that believers go out of their way to associate with the lowly.

12:17-18. Not repaying evil for evil may come from Jesus’ teaching (Mt 5:39), although some other Jewish teachers had also recommended nonretaliation (as early as Prov 20:22). Doing what is respectable in the opinions of other people was a virtue not only to aspiring Greco-Roman politicians but also to Jewish people in their dealings with *Gentiles. But while Jewish people adopted stricter guidelines than the surrounding culture for the sake of witness, they never compromised their own beliefs; the point of the admonition is to protect their witness and prevent unnecessary opposition.

12:19. Stoic philosophers opposed seeking revenge; they believed that Fate was sovereign, and one’s best resistance to Fate was to cooperate with it and refuse to let one’s will be manipulated by circumstances. Jewish pietists likewise condemned vengeance; they trusted God to vindicate them. The practice was, however, more difficult than the principle; thus, for example, the later Gentile massacres of Jews in Palestine invited bloody reprisals. Paul cites Deuteronomy 32:35 (from the same context cited in Rom 10:19 and 15:10), but the concept appears elsewhere in the *Old Testament as well (2 Sam 22:48; Prov 20:22; Jer 51:56).

12:20. Here Paul quotes Proverbs 25:21-22; although Solomon might have meant “heap burning coals upon his head” as the enemy’s emotional misery, in Paul’s context of vengeance (Rom 12:19) this expression may mean that one’s enemy will be punished all the more severely in the day of judgment. This is also the sense in which the *Dead Sea Scrolls viewed nonretaliation.

12:21. Some Greek and Jewish thinkers suggested that one should turn an enemy into a friend instead of retaliating. Sometimes, however, the one who does good to the evildoer will be vindicated only in the future day (12:20).

13:1-7

Submission to Civil Authorities

Loyalty to the state was a standard literary topic among ancient writers (e.g., the *Stoic writer Hierocles, How to Behave Toward One’s Fatherland); it appears in lists and discussions alongside proper treatment of parents, elders and friends. Philosophers and moralists commonly wrote on how government officials should act but also wrote on how citizens should behave toward the government. According to *Plato, Socrates even refused to escape execution lest he undermine the state with its good laws as well as its bad laws.

When Jewish people felt repressed for their ethnic and religious practices, submission to civil authorities was the ultimate example of nonresistance (12:17-21), an attitude that they did not always achieve. Writing this one letter to the empire’s capital, Paul may be concerned for Christians’ witness to their community. He is well aware that only roughly a decade before his letter some of the Jewish community had been expelled from Rome—possibly in debates over the identity of the *Messiah that Jewish Christians provoked (see comment on Acts 18:2). Paul had reason for concern; probably six to eight years after Paul wrote the letter, Nero began slaughtering Christians in Rome. Meanwhile, tensions in Judea were growing and within about a decade would erupt into a tragic war.

Jewish people had to be concerned about public opinion, especially in Rome, where their maintenance of economic ties with Palestine was viewed with suspicion. Because many people viewed Christianity as a minority sect within Judaism, Christians had even more reason to be cautious. Jews and Christians publicly stressed their good citizenship, against the popular slander that they were subversive. This emphasis does not mean, however, that they would avoid denouncing injustice (cf. 2 Thess 2; Jas 5; Jewish *apocalyptic). Stoics stressed submission to the state and other authorities, but no one understood such submission as absolute (that is, one should not submit to demands to do evil; e.g., Christians would not worship Caesar).

13:1-2. Nero was emperor at this time, but he had not yet begun persecuting Christians or repressing other groups; he was still under the benevolent influences of *Seneca and Burrus, rather than the reprobate Tigellinus. Nero was always popular in Greece, from which Paul was writing.

Although some Palestinian Jews already advocated the revolt against Rome that would take place in little more than a decade, other Palestinian Jews reportedly swore to nonresistance, believing that God had ordained all civil authorities (in the *Old Testament, cf. Is 45:1; Jer 25:9; Dan 4:32). Most Jews in Rome upheld this position and would have been embarrassed by any other. The Old Testament clearly taught God’s sovereignty over earthly rulers (Prov 16:10; 21:1).

