8    God Has Not Canceled His  Promises to Israel—part 1  His Setting Aside of Israel  Is Partial (11:1-10)

I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He? May it never be! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? “Lord, they have killed Thy prophets, they have torn down Thine altars, and I alone am left, and they are seeking my life.” But what is the divine response to him? “I have kept for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” In the same way then, there has also come to be at the present time a remnant according to God’s gracious choice. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace. What then? That which Israel is seeking for, it has not obtained, but those who were chosen obtained it, and the rest were hardened; just as it is written, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes to see not and ears to hear not, down to this very day.” And David says, “Let their table become a snare and a trap, and a stumbling block and a retribution to them. Let their eyes be darkened to see not, and bend their backs forever.” (11:1–10)

No message of Scripture is clearer or repeated more often than the unqualified declaration that God can be trusted, that He is the very source and measure of truth. By definition, His divine Word is absolutely trustworthy. Whatever He says is true and whatever He promises comes to pass.

Shortly before his death, Joshua testified to Israel, “Now behold, today I am going the way of all the earth, and you know in all your hearts and in all your souls that not one word of all the good words which the Lord your God spoke concerning you has failed; all have been fulfilled for you, not one of them has failed” (Josh. 23:14; cf. 21:45). David praised and exalted the Lord as “the God of Truth” (Ps. 31:5). After Solomon prayed before the altar on behalf of his people, “he stood and blessed all the assembly of Israel with a loud voice, saying, ‘Blessed be the Lord, who has given rest to His people Israel, according to all that He promised; not one word has failed of all His good promise, which He promised through Moses His servant’” (1 Kings 8:55–56).

In His high priestly prayer, Jesus prayed to His Father on behalf of His followers, “Sanctify them in the truth; Thy word is truth” (John 17:17). Paul reminded Titus that God cannot lie (Titus 1:2), and the writer of Hebrews declares that “He [God] who promised is faithful” (Heb. 10:23; cf. 6:17–18). God’s promises never fail because everything He says is wholly true, without a trace of error.

No passage of Scripture articulates God’s truthfulness and trustworthiness more eloquently than chapters 9–11 of Romans. As we have seen in an earlier chapter, Paul begins this remarkable section on the nation of Israel with the declaration that it is “Israelites, to whom belongs the adoption as sons and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the temple service and the promises” (Rom. 9:4).

God had made clear and specific promises to His chosen nation Israel. Some of those promises were conditional, dependent on Israel’s obedience. But His greatest promises to His chosen people were unconditional and therefore were grounded solely in God’s righteous integrity. Were God to fail in those promises, He would be less than righteous and just. He would be what God cannot be.

Contrary to what some sincere Christians maintain, God cannot be finished with the nation of Israel—for the obvious reason that all of His promises to her have not yet been fulfilled. If God were through with His chosen nation, His Word would be false and His integrity discredited. Among those who most strongly insist that God is through with the nation of Israel are those whose theology is commonly referred to as covenant theology. It is ironic that, because of a distorted view of Israel, covenant theology cannot escape the implication that God is not faithful in fully honoring His covenants.

God’s first covenant with Israel was through Abraham, the father of the Hebrew people, who became the nation of Israel. Just before He commanded Abraham to proceed from Haran to Canaan, God promised, “I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:2–3). After Abraham (then called Abram) entered Canaan, “The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, ‘Now lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land which you see, I will give it to you and to your descendants forever. And I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if anyone can number the dust of the earth, then your descendants can also be numbered’” (Gen. 13:14–16). Some years later, God reiterated the promise, saying, ‘“Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ And He said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be’” (Gen. 15:5).

On that occasion God instructed Abraham to cut certain prescribed animals in half, laying the two parts opposite each other. Except as an observer, Abraham did not participate in the confirmation of that covenant. Only the Lord passed between the pieces of the animals, signifying that He alone had dictated and would fulfill the covenant (see Gen. 15:8–21).

