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Here is another argument to prove the Jews are not finally rejected, because of the covenant made with their fathers.
If the first-fruit be holy: some make a difference between the first-fruit, and the root, in the latter part of the verse. By the first-fruit they understand the apostles and other godly Jews, that were at first converted to the Christian faith; and by the root they understand Abraham and the patriarchs. Others take them for the same, and understand Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with the rest of the patriarchs, to be both the first-fruit and the root.
The lump is also holy; by lump, and branches, he means the people of the Jews that descended of these holy patriarchs, and spring from them, as branches from a root. The great question is, In what sense they are said to be holy? Or of what holiness doth he speak? It is not meant of inherent, but of federal, or covenant holiness; all in all outward and visible covenant with God, were called holy: see Exo_9:6 Dan_8:24. Many common things are called holy in Scripture, because dedicated to God and to his service; yea, Jerusalem, though a place of great wickedness, is called a holy city, Mat_27:53. In such a sense as this, the Jews are still a holy people; they have an hereditary kind of dedication to God; they have a federal holiness, and relation to God, as being for ever separated to him, in the loins of their progenitors; this can never be wholly forfeited, as being granted to all the posterity of the holy patriarchs: therefore they are called the children of the covenant, which God made with their fathers, Act_3:25: see Act_2:39. So then God will remember in his own time, his covenant with the Jews, the posterity of Abraham, &c., who are beloved for the fathers’ sakes, Rom_11:28. Therefore, in the mean time, they should not look on themselves with desperation; nor should the Gentiles look on them with disdain, as it follows in the next words.