Roma 9:4-6

9:4 who are Israelites. To them belong ¹  the adoption as sons, ²  the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the temple worship, ³  and the promises. 9:5 To them belong the patriarchs, ⁴  and from them, ⁵  by human descent, ⁶  came the Christ, ⁷  who is God over all, blessed forever! ⁸  Amen.

9:6 It is not as though the word of God had failed. For not all those who are descended from Israel are truly Israel, ⁹ 

Roma 9:25-26

9:25 As he also says in Hosea:

“I will call those who were not my people, ‘My people,’ and I will call her who was unloved, ¹⁰  ‘My beloved.’” ¹¹ 

9:26 “And in the very place ¹²  where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’

there they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’” ¹³ 

Roma 11:1-12

Israel’s Rejection not Complete nor Final

11:1 So I ask, God has not rejected his people, has he? Absolutely not! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin. 11:2 God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew! Do you not know what the scripture says about Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? 11:3 “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars; I alone am left and they are seeking my life!” ¹⁴  11:4 But what was the divine response ¹⁵  to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand people ¹⁶  who have not bent the knee to Baal.” ¹⁷ 

11:5 So in the same way at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace. 11:6 And if it is by grace, it is no longer by works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace. 11:7 What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was diligently seeking, but the elect obtained it. The ¹⁸  rest were hardened, 11:8 as it is written,

“God gave them a spirit of stupor,

eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear,

to this very day.” ¹⁹ 

11:9 And David says,

“Let their table become a snare and trap,

a stumbling block and a retribution for them;

11:10 let their eyes be darkened so that they may not see,

and make their backs bend continually.” ²⁰ 

11:11 I ask then, they did not stumble into an irrevocable fall, ²¹  did they? Absolutely not! But by their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles, to make Israel ²²  jealous. 11:12 Now if their transgression means riches for the world and their defeat means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full restoration ²³  bring?

[9:4]  ¹ tn Grk “of whom.” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[9:4]  ² tn The Greek term υἱοθεσία (Juioqesia) was originally a legal technical term for adoption as a son with full rights of inheritance. BDAG 1024 s.v. notes, “a legal t.t. of ‘adoption’ of children, in our lit., i.e. in Paul, only in a transferred sense of a transcendent filial relationship between God and humans (with the legal aspect, not gender specificity, as major semantic component).” Although some modern translations remove the filial sense completely and render the term merely “adoption” (cf. NAB, ESV), the retention of this component of meaning was accomplished in the present translation by the phrase “as sons.”

[9:4]  ³ tn Or “cultic service.”

[9:5]  ⁴ tn Grk “of whom are the fathers.” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[9:5]  ⁵ tn Grk “from whom.” Here the relative pronoun has been replaced by a personal pronoun.

[9:5]  ⁶ tn Grk “according to the flesh.”

[9:5]  ⁷ tn Or “Messiah.” (Both Greek “Christ” and Hebrew and Aramaic “Messiah” mean “one who has been anointed.”)

[9:5]  ⁸ tn Or “the Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever,” or “the Messiah. God who is over all be blessed forever!” or “the Messiah who is over all. God be blessed forever!” The translational difficulty here is not text-critical in nature, but is a problem of punctuation. Since the genre of these opening verses of Romans 9 is a lament, it is probably best to take this as an affirmation of Christ’s deity (as the text renders it). Although the other renderings are possible, to see a note of praise to God at the end of this section seems strangely out of place. But for Paul to bring his lament to a crescendo (that is to say, his kinsmen had rejected God come in the flesh), thereby deepening his anguish, is wholly appropriate. This is also supported grammatically and stylistically: The phrase ὁ ὢν (Jo wn, “the one who is”) is most naturally taken as a phrase which modifies something in the preceding context, and Paul’s doxologies are always closely tied to the preceding context. For a detailed examination of this verse, see B. M. Metzger, “The Punctuation of Rom. 9:5,” Christ and the Spirit in the New Testament, 95-112; and M. J. Harris, Jesus as God, 144-72.

[9:6]  ⁹ tn Grk “For not all those who are from Israel are Israel.”

[9:25]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “and her who was not beloved, ‘Beloved.’”

[9:25]  ¹¹ sn A quotation from Hos 2:23.

[9:26]  ¹² tn Grk “And it will be in the very place.”

[9:26]  ¹³ sn A quotation from Hos 1:10.

[11:3]  ¹⁴ sn A quotation from 1 Kgs 19:10, 14.

[11:4]  ¹⁵ tn Grk “the revelation,” “the oracle.”

[11:4]  ¹⁶ tn The Greek term here is ἀνήρ (anhr), which only exceptionally is used in a generic sense of both males and females. In this context, it appears to be a generic usage (“people”) since when Paul speaks of a remnant of faithful Israelites (“the elect,” v. 7), he is not referring to males only. It can also be argued, however, that it refers only to adult males here (“men”), perhaps as representative of all the faithful left in Israel.

[11:4]  ¹⁷ sn A quotation from 1 Kgs 19:18.

[11:7]  ¹⁸ tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[11:8]  ¹⁹ sn A quotation from Deut 29:4; Isa 29:10.

[11:10]  ²⁰ sn A quotation from Ps 69:22-23.

[11:11]  ²¹ tn Grk “that they might fall.”

[11:11]  ²² tn Grk “them”; the referent (Israel, cf. 11:7) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[11:12]  ²³ tn Or “full inclusion”; Grk “their fullness.”