Although that covenant was for the benefit of Abraham and his descendants, and ultimately for the blessing of the entire earth, the terms of the covenant were unconditional, and it was sworn to and affirmed by God with Himself. He made an inviolable oath with Himself to keep His promises to Abraham. However faithful Abraham or his Israelite descendants might be, God would fulfill the covenant in every detail. This was a divine covenant founded on God’s sovereign election of Israel as His chosen people (see Heb. 6:13–20).

Because of God’s promises to Abraham and to his descendants through Isaac, the son of promise, the nation of Israel has always been and always will be divinely preserved. Otherwise God could not fulfill His irrevocable promises to her. He caused Israel to outlast all the nations who were contemporary with her, and He still preserves her today. In 1948 He brought her back into her own land as an independent and recognized state among the nations of the world.

God’s character and integrity, His trustworthiness and faithfulness depend on His continued preservation of Israel. God has obligated Himself to ultimately redeem the nation of Israel and to establish her as a purified and glorious kingdom above all others in the world.

God has promised to bless all the peoples of the world through Abraham and his descendants, and the fulfillment of that promise culminated in the coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world. He arose from Israel, but the redemption He offered was to Jew and Gentile alike. Early in His ministry, Jesus declared that “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Near the opening of this epistle, Paul assures his readers that “the gospel … is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek [Gentile]” (Rom. 1:16).

But because the Jews as a nation rejected their Messiah, God temporarily set that nation aside “until the fulness of the Gentiles has come in” (Rom. 11:25). At that time, with unfailing certainty, “all Israel will be saved” (v. 26). In addition to bringing His chosen people to salvation, God will fulfill His promises to restore her own kingdom in her own land, which will become a land of eternal blessing and peace.

Above all, God promised

The Jews of Old Testament times understood that those divine promises would be fulfilled literally. But when their Messiah came, spiritual blindness prevented them from recognizing Him. “He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him” (John 1:11). When Pilate mockingly asked the Jewish crowd, “Shall I crucify your King?” the chief priests, speaking for all of apostate Israel, declared with hypocritical vehemence, “We have no king but Caesar” (John 19:15).

Paul knew that most Jews were confused about Israel’s true destiny in regard to her Messiah. They reasoned that, because Israel was God’s chosen nation, it would be inconceivable that she would spurn her own Messiah, much less put Him to death. Regardless of how disobedient, rebellious, and spiritually blind Israel might become, surely she could not fail to recognize and receive her long-awaited Deliverer. Even if ordinary Jews failed to acknowledge and honor Him, the religious leaders were certain that they themselves could never make such an egregious error.

But Jesus prophesied that rejection in the parable of “a certain nobleman [who] went to a distant country to receive a kingdom for himself, and then return.” Just as the citizens of that country declared, “We do not want this man to reign over us” (Luke 19:12–14), so the nation of Israel refused the reign of Jesus Christ over them. Shortly after Pentecost, Peter reminded his fellow Jews of that tragic rejection: “You disowned the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, but put to death the Prince of life, the one whom God raised from the dead, a fact to which we are witnesses” (Acts 3:15).

Because Israel “stumbled over the stumbling stone,” Jesus Christ, and would not believe in Him (Rom. 9:32–33), because Israel did not know “about God’s righteousness, and [sought] to establish their own” (10:3), and because God had continually, “all the day long, … stretched out [His] hands to a disobedient and obstinate people” (10:21) who rejected Him, would not God be fully justified in forever rejecting them?

In itself, that wickedness would more than deserve God’s complete and permanent condemnation. Paul makes clear, however, that Israel’s rejection of Christ did not catch God by surprise but was, in fact, an integral part of His eternal plan of redemption. He makes equally clear that, despite its being part of that plan, Israel’s rejection of Christ was by her own rebellious choice, for which the Lord holds her fully accountable.

Once again we see the remarkable and seemingly irreconcilable association of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility. It is perfectly evident from history as well as from Scripture that Israel rejected Jesus Christ and the gospel of salvation He offered. Scripture also makes certain that God consequently set His ancient and beloved people aside.

