Romans 11: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul asks whether God has rejected his people Israel and answers no, pointing to himself and to the seven thousand in Elijah's day as evidence that a remnant remains, chosen by grace. He explains that Israel's stumbling opened the way for salvation to reach the Gentiles, and he warns Gentile believers, grafted into the olive tree like wild branches, not to boast over the branches that were broken off. He then states that a partial hardening has come on Israel until the full number of Gentiles comes in, and that in this way all Israel will be saved, since God does not take back his gifts or his call. The chapter closes with a short burst of praise for God's wisdom and knowledge.

Claim by Claim

1. 11:1
   • Paul asks whether God has cast away his people.
   • Paul answers that this is not so.
   • Paul says he is himself an Israelite.
   • Paul says he is of the seed of Abraham.
   • Paul says he is of the tribe of Benjamin.
2. 11:2
   • God has not cast away his people.
   • God foreknew his people.
   • Paul asks whether his readers do not know what the scripture says in the passage about Elijah.
   • Elijah pleads with God against Israel.
3. 11:3
   • Elijah says to the Lord that they have killed his prophets.
   • Elijah says they have torn down God's altars.
   • Elijah says he alone is left.
   • Elijah says they are seeking his life.
4. 11:4
   • Paul asks what the divine answer said to Elijah.
   • God said he had kept back seven thousand men for himself.
   • Those seven thousand men have not bowed the knee to the image of Baal.
5. 11:5
   • At the present time also there is a remnant.
   • That remnant exists according to an election of grace.
6. 11:6
   • If it is by grace, then it is no longer of works.
   • If it were of works, grace would no longer be grace.
   • If it is of works, then it is no longer grace.
   • If it were of grace, work would no longer be work.
7. 11:7
   • Paul asks what follows.
   • Israel did not obtain what it seeks.
   • The election obtained it.
   • The rest were hardened.
8. 11:8
   • It is written that God gave them a spirit of stupor.
   • It is written that God gave them eyes that do not see.
   • It is written that God gave them ears that do not hear.
   • This condition lasts to the present day.
9. 11:9
   • David says: let their table become a snare.
   • David says: let their table become a trap.
   • David says: let their table become a stumbling block.
   • David says: let their table become a repayment to them.
10. 11:10
    • Let their eyes be darkened so that they do not see.
    • Bend their backs continually.
11. 11:11
    • Paul asks whether they stumbled so that they should fall.
    • Paul answers that this is not so.
    • By their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles.
    • The purpose of this is to provoke Israel to jealousy.
12. 11:12
    • If their trespass is the riches of the world, and their loss is the riches of the Gentiles, their fullness will bring much more.
13. 11:13
    • Paul says he is speaking to the Gentiles.
    • Paul is the apostle of the Gentiles.
    • Paul magnifies his ministry.
14. 11:14
    • Paul hopes to provoke his own kinsmen to jealousy.
    • Paul hopes to save some of them.
15. 11:15
    • If the casting away of them is the reconciling of the world, their reception will be life from the dead.
16. 11:16
    • If the firstfruit is holy, the lump is holy also.
    • If the root is holy, the branches are holy also.
17. 11:17
    • Some of the branches were broken off.
    • The one addressed is a wild olive tree.
    • The one addressed was grafted in among the remaining branches.
    • The one addressed shares with them in the root and fatness of the olive tree.
18. 11:18
    • Do not boast against the branches.
    • If you boast, you do not bear the root.
    • The root bears you.
19. 11:19
    • You will say that branches were broken off so that you might be grafted in.
20. 11:20
    • Paul grants that this is rightly said.
    • They were broken off because of unbelief.
    • You stand by faith.
    • Do not be highminded.
    • Fear.
21. 11:21
    • God did not spare the natural branches.
    • If God did not spare the natural branches, take heed lest he also not spare you.
22. 11:22
    • Consider the goodness and the severity of God.
    • Severity is upon those who fell.
    • Goodness is toward you, if you continue in his goodness.
    • If you do not continue, you also will be cut off.
23. 11:23
    • If they do not remain in unbelief, they will be grafted in.
    • God is able to graft them in again.
24. 11:24
    • You were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature.
    • You were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree.
    • These natural branches will much more be grafted into their own olive tree.
25. 11:25
    • Paul does not want the brethren to be ignorant of this mystery.
    • The reason is so that they will not be wise in their own conceits.
    • A hardening in part has happened to Israel.
    • That hardening lasts until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.
26. 11:26
    • And so all Israel will be saved.
    • It is written that the Deliverer will come out of Zion.
    • It is written that he will turn ungodliness away from Jacob.
27. 11:27
    • God says this is his covenant with them.
    • The covenant takes effect when God takes away their sins.
28. 11:28
    • As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for the sake of the Gentiles addressed.
    • As concerning the election, they are beloved for the sake of the fathers.
29. 11:29
    • The gifts of God are not revoked.
    • The calling of God is not revoked.
30. 11:30
    • The Gentiles addressed formerly disobeyed God.
    • They have now obtained mercy through the disobedience of Israel.
31. 11:31
    • These have now disobeyed.
    • The purpose is that through the mercy shown to you they also may obtain mercy.
32. 11:32
    • God has shut up all in disobedience.
    • God did this so that he might have mercy upon all.
33. 11:33
    • The riches of God's wisdom and knowledge are deep.
    • God's judgments are unsearchable.
    • God's ways cannot be traced out.
34. 11:34
    • Paul asks who has known the mind of the Lord.
    • Paul asks who has been his counselor.
35. 11:35
    • Paul asks who has first given to God so that it should be repaid to him.
36. 11:36
    • All things are from God.
    • All things are through God.
    • All things are to God.
    • Glory is to God forever.
    • Amen.

