Romans 11:25-27 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

For, &c. And this I now declare, because I would not have you ignorant of this mystery Of the mysterious dispensation under consideration, which, on the first view of it, may appear very unaccountable; lest you should be wise in your own conceits Should have too high an opinion of yourselves, on account of your being made the people of God in place of the Jews. The apostle calls the rejection of the Jews for a time, and their restoration after the conversion of the Gentiles is completed, a mystery; because it was a matter of the greatest importance to mankind, and because it had hitherto been kept a secret, like the doctrine of the mysteries among the Greeks, which was discovered to none but the initiated. See on Ephesians 1:9. That blindness in part That is, as to the greatest part of them, a remnant only being now brought to the faith; is happened to Israel For a certain time, for Israel is neither totally nor finally rejected; until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in Here the Christian Church is represented as a great temple, erected for all nations to worship in. And the coming of the Gentiles into this temple, or church, to worship, signifies their conversion to Christianity; a conversion which has hitherto only taken place in a small degree. For, as Whitby observes, (Appen. to Romans xi,) “If the known regions of the world be divided into thirty parts, the Christian part is only as five, the Mohammedan as six, and the idolatrous as nineteen.” And, alas! of the part said to be Christian, how few are Scriptural Christians, possessed of the Spirit of Christ, without which we are none of his! And so all Israel shall be saved Shall be brought to believe in Jesus as the true Messiah, and so shall be put into the way of obtaining salvation, being convinced of the truth by the coming in of the Gentiles. As it is written, Isaiah 59:20, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer Being the son of David, he is said, by the apostle, to come out of Sion, the city of David, and the seat of his kingdom, rather than ενεκεν Σιων, for the sake of Sion, the words used by the LXX.; whose translation of this passage, in other respects, the apostle adopts. It differs, however, in some degree, from the Hebrew original, both in this and the next clause; for that is, the Redeemer shall come to Sion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Jacob, which, no doubt, was the exact sense of the prophet's words. But since the coming of Christ as a deliverer to the Jews was all that the apostle's argument required, he quotes the passage merely to prove that point, and does not notice the variation of the Greek translation from the original Hebrew. It being certain, however, that the general tenor of God's covenant with Israel gave no hope of their deliverance and restoration, after rejection and chastisement, but in a way of repentance and reformation, the apostle properly observes, that when the deliverer came, he should turn away ungodliness from Jacob Which, as it was not done by Christ at his first coming, will doubtless be accomplished in some future period by an extraordinary display of his mercy and grace. For this is my covenant unto Or rather with them, when I shall take away their sins That is, when their sins, as a nation, are remitted, it shall be to bring them again into covenant with myself.