Original Meaning

THE IMMEDIATE JUMPING-OFF point for this paragraph is the quotation of Joel 2:32 in Romans 10:13. This prophecy promises salvation for “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord.” In verses 14–21, Paul works back from this “calling on the Lord” to the steps that come before it: belief → preaching of the gospel → being sent to preach the gospel (vv. 14b–15).

Paul then turns explicitly to the situation of Israel in verses 16–21. He reiterates again the need for the message to be proclaimed if people are to believe (vv. 16–17). Then, with two Old Testament quotations, he shows that Israel has indeed both heard the message (v. 18) and understood it (v. 19). Two more Old Testament quotations finish off this paragraph, so that all of 9:30–10:21 ends on the same note at which the section began: Gentiles, who did not seek God, are finding him (10:20; cf. 9:30), while Israel, though offered God’s grace, continues stubbornly to reject it (10:21; cf. 9:31–32). Although 10:13, then, is the immediate trigger for these verses, the paragraph ultimately picks up Paul’s indictment of Israel from 10:2–3. Despite her zeal, Paul has charged, Israel is guilty of not understanding and submitting to God’s righteousness in Christ, but Israel has no excuse for not responding.

In 10:14–15a, Paul uses four rhetorical questions to outline the sequence if a person is to be “saved” (cf. v. 13). The steps are, in reverse order to what Paul cites: the sending of preachers, preaching, hearing the message about Christ, believing in Christ, and calling on “the name of the Lord.” The questions are put in the third person plural (“they”), but it is not clear who Paul has in mind. Since much of the paragraph is directed against Israel, many think that the implied subject in 10:14–15 is Israelites.1 But more likely Paul sets up his indictment of Israel in 10:16ff. by first speaking generally about what is required for any person (see “everyone” in v. 13) to be saved.2

The quotation from Isaiah 52:7 at the end of verse 15 serves two functions. (1) It confirms that preaching the good news is needed if people are to hear and to be saved. (2) It also suggests, however, that the last condition for salvation Paul lists in verses 14–15a has been met: Preachers have been sent. Paul was no doubt attracted to the Isaiah text both because of its context (see Bridging Contexts) and because of its use of “gospel” language (euangelizomenon agatha, lit., “those who preach good news of good things”). The text would have even greater eschatological significance if Paul understood the word horaioi to mean “timely” rather than “beautiful,” but it is not clear that he did.3

In translating “Israelites” in verse 16, the NIV makes an exegetical decision, for the underlying Greek simply has vague third person verbs (“they”). Paul could, then, simply be continuing his discussion from verses 14–15 of what people generally must do to be saved. But the quotation of Isaiah 53:1, which is applied to Jews in John 12:38, suggests that the NIV interpretation is correct: Paul now turns to Israel. The mention of the “good news” leads him to the central issue: While Israel has heard the good news (vv. 17ff.), she has not “believed.”

The expression “not all” in verse 16 is a literary device called “litotes”; it means “only a few.” But Paul probably uses this specific language in order to echo the “remnant” theology he introduced in 9:6b: “Not all who are descended from Israel are Israel” (see also 9:27). After his somewhat premature condemnation of Israel in 10:16, Paul resumes the logical unfolding of the steps necessary for salvation in 10:17. He begins by restating the second step mentioned in 10:14: Faith comes from hearing. Since the Greek word for “hearing” is the same as the word for “message” in the Isaiah quotation (akoe), this statement also builds on that quotation (NIV “hearing the message” tries to capture this connection). The last part of verse 17, then, restates the third step in the salvation sequence (v. 14c): Hearing, the kind that can lead to faith, can only happen when a definite salvific word from God is proclaimed. That word is “the word of Christ,” the message about his lordship and resurrection (vv. 8–9).

