Romans 10: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul says his prayer is that the people of Israel would be saved, and that they are eager for God but pursued a righteousness of their own rather than God's. He sets righteousness by the law beside righteousness by faith, quoting Moses, and says that confessing Jesus as Lord and believing God raised him from the dead brings salvation, with no difference between Jew and Greek. He then traces the chain backward from calling on the Lord to believing, hearing, preaching, and being sent. He closes with quotations from Isaiah and Moses about a message that was heard, a people made jealous, and hands held out all day long.

Claim by Claim

1. 10:1
   • Paul addresses his hearers as brothers.
   • Paul's heart's desire and his prayer to God are on behalf of Israel.
   • Paul's desire and prayer are that they be saved.
2. 10:2
   • Paul testifies concerning them that they have zeal for God.
   • Their zeal is not according to knowledge.
3. 10:3
   • They are ignorant of God's righteousness.
   • They are seeking to establish their own righteousness.
   • They have not submitted to the righteousness of God.
4. 10:4
   • Christ is the end of the law.
   • Christ is the end of the law so that there is righteousness for everyone who believes.
5. 10:5
   • Moses writes of the righteousness that comes from the law.
   • Moses writes that the man who does those things will live by them.
6. 10:6
   • The righteousness that comes from faith speaks in this manner.
   • The righteousness of faith says not to say in your heart, Who will ascend into heaven?
   • To ask who will ascend into heaven means to bring Christ down from above.
7. 10:7
   • The righteousness of faith says not to say, Who will descend into the deep?
   • To ask who will descend into the deep means to bring Christ up from the dead.
8. 10:8
   • Paul asks what it says instead.
   • It says the word is near you.
   • The word is in your mouth.
   • The word is in your heart.
   • That word is the word of faith.
   • Paul and his companions preach that word of faith.
9. 10:9
   • If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
   • The condition includes confessing with the mouth that Jesus is Lord.
   • The condition includes believing in the heart that God raised him from the dead.
10. 10:10
    • With the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness.
    • With the mouth confession is made, resulting in salvation.
11. 10:11
    • The scripture says that everyone who believes on him will not be put to shame.
12. 10:12
    • There is no distinction between the Jew and the Greek.
    • The same Lord is Lord of all.
    • He is rich toward all who call upon him.
13. 10:13
    • Everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.
14. 10:14
    • Paul asks how they can call on him in whom they have not believed.
    • Paul asks how they can believe in him of whom they have not heard.
    • Paul asks how they can hear without someone preaching.
15. 10:15
    • Paul asks how they can preach unless they are sent.
    • It is written that the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace and bring glad tidings of good things are beautiful.
16. 10:16
    • Not all have obeyed the gospel.
    • Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed our report?
17. 10:17
    • Faith comes by hearing.
    • Hearing comes by the word of God.
18. 10:18
    • Paul asks whether they have not heard.
    • Paul answers that indeed they have.
    • Their sound went out into all the earth.
    • Their words went out to the ends of the inhabited world.
19. 10:19
    • Paul asks whether Israel did not know.
    • Moses is the first to speak of this.
    • Moses reports God saying, I will provoke you to jealousy by those who are not a nation.
    • Moses reports God saying, I will anger you by a nation without understanding.
20. 10:20
    • Isaiah speaks very boldly.
    • Isaiah reports God saying, I was found by those who did not seek me.
    • Isaiah reports God saying, I was made manifest to those who did not ask after me.
21. 10:21
    • Isaiah speaks to Israel.
    • God says he stretched out his hands all day long to a people.
    • That people is disobedient.
    • That people contradicts and speaks against him.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

10:1

"Brethren" is simply the old word for fellow members of a group, men and women together. "Israel" here means Paul's fellow Jews, the people he belonged to himself: he was a Jew from a strict Pharisee background writing to a mixed church in Rome.