But Paul knew that neither Jew nor Gentile would place his trust in a God who did not keep His promises. And God’s unqualified promises to Israel included the assurance that He would never completely forsake her. Because God’s Word is grounded in His divine integrity and faithfulness, even His chosen people’s rejection and crucifixion of His Son could not abrogate the ultimate fulfillment of His promises to them. It is that glorious truth that Paul explains and clarifies in Romans 11.

The apostle begins by stating the truth in the form of a rhetorical question, a question reflecting the confusion and misunderstanding he must have dealt with countless times: I say then, God has not rejected His people, has He?

Rejected is from apōtheō, which means to thrust away. In the New Testament this verb is always used in the middle voice, indicating a thrusting away from oneself. Paul is therefore not asking whether or not God has refused to receive His people to Himself but whether or not He has thrust away from Himself the people He long ago received as His own.

Paul immediately answers his own question, declaring what should have been obvious to his believing readers. For those who know God’s character and understand His promises to Israel, there could be but one answer: May it never be! Impossible! That is the succinct thrust of Romans 11—It is totally inconceivable that God could renege on His unconditional promises to Israel.

The phrase me genoito (May it never be!) was the strongest negative in the Greek language, translated idiomatically in the King James Version as “God forbid.” Except for its use in one of Jesus’ parables (Luke 20:16), the expression is used elsewhere in the New Testament only by Paul, who employs it fourteen times, ten times in Romans alone. As here, he employed it almost exclusively to repudiate an anticipated misunderstanding by his readers (see, e.g., Rom. 3:4, 6, 31; 6:2, 15; 1 Cor. 6:15; Gal. 2:17).

Despite Israel’s being “disobedient and obstinate” (Rom. 10:21), Scripture is replete with the Lord’s promises never to forsake His chosen people. “The Lord will not abandon His people on account of His great name, because the Lord has been pleased to make you a people for Himself” (1 Sam. 12:22). It is God’s faithfulness to Israel that guarantees her ultimate redemption and restoration.

Through the psalmist the Lord declared of Israel,

Through another psalmist God promised that “the Lord will not abandon His people, nor will He forsake His inheritance” (Ps. 94:14). In spite of Israel’s continued unfaithfulness, God “looked upon their distress, when He heard their cry; and He remembered His covenant for their sake, and relented according to the greatness of His lovingkindness” (Ps. 106:44–45). God’s grace always surpasses His people’s sin.

Psalm 105 is devoted entirely to thanking and praising God for His unalterable and permanent covenant relationship with Israel. “He has remembered His covenant forever,” the writer declares, “the word which He commanded to a thousand generations, the covenant which He made with Abraham, and His oath to Isaac. Then He confirmed it to Jacob for a statute, to Israel as an everlasting covenant” (Ps. 105:8–10).

After Israel returned from seventy years of captivity in Babylon, the Levites spoke to the Lord on behalf of a now penitent nation, acknowledging before Him the people’s repeated cycles of going from wickedness to penitence to forgiveness to restoration and then reverting again to wickedness:

“Nevertheless, in Thy great compassion, Thou didst not make an end of them or forsake them,” the Levites continued to pray, “for Thou art a gracious and compassionate God” (9:31). Although Israel deserved only God’s damnation, His own promises to her would not permit it, because “the great, the mighty, and the awesome God,… dost keep covenant and lovingkindness” (v. 32).

Through Jeremiah, the Lord assured His people:

Because of His covenant promises to Israel, that nation was never, and can never be, completely cast aside by the Lord.

In light of that truth, Paul affirms that God’s present setting aside of Israel is only partial (11:1–10). He does so by pointing to himself as a believing Jew (v. 1b), by pointing to the believing remnant whom God has always preserved in Israel (vv. 2–7a), and by pointing to God’s revelation about unbelieving Israelites whose hearts are hardened to His grace (vv. 7b-10).

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE WRITER

For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin (11:1b)

The first proof that God had not rejected His chosen people was that Paul, not only a believer in Christ but also an apostle (1:1), was himself an Israelite.

