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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comVincent Word Studies - Romans 9:23 - 9:23
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
And that He might make known
The connection is variously explained. Some make and that dependent on He endured: “If, willing to show His wrath.... God endured... and also that.” Others make that dependent on fitted: “Vessels fitted to destruction and also that He might make known,” etc. Godet supplies He called from Rom 9:24 : “And called that He might make known,” etc. The difficulty is resolved by the omission of καὶ and. So Westcott and Hort, on the single authority of B. See Rev., in margin.
His glory
See on Rom 3:23. Godet thinks the phrase was suggested by Moses' request, “Show me thy glory,” Exo 33:18.
Afore prepared (προητοίμασεν)
Only here and Eph 2:10. The studied difference in the use of this term instead of καταρτίζω to fit (Rom 9:22), cannot be overlooked. The verb is not equivalent to foreordained (προορίζω). Fitted, by the adjustment of parts, emphasizes the concurrence of all the elements of the case to the final result. Prepared is more general. In the former case the result is indicated; in the latter, the previousness. Note before prepared, while before is wanting in Rom 9:22. In this passage the direct agency of God is distinctly stated; in the other the agency is left indefinite. Here a single act is indicated; there a process. The simple verb ἑτοιμάζω often indicates, as Meyer remarks, to constitute qualitatively; i.e., to arrange with reference to the reciprocal quality of the thing prepared, and that for which it is prepared. See Luk 1:17; Joh 14:2; 1Co 2:9; 2Ti 2:21. “Ah, truly,” says Reuss, “if the last word of the christian revelation is contained in the image of the potter and the clay, it is a bitter derision of all the deep needs and legitimate desires of a soul aspiring toward its God. This would be at once a satire of reason upon herself and the suicide of revelation. But it is neither the last word nor the only word; nor has it any immediate observable bearing on the concrete development of our lives. It is not the only word, because, in nine-tenths of Scripture, it is as wholly excluded from the sphere of revelation as though it had been never revealed at all; and it is not the last word, because, throughout the whole of Scripture, and nowhere more than in the writings of the very apostle who has faced this problem with the most heroic inflexibility, we see bright glimpses of something beyond. How little we were intended to draw logical conclusions from the metaphor, is shown by the fact that we are living souls, not dead clay; and St. Paul elsewhere recognized a power, both within and without our beings, by which, as by an omnipotent alchemy, mean vessels can become precious, and vessels of earthenware be transmuted into vessels of gold” (Farrar). See note at end of ch. 11.