Romans 2:8 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Do not obey the truth— Though by the truth the Gospel be here meant, yet St. Paul seems plainly to have used the term truth with an eye to the Jews; for, though some few of them received the Gospel, yet even a great part of these few joined with the rest of their nation in opposing this great truth of the Gospel;—that under the Messiah, the Gentiles were the people of God as much as the Jews; and, as such, were to be received by them. In the last words of this verse there seems to be a reference to Psalms 78:49 when,speaking of the Egyptians, it is said, He cast upon them the fierceness of his anger, wrath, indignation, and trouble: and it may intimate with great delicacy, that the Jews would in the day of vengeance be more severely punished than even their Egyptian enemies were, when God made their plagues so wonderful. There should be a full stop at wrath. Tribulation and anguish in the next verse begin a new sentence, which affirms that to be a general rule of God's dealing with mankind at large in judgment, which in the two foregoing verses he seems to mean only of Christians so called, and Jews. The word στενοχωρια, rendered anguish, signifies straitness; and is used by Xenophon to denote a narrow way, which cannot be passed. See Locke, Doddridge, Raphelius, and Elsner.