Romans 11:30,31 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

For as ye in times past, &c.— When the promise was made to Abraham, the calling of the Gentiles was not a secondary design,to take effect in case the Jew rejected the Gospel, but an absolute purpose, to be accomplished whether the Jews complied or refused. The refusal of the Jew was no way necessary to the calling of the Gentile; nor did the Apostles preach to the Gentiles only because the Jews had refused to accept the Gospel. Had the Jews embraced the faith of Christ, the Apostles would still have preached to the Gentiles. Their unbelief is evidently to be understood, as their fall, and the casting them off, Romans 11:11-12 not simply and absolutely, but considered under its proper circumstances, or in its cause; namely, that extensive grace, which threw down their peculiarity, in order to make room for the Gentiles, and so occasioned their unbelief. These verses may be paraphrased thus: "For as you Gentiles, for many ages past, were in a state of alienation from God, yet not so as to be totally and for ever excluded,—for you are now taken into his peculiar kingdom by that method which has occasioned the unbelief of the Jews;—so in like manner (Romans 11:11.) the Jews, in their turn, are through infidelity shut out of the present peculiar kingdom of God; not to their utter exclusion, but to open a new scene, when, through the farther displays of God's mercy to you, they shall be taken into his kingdom again." See Locke, and on Romans 11:11.