Although Paul does not mention it here, the vast majority of early Christians were Jews. It was for the very reason that so many of his fellow Jews had turned to Jesus as their Messiah that Paul, under his former name of Saul, had once fiercely persecuted the church (Acts 8:1–3; 9:1–2). Before his conversion, he had been the most fanatical Christ-hating and Christian-hating Jew in Israel. If such a Christ-rejecting Jew as himself could be brought to saving faith, the gospel had power to save any Jew.

More than that, however, Paul’s own conversion made it obvious that God could not possibly have rejected all Israel. He was living proof that, just as God’s promises to Israel do not include all individual Jews, so his judgment and rejection of Israel do not include all individual Jews. Paul would hardly devote the rest of his life, and many times risk his life, to preach a gospel from which he himself was excluded.

Paul was not a proselyte to Judaism, but was a Jew by birth, a genuine Israelite, a descendent of Abraham. Probably speaking of Judaizers, who were among the “false apostles, deceitful workers, [who were) disguising themselves as apostles of Christ,” Paul asked the Corinthians, “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I” (2 Cor. 11:13, 22).

Paul not only was a descendent of Abraham but a member of the tribe of Benjamin, “one of the most favoured tribes” of Israel according to theologian Charles Hodge. “Judah and Benjamin, especially after the exile, were the chief representatives of the theocractical people” (Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1950; orig. revised ed., 1886], p. 353).

Paul again mentioned that distinction in his letter to the church at Philippi, declaring, “If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more: circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless” (Phil. 3:4–6). But being of the tribe of Benjamin was only an earthly distinction, which, like the others he names here, he counted as “loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ” (v. 8).

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE REMNANT

God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? “Lord, they have killed Thy prophets, they have torn down Thine altars, and I alone am left, and they are seeking my life.” But what is the divine response to him? “I have kept for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” In the same way then, there has also come to be at the present time a remnant according to God’s gracious choice. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace. What then? That which Israel is seeking for, it has not obtained, but those who were chosen obtained it, (11:2–7a)

The second proof that God’s setting aside of Israel is only partial is that the Lord has always preserved a remnant for Himself. From Pentecost to the present day, Christ’s church has never been without believing Jews.

Paul here gives a direct and emphatic answer to the rhetorical question with which he opened the chapter: God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. As mentioned above in relation to verse 1a, the term rejected does not refer to not receiving (as in rejecting an application) but to not casting away from oneself (rejecting what once had been received). It is not that God has never received His people, but that He will never completely and permanently cast away those whom He foreknew from eternity past and whom He long ago received to Himself through His covenant with Abraham.

Paul is not referring to individual regenerate Jews or Gentiles—although the basic promise would certainly apply to them—but to Israel as a nation, the corporate body of God’s chosen people, who are the focus of Romans 9–11. The people mentioned in 11:2 are the “disobedient and obstinate” nation of Israel, to whom the apostle has just referred (10:21).

In this context, foreknew (from proginōskō) does not simply mean to be aware of something beforehand but to determine that it will come to pass. In Scripture, “to know” often carries the idea of intimacy, such as that of a husband and wife, an intimacy characterized by devotion and love. God’s foreknowledge is frequently used of His intimate, loving relationship with all those He called to Himself “before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4). Speaking of Jesus Christ, Peter declared to those assembled at Pentecost, that “this Man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death” (Acts 2:23). God’s predetermined plan and His foreknowledge are equated. For God, to foreknow is to predetermine and preordain.

Peter speaks of believers as those “who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father” (1 Pet. 1:1–2). God’s foreknowing those who will be saved is the same as His predestinating those who will be saved. “For whom [God] foreknew,” Paul explains earlier in this epistle, “He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren; and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified” (Rom. 8:29–30).

Israel is the only nation God has foreknown and predetermined to be His people and the recipients of His love and grace. “For you are a holy people to the Lord your God,” Moses declared to Israel. “The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers” (Deut. 7:6–8).