Words Worth Explaining

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

11:1

"God forbid" is the King James way of rendering a short Greek phrase, *mē genoito*, that literally means "may it never be." It is an emphatic denial, roughly "absolutely not"; the word God is not in the Greek. Paul uses it ten times in Romans, always to reject a conclusion he has just put in a questioner's mouth. The three things Paul says about himself are the standard credentials of unmixed Jewish descent: membership in the nation, descent from its founding ancestor, and a named tribe. Benjamin was one of the smallest tribes, but it stayed with Judah when the kingdom split and so kept a continuous identity, which made naming it a strong claim rather than a modest one.

11:2

"Wot ye not" is Elizabethan English for "do you not know." "Elias" is the Greek spelling of the Hebrew name Elijah; the King James keeps the Greek form because it is translating a Greek text. "Maketh intercession" normally means pleading on someone's behalf, and the oddity is deliberate: Paul uses the pleading word and then turns it around with "against Israel." Elijah is going to God as a petitioner, but the petition is a complaint about his own people. "Foreknew" translates a Greek word meaning "knew beforehand." In Hebrew usage, to know a person can carry the stronger sense of acknowledging or choosing that person, and readers have taken the word both ways here.

11:3

Elijah's words are quoted from 1 Kings 19:10 and 19:14. The setting is the reign of Ahab and Jezebel, who had promoted the worship of Baal and had prophets of Israel's God hunted down and killed. "Digged down thine altars" refers to altars built to Israel's own God at local sites around the northern kingdom, torn down as part of that campaign.

11:4

"The answer of God" translates a Greek noun used for a divine oracle, a formal response given to someone who has inquired. Baal was a Canaanite storm and fertility god whose name simply means "lord" or "master." His worship had heavy official backing in Israel under Ahab. Bowing or kneeling was the standard bodily gesture of submission to a god or a king, so "have not bowed the knee" means have not given him allegiance. The King James "the image of Baal" reflects a peculiarity of the Greek, which attaches a feminine word for "the" to the masculine name. This most likely echoes a Jewish habit of not pronouncing the name and saying a word meaning "the shameful thing" instead.

11:5

"Remnant" is a technical term of the Hebrew prophets: the small group left alive or left faithful after a disaster, out of which the nation continues. Isaiah in particular builds on it, and Paul is picking up that vocabulary rather than inventing a word. "Election" here means selection or choosing, the act of picking out, not a vote.

11:6

"Works" in Paul's argument means things done to satisfy a requirement, the sort of action that earns payment. The whole verse runs on that commercial contrast: a gift and a wage cannot be the same transaction, since a gift stops being a gift the moment it is owed.

11:7

"Blinded" is misleading in modern English. The Greek verb means to harden, to become callused or petrified, the way skin thickens or a joint stiffens; it is about becoming insensible rather than losing eyesight. Some early copies of the text have a different verb meaning to blind, which is probably where the King James reading comes from.

11:8

"According as it is written" is the standard formula for introducing a quotation of Scripture. The quotation combines Deuteronomy 29:4 with Isaiah 29:10. "Spirit of slumber" renders a Greek word for stupor or numbness, the dazed state of someone drugged or stunned, not ordinary sleepiness.

11:9

Quoted from Psalm 69:22 and 23, in its Greek version. Psalm 69 is a prayer of a man under attack who asks God to turn his enemies' security against them. "Their table" is the table a meal is served on, the image of safety, plenty and hospitality. "Snare" and "trap" are bird-catching equipment: a noose and a baited spring-net thrown over feeding birds. The point of the image is that the very spot where they eat becomes the spot where they are caught. "Recompence" is the older spelling of recompense and means repayment, giving back what is due.

11:10

"Alway" is simply the older form of always. A permanently bent back is the posture of someone under a heavy load: the image is of people broken down by carrying burdens, as slaves or forced laborers did.

11:11

Gentiles translates a word meaning the nations, that is, everyone who is not Jewish. The idea of God provoking Israel to jealousy by turning to other nations comes from Deuteronomy 32:21, part of the song of Moses, and Paul quotes that verse directly in chapter 10.

11:12

"Fulness" is an older spelling of fullness. The Greek word can mean the full number of people, the completion of something, or the full measure that fills a container, and Paul does not say which he means here. The same word returns in verse 25 about the Gentiles.