13:3-5. Here Paul offers standard ancient moral exhortation. The Roman state did many evil things; even its court decisions were based on social class. But the Romans generally advocated justice and toleration, and at this point the Christians have nothing to fear from them. Paul thus does not need to qualify the general principle he is articulating at this time. “The sword” refers to the standard method of execution in this period (beheading); in earlier times the ax had been used. Swords were carried in front of Roman officials to indicate their authority over life and death.

13:6-7. The empire as a whole levied a property tax (often about one percent) and a head tax; local provinces or kingdoms added further taxes; there were also customs duties. Taxes were used to finance roads and run the government but also to support Roman armies and temples devoted to the worship of the emperor. Particular taxes became controversial in Rome perhaps just months before Paul wrote this letter; noncitizen Jews who returned to Rome in or after A.D. 54 may have also been subject to special taxes from which Roman citizens were exempt. Officials expected and received honor by virtue of their position.

13:8-10

Fulfilling the Law

Paul reminds any Jewish hearers concerned about *Gentiles’ lax observance of the *law that the best way for them to fulfill the law is to get along with each other (see the discussion of situation in the introduction to Romans).

13:8. Moralists often emphasized not being in debt (cf. Prov 22:7; Publilius Syrus 11); sometimes even whole essays were written on the subject (e.g., by *Plutarch, One Ought Not to Borrow). Judaism always stressed love of one’s neighbor and sometimes recognized it as a commandment that summarized God’s law.

13:9-10. No hearers, whether Greek, Roman or Jewish, would disagree with the commandments Paul cites here, except for some Gentiles who might disagree about coveting. Many Jewish people highlighted the Ten Commandments as particularly significant. Treating one’s neighbor as oneself is a recurrent admonition of ancient ethics, although ancient moralists found many different ways to summarize ethics; Paul follows the specific summary advocated by Jesus (Mk 12:31).

13:11-14

Waking for the Dawn

13:11. Philosophers sometimes spoke of a soul inattentive to spiritual matters as being asleep. Paul’s image of sleeping in the light of Christ’s impending return probably harks back to Jesus’ own teaching (Mt 24:43; Mk 13:36). Most Greeks expected history to continue as normal or believed that the universe moved in cycles; but most Judeans, like Paul, were anticipating its climax in the imminent future.

13:12. Many Palestinian Jews were expecting an end-time battle that would include the overthrow of the Gentiles, but Paul here intends this image much more in the sense that Jews outside Palestine would have used it. Philosophers often described their battle with the passions in athletic and military images. This imagery also influenced non-Palestinian Jewish writers; for instance, one document portrays Moses’ armor or weapons as prayer and incense (Wisdom of Solomon 18:21). Some of these documents also use the image of clothing oneself spiritually, and Judaism could speak of persons’ being “clothed” with God’s *Spirit (the *Septuagint version of Judg 6:34; 2 Chron 24:20; *Pseudo-Philo, Biblical Antiquities 27:9-10; cf. also *Old Testament images listed in comment on Eph 4:20-24).

13:13-14. Jews often characterized Gentile behavior in terms of wild drinking parties and premarital sex, and in general they were not far off the mark. These activities were done at night (drunken parties often lasted well into the night), like sleeping (v. 11) and burglaries. (Nero’s own nocturnal revels were widely known; *Tacitus, Annals 16.20.) Rome’s streets were not very safe at night if one traveled alone, but parties still could last late into the night.

14:1-23

Don’t Be Divided over Foods or Holy Days

The issue of “pure” and “unclean” foods (14:14) prepares for the issue of Jews and *Gentiles accepting one another (15:7-12). Paul’s exhortation to unity between the Jewish and Gentile Christians in Rome (see the introduction) now reveals some of the cultural divisions being experienced there. Jewish people did not expect most Gentiles to observe their food laws or holy days but did expect Gentile converts to Judaism to do so, perhaps including Gentile Christians. (Lev 11:44-45 deals with holiness as separation and may suggest that God gave special food laws to Israel particularly to keep it separate from other nations, because most cultures had their own special dietary practices. For Jesus’s followers called to reach the world, however, its principle of moral separation could be retained without cultural separation.)

Gentiles, particularly in Rome, had long ridiculed Jewish people for their peculiarities on especially these two issues (plus circumcision, addressed in 2:25-29; 4:9-12). Paul emphasizes primarily eating practices. (Although he addresses a different kind of division over foods in 1 Cor 8, he applies similar principles.)

