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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadPaul Kretzmann Commentary - Romans 11:7 - 11:10
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The result of refusing God's way of salvation:
v. 7. But the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded
v. 8. (according as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see. and ears that they should not hear) unto this day.
v. 9. And David saith, Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumbling-block, and a recompense unto them;
v. 10. let their eyes be darkened that they may not see, and bow down their back alway.
Only the election, those that were elected according to God's gracious decree, obtained salvation in Christ. But the rest, the great majority, the entire people of Israel as such, in fact, became hardened. They rejected God's way of salvation, and therefore God rejected them; their willful resistance to God's will and Word was the cause of this hardening; they were the sole cause of their own downfall. And this result had been foretold by the prophets. It had been predicted, as Paul writes by combining Deu_29:4 with Isa_29:9-12 : God has given them a spirit of torpor, eyes not to see and ears not to hear, until the present day. They have become so stunned and stupid that they simply find it impossible to understand the Word of prophecy properly. The blinding and hardening of Israel began in the days of Isaiah, it may even be said to extend back to the days of Moses; but the prophecy was fulfilled in its terrible completeness in the time of Jesus and the apostles, Mat_13:14-15; Mar_4:12; Luk_8:10; Act_28:26-28. And the last quotation is from Psa_69:22, a Messianic prophecy, where the suffering, dying Messiah laments over the shame which He is forced to endure at the hands of His enemies: May their table become a snare, a trap or net, and to a stumbling-block and to a reward of punishment to them; let their eyes be darkened not to see, and bend their back together always. The table of the enemies of Christ, their joy, delight, and happiness, should turn into a snare for their feet, to a trap, in which their feet might be caught and cause them to fall, to a chase and destruction, as the hunt becomes to the game, to a retribution, by which God would punish them for their enmity against Christ. All this is meant, of course, in a spiritual sense. The punishment of the disobedient and hostile Jews was that they became so thoroughly blinded that they could no longer see the way of salvation; that their spiritual strength was taken from them that they could no longer walk in the way of God's commandments. Thus God gave them up to their hardened mind and withdrew His Spirit and grace from them. And even so today the persistently disobedient and unbelieving enemies of Christ will be punished in the way they themselves chose: abandoned by God and His Spirit, they are altogether unfit to know the truth and to come to repentance, faith, and obedience.