Because God foreknew and predetermined before the foundation of the earth to set His special love upon Israel forever, He can never totally reject them. To do so would invalidate His divine promises, nullify His divine faithfulness, discredit His divine integrity, and compromise His divine love. One of the greatest evidences that God has not totally rejected Israel is the continual remnant of that people whom God has graciously preserved for Himself. From the day God called Abraham until the day Christ returns in glory and judgment, there has not been and will never be a time when the earth will be without believing Jews.

Paul reminds his readers about what the Scripture says in the passage about Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? “Lord, they have killed Thy prophets, they have torn down Thine altars, and I alone am left, and they are seeking my life” (cf. 1 Kings 19:10).

When his life was threatened by Jezebel, even the godly and normally fearless Elijah became fearful and despondent, thinking in self pity that he was the only believer left on earth. But the divine response to him was, “I have kept for Myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal” (cf. 1 Kings 19:18).

Chrēmatismos (divine response) carries the idea of divine oracle or revelation. Through His direct word, the Lord reassured Elijah that seven thousand others remained faithful to the true God and had not bowed the knee to the pagan god Baal, whom the wicked Jezebel and her priests had led most of Israel to worship (see 1 Kings 19:9–18).

When the Lord called Isaiah to preach, He warned the prophet that most of his hearers would not listen or repent and that only a small holy remnant would remain, like the stump left when a tree is felled (Isa. 6:9–13). That passage from Isaiah is the most quoted Old Testament text in the New Testament (see, e.g, Matt. 13:14—15; Mark 4:12; Luke 8:10; John 12:40; Acts 28:26)—used repeatedly to emphasize the truth that God has judicially blinded those of His chosen people who willfully blind themselves to Him.

While God’s people were captives in Babylon, most of them refused to turn to God. But a few—the godly remnant that included Daniel, Ezekiel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, Mordecai, and Esther—remained faithful to the Lord. Malachi assured such believers that their names were written in the Lord’s “book of remembrance” (Mal. 3:16).

When Israel’s Messiah, Jesus Christ, came to earth, the apostate nation rejected and crucified Him. But there was a godly remnant in Israel before Jesus was born—including Zacharias and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph. There was a godly remnant—including Simeon, Anna, and the shepherds near Bethlehem—who received and worshiped Jesus when He was but an infant. During His ministry, a growing number of Jews turned to Him as Lord and Savior. Some 3,000 believers, mostly Jewish, were added at Pentecost (Acts 2:41), and another 5,000 a short while later (4:4). By the time of the events mentioned at the end of Acts 4, it is probable that there were at least 20,000 Jewish Christians in Jerusalem alone.

In the same way then, Paul goes on to say, there has also come to be at the present time a remnant according to God’s gracious choice. By the time the apostle wrote those words, there were doubtless hundreds of thousands of Jewish Christians throughout the Roman empire and likely even beyond it.

Gracious choice translates eklogēn charitos and could be rendered “election by grace.” As is true of all believers in all ages, the believing remnant of Jews during Paul’s time were not elected by virtue of their spiritual worthiness or moral good works—and obviously not simply on the basis of their racial descent—but according to God’s sovereign election, His gracious choice. Before the foundation of the world, God graciously predetermined His choice of those physical descendants of Abraham who also would become His spiritual descendants.

As a member of that elect remnant of Jews, Paul explains that “God has saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity” (2 Tim. 1:9).

As the apostle has already explained in some detail in Romans (see, e.g., 3:21–31; 4:1–11; 5:2, 20–21; 9:11), if God’s salvation is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace. The additional phrase in the King James Version (“otherwise work is no more work”) may have been a copier’s marginal note that found its way into the text.

Summing up what he has just emphasized, Paul asks, What then? Again answering his own question, he replies, That which unbelieving Israel is seeking for, it has not obtained, but only those who were graciously chosen obtained it.

