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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadJohn Bengel Commentary - Romans 9:3 - 9:3
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Rom 9:3. Ηὐχόμην, I could wish) A verb in the imperfect tense, involving in it a potential or conditional signification, involving the condition, if Christ would permit. His grief was unceasing [continual], but this prayer does not seem here to be asserted as unceasing, or absolute. Human words are not fully adequate to include in them [to express fully] the emotions of holy souls; nor are those emotions always the same; nor is it in the power of those souls always to elicit from themselves such a prayer as this. If the soul be not far advanced, it is incapable of [cannot comprehend] this. It is not easy to estimate the measure of love, in a Moses and a Paul. For the narrow boundary of our reasoning powers does not comprehend it; as the little child is unable to comprehend the courage of warlike heroes. In the case of those two men [duumvirs] themselves, the intervals in their lives, which may be in a good sense called extatic, were something sudden and extraordinary. It was not even in their own power to elicit from themselves such acts as these at any time they chose. Grief [heaviness] and sorrow for the danger and distress of the people; shame for their fault; zeal for their salvation, for the safety of so great a multitude, and for still farther promoting the glory of God through the preservation of such a people, so carried them away, as to make them for a time forget themselves, Exo 32:32. I am inclined to give this paraphrase of that passage: Pardon them; if thou dost not pardon them, turn upon me the punishment destined for them, that is, as Moses elsewhere says, kill me, Num 11:15. It is therefore the book of temporal life, as distinguished from that of eternal life, according to the point of view, economy, and style of the Old Testament; comp. Exo 33:3; Exo 33:5. The book of temporal life is intended in Psa 139:16.-αὐτὸς ἐγὼ, I myself) construe these words with to be [were].-ἀνάθεμα εἶναι, to be accursed) It will be enough to compare this passage with Gal 3:13, where Christ is said to have been made a curse for us. The meaning is, I could have wished to bring the misery of the Jews on my own head, and to be in their place. The Jews, rejecting the faith, were accursed from Christ; comp. Gal 1:8-9; Gal 5:4. Whether he would have wished only the deprivation of all good, and his own destruction, and annihilation, or the suffering also of every evil, and that too both in body and in soul, and for ever, or whether, in the very excitement [paroxysm] of that prayer, he had the matter fully present before his understanding, who knows whether Paul himself, had he been questioned, would have been able exactly to define? At least that word [Ego] I [all thought of self] was entirely suppressed in him; he was looking only to others, for the sake of the Divine glory; comp. 2Co 12:15. From the loftiest pinnacle of faith (chap. 8) he now shows the highest degree of love, which was kindled by the Divine love. The thing, which he had wished, could not have been done, but his prayer was pious and solid, although under the tacit condition, if it were possible to be done; comp. Rom 8:38, I am persuaded; Exo 32:33.-ἀπὸ τοῦ Χριστοῦ, from Christ) So ἀπὸ from 1Co 1:30; or, as Christ, being made a curse, was abandoned by the Father; so Paul, filled with Christ, wished in place of the Jews to be forsaken by Christ, as if he had been accursed. He is not speaking of excommunication from the everlasting society of the church. There is a difference between these two things, for κατάρα קללה, curse, has the greater force of the two, and implies something more absolute: חרם, anathema, something relative, Gal 1:8-9, 1Co 16:22, the former is rather more severe, the latter milder; the former expresses the power of reconciliation by the cross of Christ; the latter is more suitable to [more applicable as regards] Paul; nor can the one be substituted for the other, either here, or in the passages quoted.-Τῶν) The apostle is speaking of the whole multitude, not of individuals.-ἀδελφῶν μου, for my brethren) This expresses the cause of his so great love toward them.-συγγενῶν μου κατὰ σάρκα, my kinsmen according to the flesh) This expresses the cause of his prayer, showing why the prayer, other things being supposed to be equal [cœteris paribus, supposing there were no objection on other grounds], was right; and by adding kinsmen, he shows that the word brethren is not to be understood, as it usually is, of Christians, but of the Jews. Christ was made a curse for us, because we were his kinsmen.