14:1-4. Most distinct cultures in the ancient world had their own food customs; some philosophical schools also had their own food rules. But few cultures were as insistent as the Jewish people that a deity had assigned their food laws; in the two centuries before Paul many Jews had died for refusing to eat pork, a meat most Greeks thought delicious. (Others who abstained from pork included Phoenicians, some Syrians, Egyptian priests and the philosophic sect of *Pythagoreans, who were vegetarian; Greeks looked down on some of these groups also.) Although we know that some *Hellenistically educated Jews in Egypt took the food laws symbolically, most Jews continued to keep these laws regardless of where in the Roman Empire they went. Many Gentiles ridiculed these distinctive food customs as being separatist and complained that Jews refused to dine with other peoples. Jews were not total “vegetarians” (14:2), but could resort to that when kosher meat was not available (e.g., 2 Maccabees 5:27; *Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 10.190; Life 13-14).

14:5-6. The precise time for festivals was such an important issue in Judaism that different Jewish groups broke fellowship with each other over the issue. (Not much later in history, different Christian groups followed suit.) Pagans had their own festivals, with different nations having their own ancestral customs and calendars; Romans also had market days every eight or nine days. But Gentile writers often reviled the Jewish sabbath. Romans reasoned that Jews were just lazy and wanted a day off from work. (This was not the first time in history that someone viewed Jewish worship in such terms—Ex 5:17.) God provided the sabbath before the *law (Gen 2:2-3), but outside Jewish enclaves many Gentiles (especially slaves and employees) would lack the option of observing it. Paul also alludes to the Jewish custom of giving thanks over food.

14:7-9. Like their separate food laws, their sabbath regulations forced Jews to form their own moderately self-sufficient communities in the Greco-Roman world, and Gentiles often regarded Jews as separatistic and unsociable. This situation increased the social distance between most Jews and Gentiles.

14:10-12. “Judgment seats” were common in the Greco-Roman world; officials like *Pilate or Gallio would make their judgments from such a bema or rostrum (Acts 18:12). God judging all people before his throne was a common image in Jewish portrayals of the end. It is natural for Paul to apply Isaiah 45:23 to the final judgment, because the chapters around it speak of God delivering Israel in the end and calling the nations to account before him so that they acknowledge that he is God.

14:13. Other ancient texts also used the “stumbling block” as a metaphor. Jews called one another “brothers,” as did members of Greek religious clubs. Christians regarded one another as spiritual siblings, and Paul reinforces the conviction that Jewish and Gentile Christians must regard one another in these terms.

14:14. Jews classified foods as “clean” or “unclean,” based on the Bible (Lev 11). For Paul to say that this classification is no longer literally relevant would put him in agreement with some philosophically minded Jews in the Greco-Roman world (most of whom nevertheless kept the food laws), but it would shock the vast majority of ancient Jews.

14:15-16. Precisely because foods do not matter, one should be willing to forgo eating them for the sake of what does matter: preserving the unity of the body of Christ. Paul is not telling Gentiles to keep kosher; but he is telling them not to try to talk Jewish Christians out of doing so.

14:17-19. Jewish people often spoke of the perfect future time of God’s *kingdom (see 1 Cor 6:9), when the *Spirit would be made available and all people would be at peace with one another (Rom 14:17). For Paul, the coming of the *Messiah and the coming of the Spirit have also inaugurated the working of the kingdom, hence believers should be at peace with one another (14:19).

14:20-21. Gentile meat (suspected of having been offered to idols or not having the blood properly drained) and Gentile drink (some of it possibly used for libations to gods) were suspect to Jews. Jews could usually obtain Kosher food, but like a good *rhetorician, Paul calls his readers to concede his point even in the most extreme case (eg., Josephus, Life 14), requiring abstinence from all meat or wine (and if it applies to the extreme, “how much more”—following a standard style of argument—to all lesser cases). (Although some Jewish groups abstained from wine for periods of time—Num 6:3; cf. Jer 35:5-6—diluted wine was a normal part of meals; thus the language here is probably hyperbolic; see comment on Jn 2:9-10.)