Since Paul has focused in verse 17 on hearing, it is natural that he should focus on this critical step in verse 18. His question “Did they not hear?” as the NIV rendering indicates, expects a positive answer (the particle ouk in Greek indicates this). Paul explicitly supplies this response—“Of course they did”—and then quotes Psalm 19:4 to substantiate his affirmative: “Their voice has gone out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” Paul again demonstrates the freedom with which he treats the Old Testament, for Psalm 19 is about God’s revelation of his character in nature. Yet Paul applies it to the preaching of the gospel (see Bridging Contexts for further discussion).

Also puzzling is Paul’s apparent claim that the message has gone “into all the earth.” Since the second line of Psalm 19:4 in the LXX uses oikoumene, “inhabited earth,” he may implicitly confine the reference to the Roman empire of his day. And he is undoubtedly thinking corporately rather than individually, in terms of the gospel being proclaimed to every ethnic group or region within the empire.4 But we have little reason to think that gospel preaching had spread even to this extent in A.D. 57. Thus, we should probably view Paul’s application of this verse as hyperbole. He simply uses the language given to him in the quotation to assert that the gospel had been proclaimed so widely that Jews have no excuse for not responding (see also the similar Col. 1:23).

“Again I ask” (v. 19) matches the “But I ask” at the beginning of verse 18. Having demonstrated that Israel has heard, Paul now wants to probe more deeply into the nature of this “hearing.” Was it superficial? Not at all. Israel, Paul affirms, understood. What they understood is that God could very well act in such a way as to include Gentiles in his people and to bring judgment on his own people Israel (vv. 19–21). Moses, Paul suggests, was the “first” in a long line of prophets to suggest that God would eventually extend his grace beyond the confines of Israel. Those who are “not a nation” (cf. “not my people” in 9:26) will stir up Israel’s jealousy, predicts Moses in Deuteronomy 32:21. Paul announces a theme he will take up later to explain the oscillation in salvation history between Jew and Gentiles (11:11–14).

Isaiah is another prophet who predicted the inclusion of Gentiles: “I was found by those who did not seek me; I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me” (Isa. 65:1). This prophecy refers to God’s offer of grace to a rebellious Israel. But, as Paul did with Hosea 1:10 and 2:23 in Romans 9:25–26, he applies the verse to the Gentiles. He probably intentionally returns to the note on which this section began: Gentiles who were not seeking righteousness have found it (9:30); Gentiles who did ask for God have found him (10:20).

In 10:21 Paul finally turns back to the failure of Israel, the issue that has dominated this section. He quotes Isaiah 65:2 to make two points: God continues to extend his grace to Israel (he “holds out his hands” to them), and Israel continues to rebel (they are “disobedient and obstinate”).

Bridging Contexts

MORE ON PAUL and the Old Testament. Turning again to Paul’s use of the Old Testament may seem like overkill, since we have dealt with this issue in the last two units. But the extent to which Paul argues in this paragraph from the Old Testament—six quotations in eight verses—demands that we pay attention to this matter, and each new quotation offers additional insight into Paul’s methods and purposes in forging connections between Old Testament and New.

The quotations in 10:14–21 reveal three important assumptions about Paul’s use of the Old Testament. He expects us to recognize and share these assumptions so that we can understand what he wants to teach about the relationship of the gospel to the Old Testament. We can formulate these three assumptions as reading strategies that we need to employ when we come to quotations.

(1) We need to pay careful attention to the Old Testament context from which Paul’s quotations come. Often that context will explain and/or elucidate his use of the words we find in the text. Those words are sometimes but the tip of the iceberg, with the Old Testament context supplying important information about what Paul is teaching. Three of the quotations in 10:14–21 illustrate this first strategy.

Isaiah 52:7, quoted in Romans 10:15b, comes in a passage rich in theological implications for New Testament fulfillment (see Isa. 52:4–10):

For this is what the Sovereign LORD says:

“At first my people went down to Egypt to live;

lately, Assyria has oppressed them.

“And now what do I have here?” declares the LORD.