The phrase is seeking for is from epizēteō, which indicates intense, diligent seeking. The Jews of Paul’s day were fanatically religious, a condition the apostle acknowledged in the previous chapter: “For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge” (Rom. 10:2). And because their zeal focused on their own false righteousness rather than on God’s true righteousness, “they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God” (v. 3). Consequently, they did not acknowledge or receive Jesus Christ, who “is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (v. 4). But those whom God had chosen for Himself did seek His righteousness and graciously obtained it.

In the end times, God will seal for Himself a special remnant of 144,000 Jews, who will be protected from Antichrist and who will be His witnesses during those increasingly degenerate and depraved days (Rev. 7:1–8; 14:1–5). Ultimately, Paul assures us later in this chapter, “All Israel will be saved” (Rom. 11:26).

The noted Christian scholar Charles Feinberg, like Paul a believing Jew, tells the following story that gives contemporary evidence that God will never be without a believing remnant of His chosen people Israel.

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE REVELATION

and the rest were hardened; just as it is written, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes to see not and ears to hear not, down to this very day.” And David says, “Let their table become a snare and a trap, and a stumbling block and a retribution to them. Let their eyes be darkened to see not, and bend their backs forever.” (11:7b-10)

The third proof that God’s setting aside of Israel is only partial is that the Lord has hardened the hearts only of those Jews who refuse to believe.

Were hardened is passive, indicating that the hardening was caused by an outside power. That outside power was none other than God, who, just as it is written, … gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes to see not and ears to hear not, down to this very day (cf. Deut. 29:4; Isa. 29:10). Deuteronomy represents the law and Isaiah the prophets. Both the law and the prophets testify to God’s sovereign and predetermined hardening of hearts. But that hardening is neither capricious nor unjust. God hardens only those hearts who, in rejecting His gracious offer of righteousness, harden themselves to His grace.

God judicially hardened Pharaoh’s heart (see, e.g., Ex. 4:21; 9:12; 10:20), because Pharaoh willingly “hardened his [own] heart” against God (Ex. 8:15; cf. 8:32; 9:34; 10:1).

During the Lord’s Supper, Jesus said, “Behold, the hand of the one betraying Me is with Me on the table. For indeed, the Son of Man is going as it has been determined; but woe to that man by whom He is betrayed!” (Luke 22:21–22). God’s righteous predetermination of Judas’s betrayal was inextricably connected to Judas’s own unrighteous intentions, for which he was held eternally accountable. One of the great mysteries of Scripture is the coexistence of God’s sovereign preordination and man’s personal accountability. God’s judicial hardening of a man’s heart is never separate from that man’s hardening of his own heart.

Citing the Old Testament again, Paul quotes David, who said, “Let their table become a snare and a trap, and a stumbling block and a retribution to them. Let their eyes be darkened to see not, and bend their backs forever” (cf. Ps. 69:22–23). Psalm 69 is one of the most marvelous messianic passages in the Old Testament and one of the most quoted psalms in the New Testament. Like Psalm 22, it is a lament of the Messiah’s suffering and grief. It is also imprecatory, pronouncing a curse on the enemies of God who caused that suffering and grief.

A person’s table is generally thought of as a place of safety, feasting, and sustenance. But the table of the ungodly and self-righteous will become a snare and a trap. The Jews considered God’s Word, in particular the Torah, to be their spiritual sustenance—which indeed it was. But because of their rebellious unbelief, that Word became a judgment on them, a stumbling block and a retribution.

One of the saddest commentaries of history is that so many people place their trust in the very thing that damns them. All false religions—pagan, cultic, unbiblical Christianity, and every other kind—present counterfeit means of salvation. The more their adherents feed on the falsehoods, the more immune they become to the true gospel of Jesus Christ, the living bread of life.

As she continued to reject God, Israel became progressively more spiritually blind—so blind that she could not recognize her own Messiah and Savior. Just as David had prayed in righteous indignation against the sins of his own people, Israel’s eyes were darkened to see not. Because Israel refused to see the things of God, God judicially ratified her willing blindness. Bend their backs suggests the hunched over position in which blind people sometimes walk as they grope their way on a path they cannot see that leads to a destination they do not seek.