14:22-23. Jewish teachers erected a “fence around the law” to keep people from areas of “doubt,” areas that were unclear and where they might be sinning. Paul’s point is that one should not wound the faith of those avoiding what they think could be wrong; ideally, however, one should discern what is right.

15:1-13

Christ as a Minister of Ethnic Reconciliation

Ancient writers commonly used examples to argue their points. Opponents were more hesitant to challenge the example of a virtuous teacher. Continuing his argument from chapter 14, Paul begins with the ultimate and indisputable example for Christians: Christ.

15:1-3. Psalm 69:9 makes good sense in this context—Psalm 69 is a psalm of the righteous sufferer; thus early Christians often applied it appropriately to *Christ (the ultimate righteous sufferer; Mt 27:34; Jn 2:17).

15:4. Paul can say that Scripture (including the one cited in 15:3) “was written for our instruction” (NASB) because he believes, like his Jewish contemporaries, that it is God’s Word and remains relevant. This statement does not mean that he thought it was intended only for his own generation, as some commentators have suggested on an analogy with their views of scriptural commentary in the *Dead Sea Scrolls; indeed, “for our instruction” could easily refer directly to Moses’ words in Exodus 24:12. The Jewish people found comfort in the teaching of the Scriptures (2 Maccabees 15:9).

15:5. Because divisiveness was rife in ancient urban Mediterranean culture, many speakers offered exhortations to unity, as here (see our introduction to Romans). Being of “one mind” means thinking in unity (1 Chron 12:38)—in this case a unity of love, not of complete agreement (chap. 14).

15:6. Praising God “with one voice” means in unanimity; cf. Exodus 24:3 (this chapter could be fresh in Paul’s mind; cf. Rom 15:4) and 2 Chronicles 5:13 (also elsewhere, e.g., *4 Maccabees 8:29).

15:7-12. Speakers could save a climactic, clinching argument for near the end of their speech; Paul here provides some of his strongest biblical argument for the unity of Jewish and *Gentile believers. That Christ accepted not only Jews but Gentiles Paul demonstrates from Scripture (Ps 18:49 = 2 Sam 22:50; Deut 32:43 [cf. Rom 12:19]; Ps 117:1; Is 11:10). Paul provides citations from different parts of the *Old Testament (Writings, Law and Prophets) and could have provided others to make his case that God seeks the praise of the Gentiles as well as that of the Jewish people (e.g., 1 Chron 16:31; Ps 22:27; 96:10; 102:22; Is 49:23; 60:3, 9-14). Deut 32:43 (cited in Rom 15:10) recalls a context Paul mined also in Romans 10:19 and 12:19. His last citation (in 15:12), Isaiah 11:10, was accepted as messianic. It was also a clear *prophecy of Gentiles turning to the *Messiah and being saved in the end time; Isaiah also has other prophecies about Gentiles being incorporated into God’s people (19:23-25; 56:3-8).

15:13. Letters often included a prayer or well-wishing for someone’s health, especially in the opening; Paul’s letters, which focus on spiritual issues, naturally include more prayers than most ancient letters (15:5-6, 33, etc.). Jewish people customarily used wish-prayers or blessings like this one in the same way that they used direct intercession, and Paul no doubt means for God as well as his Roman audience to hear this prayer.

15:14-33

Paul as a Minister of Ethnic Reconciliation

Often a speech’s epilogue would repeat points made in the proem (opening); Paul employs such repetition in this letter (cf. 15:14-33 with 1:8-15) but in a more personal tone characteristic of especially affectionate letters or speeches. The end of a speech was often the place to stress what the Greeks called pathos, or emotional appeals.

15:14. Greek writers often expressed their confidence in their addressees; this expression helped the readers to listen more favorably to the rest of the letter and sometimes served as a polite way to make a request. Although it was customary in letters of advice, it was less appropriate in letters of reproof (cf. Galatians). “Admonition” (KJV, NASB) was the gentlest form of correction offered by public speakers and by skilled writers in “letters of blame,” and Paul here notes that they can supply this instruction to one another.

15:15. Bold speech could be respected if it was understood as for the hearers’ good. Noting that one was merely “reminding” one’s hearers was a common feature of ancient moral exhortation.