“For my people have been taken away for nothing,

and those who rule them mock,”

declares the LORD.

“And all day long

my name is constantly blasphemed.

Therefore my people will know my name;

therefore in that day they will know

that it is I who foretold it.

Yes, it is I.”

How beautiful on the mountains

are the feet of those who bring good news,

who proclaim peace,

who bring good tidings,

who proclaim salvation,

who say to Zion,

“Your God reigns!”

Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices;

together they shout for joy.

When the LORD returns to Zion,

they will see it with their own eyes.

Burst into songs of joy together,

you ruins of Jerusalem,

for the LORD has comforted his people,

he has redeemed Jerusalem.

The LORD will lay bare his holy arm

in the sight of all the nations,

and all the ends of the earth

will see the salvation of our God.

Note that Isaiah 52:5 has already been quoted by Paul in Romans 2:24. It is probably no mere chance that led Paul to quote twice from this text in the same letter. For this passage contains the basic scheme of salvation history as Paul presents it in Romans: sin and disobedience of Israel at the present (Isa. 52:4–5), to be changed when God sends the good news of “salvation” to Zion (52:7), and both Israel (52:9) and the Gentiles (“the ends of the earth,” 52:10) are saved. The alert reader of Romans should be led by the explicit quotations back to this great Isaiah prophecy and allow Isaiah and Paul mutually to interpret one another.

A second example of the importance of context is the quotation from Isaiah 53:1 in Romans 10:16. Paul’s application of the text is straightforward. But the reader will recognize that Paul is led to this text because all of Isaiah 53, the fourth Servant Song, was applied to Jesus in the early church (see Paul’s quotation from this same song in Rom. 15:21).

We see the same approach in Paul’s use of Deuteronomy 32:21 in Romans 10:19. In its original context, this verse states God’s “equivalent” response to Israel’s idolatry: Because Israel has made God jealous with “what is no god” (Deut. 32:21a), God will make Israel “jealous” with what is “no people.” The phrase “no people” is probably the catchphrase that draws Paul’s attention to this text, since he quotes the Hosea prophecy about those who are “not my people” becoming the people of God in Romans 9:25–26.5

But Deuteronomy 32, which rehearses the history of God’s gracious acts on Israel’s behalf and Israel’s stubborn and sinful response to those acts, is one that Paul also seems to have valued in its own right as an important confirmation of his own view of salvation history. He accordingly sees in the words a prophecy of the mission to the Gentiles: The inclusion of Gentiles in the new people of God stimulates the Jews to jealousy and causes Israel to respond in wrath against this movement in salvation history. Old Testament scholars debate about whether the “not a people” in Deuteronomy 32:21 refers to an uncivilized nation unworthy of the name “people”6 or whether it has the more theological sense of a people whom God has not chosen.7 If it is the latter, Paul’s use of the text is not far from its original meaning.

(2) We must realize that Paul does not always quote the Old Testament to “prove” a point. People quote texts with much broader purposes than this in mind, as I illustrated with the example of my son’s Dirty Harry quote (see Bridging Contexts section on 1:1–7). Paul is no exception. When we find him quoting an Old Testament passage about God’s universal natural revelation and applying it to the gospel (Ps. 19:4 in Rom. 10:18), we should not rush to wonder whether his use of the psalm is valid. This may be the wrong issue entirely. Paul may simply be using the language of the psalm, with the “echoes” of God’s universal revelation that it awakes, to suggest that what God did in natural revelation he now does in the gospel.8 He may also have been attracted to Psalm 19:4 because the “ends of the world” is similar to the language Isaiah uses to describe the extension of God’s grace to the Gentiles (see Isa. 45:22; 49:6; 52:10; 62:11).