10:2

In the King James, "a zeal of God" means zeal for God: the "of" marks what their enthusiasm is directed at, not where it comes from. "Zeal" here is intense, committed devotion, not mild interest.

10:3

"Righteousness" translates a Greek word covering both being in the right and being put in the right by someone else; the same root gives the word usually translated "justified." Also, the King James "going about to establish" does not mean walking around: "going about to" was ordinary English for "setting out to" or "attempting to."

10:4

"End" translates the Greek telos, which can mean the point at which something stops and also the goal or completion something was always aiming at. The Greek allows both senses, and readers have argued over which Paul intends since ancient times; the rendering leaves the word as open as the original.

10:5

Paul is quoting Leviticus 18:5.

10:6

Paul is quoting Deuteronomy 30:12-14, where Moses says God's command is not far off in the sky or across the sea but close at hand. The King James "speaketh on this wise" simply means "speaks in this way." Paul has the passage spoken by "the righteousness which is of faith," as though that were a person talking.

10:7

Deuteronomy 30:13 says "beyond the sea"; Paul instead writes "the deep," Greek abyssos, the bottomless depth, a word Greek-speaking Jews used for the underworld where the dead are. So the two questions are about reaching the top of the sky and the bottom of the world.

10:8

"Nigh" means near. "The word" here is the message being announced, not a single word in a sentence.

10:9

"Confess" here means to declare openly and publicly, to say something on the record, not to admit to wrongdoing. "Lord" translates kyrios, which was the ordinary word for a master or owner, the word the Greek Old Testament put wherever the Hebrew had God's personal name, and a title claimed by the Roman emperor.

10:11

Quoting Isaiah 28:16. "Ashamed" here is not a private feeling of embarrassment but public disgrace: being humiliated, let down in front of everyone. The picture is of someone who trusted and was not left looking like a fool.

10:12

"Greek" stands here for non-Jews in general. Greek was the shared language and culture of the eastern Roman world, so "Jew and Greek" was a common way of saying "people of either kind, that is, everybody."

10:13

Quoting Joel 2:32. "Call upon the name of the Lord" is a long-standing Hebrew expression for calling out to God, in worship or in appeal, by naming him.

10:14

"Preacher" translates a word meaning herald: someone sent to announce a message out loud in public on another person's authority. It does not mean a clergyman with a congregation.

10:15

Quoting Isaiah 52:7, which pictures a runner coming over the hills with news that the exile is over. "Preach the gospel" and "bring glad tidings" both translate forms of one Greek word meaning to announce good news, and "gospel" is itself an old English word for good news.

10:16

"Esaias" is the Greek form of the name Isaiah, which the King James translators kept as it stood in their Greek text. The quotation is Isaiah 53:1. "Report" translates akoē, a word that means both a message heard and the act of hearing; it is the same word translated "hearing" in the next verse.

10:17

The Greek manuscripts differ here: the ones behind the King James read "the word of God," while the oldest surviving copies read "the word of Christ." Also, "hearing" renders the same double-sided word as "report" in verse 16, so the line can mean both that faith comes from the act of listening and that it comes from the message that is heard.

10:18

Quoting Psalm 19:4, where the "sound" and the "words" belong to the sky, the sun and the stars, telling of God without speech across the whole earth. The King James "yes verily" is emphatic agreement, roughly "they most certainly did."

10:19

Quoting Deuteronomy 32:21. "Provoke you to jealousy" means to make someone jealous deliberately. "Them that are no people" means a group with no standing as a nation at all. "Foolish" here means lacking sense or understanding, not silly or comical.

10:20

Quoting Isaiah 65:1. "Is very bold" translates a verb meaning dares, takes the risk of saying it outright. "Was made manifest" means was made plainly visible, showed himself openly.

10:21

Quoting Isaiah 65:2. "Gainsaying" is old English for contradicting, answering back, speaking against. To stretch out the hands is the gesture of someone pleading or beckoning, arms held out in appeal, and here it is kept up all day long.