15:16. Paul employs a priestly metaphor (cf. 12:1). One popular Jewish expectation of the end time was that Israel would rule over the *Gentiles, who would finally acknowledge the one true God, and the Gentiles would send tribute to Jerusalem (e.g., Is 60:11-14). Jerusalem Christians may have viewed Paul’s collection for the *saints there (15:25-27) as a fulfillment of this vindication of Israel’s faith.

15:17-18. People disrespected boasting unless it could be justified as for the common good. Philosophers used their lifestyle as well as their teaching to demonstrate their principles and could call attention to it as an example. Paul limits his credentials to what has been demonstrated in his life and ministry.

15:19. Illyricum was north of Macedonia, across from Italy on the eastern Adriatic coast, on the west of the Yugoslav/Serbo-Croation region. The Roman province was called Illyricum; Greeks included this region and some more territory farther south (including Dyrrhachium on the Via Egnatia in Macedonia) in what they called Illyria. Biblically literate hearers understood that “signs and wonders” occurred during the exodus (Ex 7:3; 11:9-10; Deut 4:34; 6:22; 7:19; 11:3; 26:8; 34:11; Jer 32:20-21; Wisdom of Solomon 10:15-16; Baruch 2:11); the proliferation of the *gospel is no less a divine work, often accompanied with demonstrations.

15:20. Illyricum (15:19) may have been one of these previously unevangelized areas; Spain would be another (see comment on 15:24, 28).

15:21. Here Paul quotes Isaiah 52:15, which in its context clearly refers to Gentiles (“kings”), who contrast with the suffering servant’s own people, Israel, who would not recognize him (53:1-4).

15:22-23. Ancient letters often dealt with business, including planned visits. Affectionate letters often explained why the writer had not yet been able to visit (here, because evangelizing unreached peoples had kept Paul busy, 15:19-21).

15:24. Persons of honor often avoided direct requests, but Paul indirectly suggests one here. “Assist” (NIV) or “help” (NASB) implies that they would cover his expenses for the trip. This would be a great expression of hospitality, but one which the Roman *church would probably consider an honor if they could afford it. There is little evidence of any major Jewish settlement in Roman Spain before the third century A.D.; Paul’s missionary work there would probably be among those who knew nothing of the Bible. Paul also would need to speak Latin there (in the Roman colonies) or use interpreters; most would not understand Greek. At the farthest western end of the Mediterranean, Spain was counted by geographers such as Strabo as at the end of the earth (with China and India on the opposite, eastern side of the world); cf. Acts 1:8.

15:25-26. “The poor” became a title for the pious of Judea in some circles (especially members of the *Qumran community)—perhaps mainly because most of them were poor. Some Jewish teachers considered the laws requiring care for the poor to be a major test of whether a Gentile convert had genuinely accepted God’s *law. Sending money to Jerusalem was a common Jewish practice in the Mediterranean, especially with regard to the annual temple tax. Jewish men throughout the world expressed their solidarity with Jerusalem and the homeland through the temple tax; here the Gentile Christian offering for Jerusalem expresses solidarity between Gentile and Jewish Christianity (for the centrality of this issue in Romans, see the introduction).

Paul’s letters more frequently identify churches by cities in which they are located than by provinces. The churches probably viewed themselves in these terms because inhabitants of large urban areas identified themselves more by the cities in which they lived than by the political boundaries of Roman provinces. Regional cultural ties existed, however, and this passage may indicate regional cooperation among churches.

15:27. Some believers in Jerusalem may have envisioned the gift as the firstfruits of the prophetic promise that the nations would bring tribute to Israel (Is 45:14; 60:6-10; 66:20); Paul may think more broadly of unity in Christ. In any case, Jewish readers steeped in the *Old Testament had a much better sense of corporate responsibility from members of one people to another than is common in individualistic Western society (Deut 23:3-4; 2 Sam 21:1-9). The Roman government collected tribute from the rest of the world, but in the second century the church in Rome was known for sending funds to needy churches elsewhere in the empire, to free Christian slaves from the mines and so forth.