(3) We often have to look below the surface to discover the basis for Paul’s application of Old Testament quotations. His use of Isaiah 65:1 in Romans 10:20 illustrates the principle. Paul, of course, applies the passage to the Gentiles: Those who did not seek God or ask for him have found him. A few scholars think Paul’s use of the passage is straightforward because, they argue, Isaiah 65:1 is about Gentile inclusion in the people of God.9 But the majority of Old Testament scholars claim that the verse is about Israel, and they seem to be right.10

As he did in 9:25–26, then, Paul again applies an Old Testament prophecy about Israel to the Gentiles. Has he misread the Old Testament, or does he just not care about the original meaning? No. Paul has too much respect for the Old Testament, and knows it too well, to proceed in so arbitrary a manner. If we look more carefully below the surface of the quotation to Paul’s underlying theological structures, we can understand better how he can apply the text in the way that he does.

When we discussed Paul’s surprising application of Hosea 1:10 and 2:23 to the Gentiles (see Bridging Contexts section of 9:25–26), we found that the story of God’s promise to Abraham was at the root of the matter. But having brought these Hosea texts into the orbit of the Abrahamic promise of Gentile inclusion, we can understand how Isaiah 65:1 could have been swept into the same hermeneutical approach. For the “not my people” and “not my loved one” language of Hosea is similar to the “did not seek me” and “did not ask for me” language of Isaiah. While proof is impossible, we think it is probable that Paul uses a universalistic interpretation of the Abrahamic promises as a key lens through which he reads Isaiah 65:1.

Contemporary Significance

EXPANDING OUR HORIZONS in reading the New Testament. An obvious point of contemporary significance emerges from the discussion we have just concluded: Many of us need to broaden the way we look for connections between the Old and New Testaments. We can begin by reading the New Testament more like an ordinary piece of literature.

I do not want you to misunderstand what I am saying here. I am not for a minute suggesting that we take anything from the Bible’s unique status as an inspired and inerrant Word from God. No other book has its authority. But I think our insistence on the Bible’s unique role in the life of the church can blind us to the fact that it has been written, and thus must be read, like any other book. Good interpreters recognize this, and so they use those methods appropriate to the study of any book in studying the Bible: defining its words, putting together its syntax, paying attention to context, and so on.

Most of us also recognize that the Bible uses literary techniques that are found in almost any of the world’s literature. The Bible exaggerates for effect (hyperbole), uses similes and metaphors, and employs various genres (poetry, narrative, parable, etc.). Like other literature, the Bible also uses language and ideas from earlier pieces of literature. Especially does the Bible like to quote itself: Old Testament writers refer to earlier Old Testament passages and New Testament writers refer to the Old Testament and earlier New Testament texts. When they do so, they are not always quoting as a “proof text.” That is, they are not always claiming that what they are saying is true because such and such a text teaches the same thing.

To be sure, the New Testament authors often use the Old Testament in this way. But I think many of us assume, wrongly, that this is the only purpose they have in citing the Old Testament. This is shortsighted. Like any work of literature, the New Testament sometimes quotes or alludes to the Old Testament to evoke a style or tradition. Consider the way T. S. Eliot wove classical allusions into his 1922 poem The Waste Land. Or consider the way someone who knows Scripture well will use scriptural language when praying. Or, yet again, consider one of my favorite hymns, which I have mentioned before in the commentary, And Can it Be? In the third stanza, Charles Wesley, the lyricist, describes conversion in these terms:

Long my imprisoned spirit lay

Fast bound in sin and nature’s night.

Thine eye diffused a quick’ning ray:

I woke—the dungeon flamed with light!