11:13

"Apostle" is a Greek word meaning one who is sent out, an authorized envoy who carries another person's commission. "I magnify mine office" does not mean Paul is boasting about his own importance. To magnify is to make large, to give full weight and honor to something, and "office" means the assignment or service he has been given rather than a position of rank.

11:14

"Emulation" in 1611 meant jealous rivalry, the sting of seeing someone else have what you want. It did not have the modern sense of admiring imitation. "Them which are my flesh" means his own blood relations, his fellow Jews. The King James follows the Greek, which literally says "my flesh."

11:15

"Life from the dead" is left open in the Greek. It may be a figure of speech for an overwhelming reversal, the way we say something brought a place back to life, or it may point to the resurrection of the dead itself. Paul does not settle it.

11:16

The image comes from a specific ritual in Numbers 15:20 and 21: when dough was made from the new grain harvest, the first portion of it was set apart and given to God as an offering, and that act made the whole batch fit for ordinary use. "Firstfruit" is that first portion and "the lump" is the rest of the kneaded dough. "Holy" in this sort of language means set apart and belonging to God, a status word rather than a description of moral character.

11:17

"Graffed" is the old spelling of grafted. Grafting is a real orchard technique: a cut is made in the trunk or a branch of a living tree, a shoot from another tree is wedged into the cut and bound, and it grows on as part of the host, fed by the host's roots. The olive was the most valuable tree crop in the region and takes decades to come into full bearing, so olive groves were long-term family wealth. The prophets already used a cultivated olive tree as a picture of Israel, as in Jeremiah 11:16 and Hosea 14:6. "Fatness" means richness, the oil-bearing sap drawn up from the root.

11:18

"Boast not against" means do not crow over, do not treat them as beneath you.

11:20

"Highminded" in 1611 meant arrogant and puffed up. It is the opposite of the modern sense of high-minded, which suggests noble principles.

11:21

The natural branches are the ones that grew on the tree from the start. Paul means the Jewish people, and the grafted branch means the Gentiles.

11:22

"Severity" here translates a Greek word built on the verb to cut off, which is why the sentence ends with being cut off. The King James keeps the two words "goodness" and "severity" as a matched pair, as the Greek does.

11:24

Grafting normally runs the other way around: a cutting from a cultivated tree is grafted onto hardy wild rootstock, because the point is to get good fruit from a tough root. Putting a wild shoot into a cultivated tree is backwards as farming, and Paul says so himself with "contrary to nature."

11:25

"Mystery" does not mean a puzzle or something unexplained. In this kind of Jewish and early Christian writing it means a part of God's plan that was hidden and has now been disclosed, so it is closer to "open secret" than to "riddle." "Wise in your own conceits" uses conceit in its older sense of an opinion or estimate, so the phrase means wise in your own estimation. "Blindness in part" is the same hardening word as in verse 7, and "in part" can mean partly in extent, affecting some but not all, or partly in degree.

11:26

"And so" translates a Greek adverb meaning "in this manner." It describes the way it happens rather than saying what happens next in time. "Sion" is the King James spelling of Zion, following the Greek. Zion was originally the fortified hill in Jerusalem and came to stand for the city as a whole, and for its people. The quotation is from Isaiah 59:20 and 21. "Jacob" is the ancestor whose other name was Israel, and his name is used here for the nation descended from him. "Ungodliness" means irreverence toward God, a life lived with no regard for him.

11:27

This continues the quotation begun in verse 26, with the closing line drawn from Isaiah 27:9. A covenant is a formally binding agreement, of the kind made between a king and a people, with obligations named on each side.

11:28

"As concerning" and "as touching" both mean "with respect to." Paul is setting two angles side by side, not two time periods. "The fathers" means the founding ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to whom the promises were originally made.

11:29

"Without repentance" is badly misleading today. Repentance here means a change of mind, and the word is being applied to God, not to people: the gifts and the call are things God will not go back on. The sense is irrevocable.

11:30

"Have not believed" translates a Greek word that means refused to be persuaded or disobeyed. Belief and obedience are not separate ideas in this sentence, and the same word carries through verses 31 and 32.

11:32

"Concluded" is a 1611 legal and physical term meaning shut in, enclosed, locked up together with no way out. It is not the modern sense of reaching a conclusion.

11:33

"Unsearchable" means impossible to investigate or get to the bottom of. "Past finding out" translates a word about footprints: his ways leave no trail that can be followed. "Judgments" here means decisions or verdicts, the rulings he makes, not condemnations.

11:34

Quoted from Isaiah 40:13 in its Greek version. A "counsellor" is an adviser in a royal court, one of the people a king consults before deciding.

11:35

Drawn from Job 41:11. The logic is that of gift-giving between unequals in the ancient world: a gift placed first creates an obligation, and the receiver is then in the giver's debt.

11:36

"Amen" is a Hebrew word meaning something like "truly" or "let it stand." It was spoken aloud by a gathering to affirm a blessing or a prayer someone else had said, and Paul is using it here to close a burst of praise.