15:28. Ancient letters often anticipated personal visits. It was impossible for any traveler to find a direct route from Syria or the East to Spain; eastern vessels would go to Rome, from which a traveler would have to transship to Spain. A seafarer would voyage to Tarraco there; one could also travel overland by roads to southern Gaul and across the Pyrenees to Tarraco. It was a trip of more than a thousand miles; overland from Rome to Cordova was about seventeen hundred miles. “Put my seal on this fruit” (NASB) refers to the seal used in commercial documents, guaranteeing the correct contents of merchandise (hence “made sure”—NIV); Paul would inspect and oversee the offering’s delivery.

15:29-31. That Paul’s journey to Jerusalem could involve some danger is attested by the account in Acts 21–22; see comment on that passage. Against some, it is very unlikely that the Jerusalem church rejected the gift (15:31); they had desired help (cf. Gal 2:10), and in that culture, rejecting a gift effectively declared enmity.

15:32. For the expectation of hospitality here, see comment on 15:24.

15:33. On wish-prayers, see comment on 15:13; a standard Jewish blessing was “peace,” and “peace” is relevant to a divided congregation (see introduction to Romans).

16:1-2

Letter of Recommendation for a Minister

People often wrote letters of recommendation to their peers or others who respected them, introducing or recommending someone, often the bearer of the letter, usually with reasons why the person should be helped. Jewish travelers often carried letters of recommendation attesting that they should be received by Jewish communities along the way; they were generally bearers of such letters themselves. (The only mail service was by imperial couriers for the government; Paul thus had to send the letter by a traveler.) Paul no doubt emphasizes Phoebe’s spiritual qualifications for two reasons: Jewish and Greco-Roman circles did not usually have high regard for women’s religious wisdom; and, as the letter’s bearer, she will need to explain to them by word of mouth anything in Paul’s letter that the hearers would not understand.

16:1. “Servant” (KJV, NASB) is the Greek diakonos, which is sometimes translated “deacon” (e.g., NRSV, NIV), perhaps the owner of a home in which *churches met. But Paul usually applies the term diakonos to “ministers” of God’s word, like Paul and his colleagues; Paul could have this meaning in view here (although ancient Judaism barely ever allowed women to teach the *law publicly to men).

Cenchrea was the eastern port city of Corinth, to its southeast. It had naturally come to host a variety of foreign religions.

16:2. “Helper” (NASB) or “help” translates a Greek term applied especially to *patrons (with NIV, NRSV, “benefactor”). A patron of a religious association was normally a well-to-do person who allowed members of a religious group to meet in his or her home. The patron was generally a prominent and honored member of the group and could exercise significant influence over it. Although most patrons of religious associations were men, a minority were women.

16:3-16

Greetings to Friends in Rome

“All roads led to Rome,” and many people in the ancient Mediterranean migrated there; this would be especially true of Jewish Christians who had returned after Claudius’s death annulled his expulsion order, such as Aquila and Priscilla (16:3; cf. Acts 18:2). Many ancient letters closed with greetings to friends, often by name, but this letter makes it clear how many friends Paul had, even in a city he had not yet visited.

Many of the names are Greek or Jewish, but this is not unusual; some even suggest that as many as eighty percent of the inhabitants of imperial Rome were descendants of freed slaves from the East. One could bear a Latin name without being a Roman citizen, although the list probably includes several indigenous Romans. Jews could also bear traditional Greek names (even named for deities).

A few years after this letter, Nero began killing hundreds of Christians in Rome, yet the church remained strong; there were thus many believers in Rome, and Paul probably lists primarily house church leaders here. It is noteworthy that although Paul greets roughly twenty-eight individuals and only about eleven are women (nearly forty percent), he specifically commends the work of six (over half) of the women and six (about one-third) of the men. This disproportion may be because, in that culture, the women needed more affirmation in their ministry (see comment on 16:1-2). Some evidence suggests that men outnumbered women in Rome.

16:3. Husbands were normally mentioned first unless the wife was of higher status, which may suggest Priscilla’s superior status in society (by birth) or (given Paul’s concerns about overemphasizing social status) in the church. “Prisca” is a Latin name, the more formal version of the informal “Priscilla” (her name in Acts), just as Paul elsewhere uses the formal “Silvanus” whereas Luke prefers the informal “Silas.”

16:4. “Laying down one’s neck” (KJV) was a figure of speech for risking one’s life on someone else’s behalf, probably derived from the Roman method of execution by beheading.