My chains fell off, my heart was free,

I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

Many years ago a former colleague of mine, David Dunbar, brought to my attention the fact that Wesley used language in this stanza drawn from the account of Peter’s imprisonment and escape in Acts 12 (see esp. verses 6–9, and note the words italicized):

And when Herod would have brought him forth, the same night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains: and the keepers before the door kept the prison. And, behold, the angel of the Lord came upon him, and a light shined in the prison: and he smote Peter on the side, and raised him up, saying, Arise up quickly. And his chains fell off from his hands. And the angel said unto him, Gird thyself, and bind on thy sandals. And so he did. And he saith unto him, Cast thy garment about thee, and follow me. And he went out, and followed him; and wist not that it was true which was done by the angel; but thought he saw a vision. (KJV)

Did Wesley think that Acts 12 describes a Christian conversion? Almost certainly not. He did not allude to this text to prove anything about Christian conversion but to set off a series of reverberations in our minds that enrich the hymn for us. I know I cannot sing this verse without thinking of some of the biblical allusions it awakens, and my appreciation for what I am singing is greatly enhanced.

Paul may be using the language of Psalm 19 in Romans 10:18 in a similar way. We misunderstand him if we think he is claiming that the psalmist was predicting the preaching of Christian evangelists. As Richard Hays argues, “The citation of Ps. 19:4 does not prove that Jews have had the opportunity to hear the gospel; rather, it gives Paul a ‘vocabulary of a second and higher power’ with which to assert that they have heard it.”11 Paul uses the language of Psalm 19, instead of his own wording, because it carries with it the flavor of that text, with its emphasis on God’s marvelous, universal display of his nature. Our reading of the New Testament will be immensely deepened if we open our ears to these kinds of allusions. They have great power to shape our emotions and reactions to the text.

Missions and the Word of God. Before I studied or taught Romans, I had often heard 10:14–15 quoted in missionary sermons to prove the need to “send out” missionaries. Like many who listened to such sermons, I did not have a good sense of the context from which the verses were taken. When I studied that context, I realized that the usual application of the verses was not on target. That text is not encouraging us to send out missionaries. Rather, it is asserting that God has already done so. He has sent out people like Paul and the other apostles to preach the good news. Israel has heard that good news but failed to believe it. This is the issue in Romans 10.

But this text still has important things to teach us about missions—and the message is one the church must pay close attention to in the new millennium. For, while Paul is not calling on the church to send out missionaries with the message of the gospel, he is nevertheless clearly assuming it needs to be done. People can only believe in Jesus when they hear about him, and they can hear about him only when someone presents the good news. “Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ” (v. 17).

The absolute need for people to hear the gospel preached if they are to be saved was one of the greatest forces impelling the modern missionary enterprise, begun in the early 1800s and flourishing yet today. Yet the tie between preaching the gospel and being saved is being severed in many churches and denominations. Caving in to the flood of postmodern malaise and afraid of seeming intolerant, many churches have lost missionary zeal. Reasons vary, of course. But some teach that other religions are also ways to God, so why bother sending missionaries if people can be saved within their own religion? Others teach that God reveals himself to all people in various ways, so that an oral or written presentation of the gospel is unnecessary.

But the text before us shows such viewpoints as the false teachings or easy generalizations they really are. Paul links salvation to belief, which he in turn ties to hearing the message about Christ. People must be “sent out” so that the message can be proclaimed to all people. Paul himself, of course, was among those whom God had sent out. In his own life of difficult travel, he illustrates the theology he teaches: People need to hear the gospel so that they can be saved.

I do not want to minimize the problems inherent in a theology that ties salvation to response to God’s Word. I, too, struggle with the question of fairness, wondering about those many people who never had a chance to respond to the Word of God. And I do not want to dogmatize beyond the text about the ways in which God may bring his message to people.

But I do think Romans 10:14–21, in the context of Paul’s life and theology, teaches that response to God’s Word is the only way to salvation and that sending out people to proclaim that word is God’s chosen way to bring that Word “to the ends of the earth.” The twenty-first century church needs to embrace this theology and staunchly defend it against the many attacks that are sure to increase. We need also to translate that theology into practice so that the sending of missionaries can again take top priority in the life of the church. Too many churches spend far too much on themselves and far too little on missions. We so easily turn inward and become preoccupied with our problems and potential, neglecting the millions who have never heard the Word and the wonderful potential to bring God glory by showing them the way into the kingdom.