16:5. Small *synagogues sometimes had to meet in homes before they could purchase buildings; many Greek religious associations did the same; churches did so for the first three centuries, using their income to buy slaves’ freedom, feed the poor and so forth, rather than to build edifices. In Rome, many mezzanine apartments existed above ground-floor shops in multistory tenement buildings; Aquila and Priscilla may have lived above their artisan shop. Upper-story apartments were cheaper, tinier and flimsier, with room only to sleep; tall buildings periodically collapsed. Apartment churches could have met in the long hallway connecting small apartments, or on the somewhat more spacious lower floors. The Roman house churches might especially be threatened with disunity among themselves, because Rome (unlike the cities of the East) did not allow Jews to assemble on any level larger than local synagogues, and Christians were regarded as Jews. “Epenetus” was a common name among slaves and freedmen, though not limited to their ranks.

16:6. “Maria” could be a Latinized form of the Jewish “Miriam” (normally translated “Mary” in the *New Testament), or possibly a Latin nomen, which could indicate citizenship.

16:7. “Andronicus” is elsewhere attested as a *Hellenistic Jewish name. “Junia” is a Latin nomen that should indicate her Roman citizenship. Against attempts to make “Junia” a contraction of the masculine “Junianus,” this contraction of Junianus is not attested, because that is a Greek form of contraction and Junianus and Junia are Latin names. Ancient Christian readers recognized that Junia was a woman. Because she and Andronicus traveled together without scandal, and singleness was unusual, they were undoubtedly a husband-wife team; husband-wife teams were known in some professions, like doctors and lower-class merchants. The majority of scholars read the Greek phrase as indicating that both were *apostles. “Kinsmen” (KJV, NASB) can mean countrymen (cf. 9:3; 16:11).

16:8-9. “Ampliatus” and “Urbanus” were common slave names in Rome; they might be freedmen.

16:10. “The household of Aristobulus” may refer to slaves (if Aristobulus remained alive) and *freedpersons of Aristobulus, Herod the Great’s grandson, who spent his life in Rome. (“Aristobulus” is, however, a common Greek name, so the phrase could refer to a house church or family headed by a different Aristobulus.) Some slaves in elite households were well-educated and exercised power and influence over even free persons.

16:11. “Herodion” could be so named because he was a slave or freedperson from a Herodian family (see comment on 16:10). “Household of Narcissus” may mean the freedpersons formerly belonging to Narcissus, himself a freedman who was one of the empire’s most powerful people under Claudius.

16:12. “Tryphaena” and “Tryphosa” are Greek names sometimes used by Jewish as well as Greek women. “Persis” is attested as a slave name, especially for slaves imported from Persia, but was also used by free persons.

16:13. “Rufus” was a common slave name. It is a Roman name, sometimes born by Jews; because Paul knows his mother, presumably from the East, some commentators think this is the Rufus of Mark 15:21. Greetings at the close of letters could include affectionate terms of intimacy such as “father” or “mother” (e.g., one ancient letter addresses two older men as “fathers”).

16:14. Like Greeks, Jewish people in the ancient Mediterranean often used Greek names compounded from the names of pagan gods, like Hermes or Apollo. “Patrobus” is short for the rare name “Patrobius”; some scholars have linked this name with the household of one of Nero’s wealthy freedmen. “Phlegon” was also a common slave name.

16:15. “Julia” and “Nereus” appear most frequently for persons with slave backgrounds.

16:16. Kisses were a common form of affectionate greeting for family members, intimate friends or those who were objects of respect (e.g., Gen 33:4; 45:15; 1 Sam 20:41). The kiss was normally a light kiss on the mouth, readily distinguishable from lovers’ passionate kisses. Nevertheless, due to abuses, in subsequent centuries the church limited the practice of the liturgical kiss of fellowship to men kissing men and women kissing women, although this was not the initial practice. Some second-century letters of Fronto suggest that a letter writer could want a reader to pass on a kiss to another person.

16:17-20

Concluding Exhortation

That the letter’s concluding exhortation warns against division makes sense of the setting.

16:17. In keeping with the point of the letter (see the discussion of the situation in the introduction), those who cause schisms and divisions are Paul’s main object of warning.

16:18. Moralists used “bellies” (often translated “appetites”) to refer to self-indulgence. Philosophers ridiculed those who were “slaves” to their passions; on Paul’s phrase here, see comment on Philippians 3:19. Philosophers and moralists also distanced themselves from populist public speakers who sought to flatter their audiences; but they emphasized that they themselves told people what they needed to hear rather than what they wanted to hear.

16:19. Paul might allude here to Adam and Eve seeking fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:9; 3:6); see comment on 16:20. He may also intend a contrast with Jeremiah 4:22: “wise to do evil, but ignorant of how to do good” (cf. Mt 10:16).

16:20. Genesis 3:15 promised that the serpent who deceived Adam and Eve to partake of the fruit (cf. Rom 5:12-21) would ultimately be crushed beneath the feet of Eve’s seed. In many Jewish traditions the serpent represented *Satan or his instrument. Some texts seem to have understood Eve’s “seed” as Israel, others as the *Messiah; but here Paul applies it more broadly to the Messiah’s followers as well. His point is that they should persevere to the end, and God will bring triumph.

16:21-24

Greetings to the Church in Rome

It was not uncommon to attach supplemental greetings from others in one’s location.

16:21. “Lucius” was a Greco-Roman name sometimes used by Jews; its shortened Greek form is “Lucas” (i.e., Luke; if this is the author of Acts, however, he soon traveled on ahead back to Philippi; see Acts 20:5-6). For the names “Jason” and “Sosipater” (probably the same people), see Acts 17:6, 9 and 20:4 (“Sopater” was another form of “Sosipater”); Macedonian delegates had accompanied Paul to Corinth (Rom 15:26; 1 Cor 16:3; 2 Cor 9:4).

16:22. “Tertius” was a Roman name (often used for a third boy), sometimes used by Jews. Most of the ancient world was too illiterate to write letters, certainly letters as sophisticated as this one; they depended instead on *scribes. Those who were highly literate were also wealthy enough that they could dictate letters to scribes as well, sometimes their own secretaries, who were usually literate slaves. Paul’s host may have lent him his scribe, or Tertius may have been a professional scribe; in any case, Tertius seems to be a believer, because scribes did not normally add their own greetings. That Paul followed the common practice of signing dictated letters (1 Cor 16:21; Gal 6:11; Col 4:18; 2 Thess 3:17) indicates that he used scribes regularly.

16:23. If Gaius’s house accommodated “the whole church,” it must have been larger than most of the house churches; but Paul could simply be emphasizing Gaius’s great hospitality or that his had been the initial house church (some think that Gaius could be the praenomen for Titius Justus; cf. Acts 18:7).

“City treasurers” (NASB) were sometimes public slaves or freedmen, but they were generally wealthy. In other cases public jobs were assigned to well-to-do persons as part of their civic responsibilities. If this is the same “Erastus” who is attested in a Corinthian inscription as an aedile in this general period (and this is likely), he must have been a wealthy benefactor of the city, part of the municipal aristocracy. Candidates for aedile had to promise significant donations to the city to gain election. *Synagogues and other associations could have *patrons who were not members; whether this is the Christian Erastus of Acts 19:22 is debated, but cf. 2 Timothy 4:20.

16:25-27

Closing Benediction

The conclusions of Greco-Roman letters varied considerably but often ended with a wish for the recipient’s health and then “Farewell.” Synagogues, however, closed prayers, readings and services with benedictions, and Paul anticipates that his letter would be publicly read in house churches’ worship services. To repeat in one’s conclusion themes stated early in one’s speech or work, as Paul does here (cf. 1:2-5, esp. 1:5; also 1:11, 17; 2:16; 3:21; 11:25, 33, 36), was good *rhetoric.

16:25-26. Some ancient Jewish texts like Daniel and the *Dead Sea Scrolls spoke of God revealing what were once mysteries, special knowledge previously unavailable except by divine revelation. For Paul, this mystery of *Gentile ingathering was already taught in the Scriptures (Paul cites many of them in his argument in Romans, esp. in 15:9-12; cf. also, e.g., Is 19:18-25; 56:3-8; Zech 2:11) and is finally being understood.

16:27. Here Paul offers the sort of standard Jewish doxology used to close *Hellenistic Jewish religious works (except, of course, for “through Jesus Christ”). “Amen” was the standard closing at the end of prayers and a number of Jewish books.

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