(9:14–16) Vincent’s note on the words “mercy” and “compassion” is as follows: “The former verb emphasizes the sense of human wretchedness in its active manifestation; the latter, the inward feeling expressing itself in sighs and tears. Have mercy therefore contemplates, not merely the sentiment in itself, but the determination (the selection and appointment) of those who should be its objects. The words were spoken to Moses in connection with his prayer for a general forgiveness of the people, which was refused, and his request to behold God’s glory, which was granted. With reference to the latter, God asserts that His gift is of His own free grace, without any recognition of Moses’ right to claim it on the ground of merit or service.”
The first “I will have mercy” is a future indicative, predicting a future event. The second occurrence of these words is a present subjunctive. The relative pronoun is accompanied by an (ἀν), a particle used with the subjunctive mode, used here with the relative pronoun to make the latter mean “whoever,” emphasizing indefiniteness. (The idea is not, “I will have mercy on whoever I desire or will to have mercy.”) It is, “I will have mercy on anyone, whoever he is, that I will show mercy to in the future.” This emphasizes the absolute sovereignty of God in the disposition of His mercy.
The word “it” refers to the fact of a participation in God’s mercy (Vincent). It is, A participation in God’s mercy is not of him that desires mercy nor runs, that is, works for it. Vincent says, “God is laid under no obligation by a human will or a human work.” A participation in God’s mercy is dependent upon God’s sovereign will alone. The question of verse 14 in the Greek requires a negative answer, the negative mē (μη) being included.
Translation. What shall we say then? There is no unrighteousness with God, is there? Away with the thought. For to Moses He says; I will have mercy upon whoever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whoever I will have compassion. Therefore then, mercy is not of the one who desires nor even runs, but of the One who is merciful, God.
(9:17, 18) Vincent quotes Morison commenting on the present tense of the word “saith,” “There is an element of tirelessness in the utterance. If the scripture ever spoke at all, it continued and continues to speak. It has never been struck dumb.” Denney shows that while in verse 16 the experience of God’s mercy does not depend on man’s resolve or effort, in verse 17, the contrary phenomenon is seen, “that of a man who does not and cannot receive mercy.” The same authority says concerning Paul’s use of Scripture here, “It is on Scripture the burden of proof is laid here and at verse 15. The Jew might answer the arguments Paul uses here if they were the apostle’s own; to Scripture he can make no reply; it must silence, even where it does not convince.”
The verb “raised up” is exegeirō (ἐξεγειρω), “to arouse, to raise up.” Vincent explains the use of the word here as follows; “In the Hebrew the word means caused thee to stand. The meaning here is general, allowed thee to appear, brought thee forward on the stage of events.” “Declared” is diaggellō (διαγγελλω), “to carry a message through, announce everywhere, publish abroad.” Godet says, “Even to this present day, whenever throughout the world, Exodus is read, the divine intervention is realized.” Concerning Paul’s choice of Pharaoh as an example of God’s sovereignty, Denney says, “Pharaoh as well as Moses can be quoted to illustrate it. He was the open adversary of God, an avowed, implacable adversary; yet a divine purpose was fulfilled in his life, and that purpose and nothing else is the explanation of his very being.”
The word “hardeneth” is sklērunō (σκληρυνω), “to make hard, to harden,” metaphorically, “to render obstinate, stubborn.” Vincent says of the word: “Three words are used in the Hebrew to describe the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. The one which occurs most frequently, properly means to be strong, and therefore represents the hardness as foolhardiness, infatuated insensibility to danger. See Exodus 14. The word is used in its positive sense, hardens, not merely permits to become hard. In Exodus the hardening is represented as self-produced (8:15, 32; 9:34), and as produced by God, (4:21; 7:3, 9:12; 10:20, 27; 11:10). Paul here chooses the latter representation.” We are not to understand in the latter instance that God arbitrarily and directly forced upon Pharaoh an obstinate and stubborn resistance to Himself. Evil cannot be laid at the door of God. God not only does not solicit a sinner to do evil (James 1:13), but He also does not cause man to do evil. When man does wrong, that wrong comes from his own totally depraved nature (James 1:14). Therefore when Pharaoh acted in stubborn rebellion against God, all of that rebellion came as a result of his own depravity, not any directly from God. When God is said to harden Pharaoh’s heart, it is that He be demanding the release of Israel, confronted him with an issue which he did not wish to meet. It is like the case of a naughty boy whose violent temper is incited to greater effort by the demand of his mother that he behave himself. Paul says, “Whom He will, He hardeneth.” “Will” is thelō (θελω), “to be resolved, to determine, to purpose.” Vincent says that the word is used here in the sense of a decree. God’s resolve to use Pharaoh as an example of His sovereignty issued in a decree that he be so used. Pharaoh was an incorrigible, and God simply used him as He found him to demonstrate His power to the human race, in the last analysis, an act of mercy to the larger number, while also an act of perfect justice toward Pharaoh, for God’s demands were just. Denney says: “The purpose Pharaoh was designed to serve, and actually did serve, on this stage, was certainly not his own; as certainly it was God’s: God’s power was shown in the penal miracles by which Pharaoh and Egypt were visited, and His name is proclaimed to this day wherever the story of the Exodus is told.”
Translation. For the scripture says to Pharaoh, For this same purpose I raised you up, in order that I may demonstrate in you my power, and in order that there may be published everywhere my Name in all the earth. Therefore then upon whom He desires, He shows mercy, and whom He desires to harden, He hardens.
(9:19–21) “Hath resisted” is the perfect tense verb of anthistēmi (ἀνθιστημι), “to set one’s self against, to withstand, resist, oppose.” The simple verb is histēmi (ἱστημι), “to stand,” the prefixed preposition, anti (ἀντι), “against,” thus, “to stand against.” The use of the perfect tense here speaks of a process of standing against God’s will which has come to a finished end, and the resulting state, that of a confirmed and permanent stand against God. Vincent says; “Rev., more correctly, withstandeth. The idea is the result rather than the process of resistance. A man may resist God’s will, but cannot maintain his resistance. The question means who can resist Him? Paul leaves the question unanswered, for there is no answer which a finite mind can either reason out nor understand, since it involves the sovereignty of God and the fact of man as a free moral agent. The point where both of these touch each other has never been found by man.” Denney’s note is most helpful. “But human nature is not so easily silenced. This interpretation of all human life, with all its diversities of character and experience, through the will of God alone, as if that will by itself explained everything, is not adequate to the facts. If Moses and Pharaoh alike are to be explained by reference to that will—that is, are to be explained in precisely the same way—then the difference between Moses and Pharaoh disappears. The moral interpretation of the world is annulled by the religious one. If God is equally behind the most opposite moral phenomena, then it is open to anyone to say, what Paul here anticipates will be said; why does He still find fault? For who withstands His resolve? To this objection there is really no answer, and it ought to be frankly admitted that the apostle does not answer it. The attempt to understand the relation between the human will and the divine seems to lead of necessity to an antinomy (the opposition of one law to another) which thought has not yet succeeded in transcending. To assert the absoluteness of God in the unexplained, unqualified sense of verse 18 makes the moral life unintelligible; but to explain the moral life by ascribing to man a freedom over against God reduces the universe to anarchy. Up to this point Paul has been insisting on the former point of view, and he insists on it still as against the human presumption which would plead its rights against God; but in the very act of doing so he passes over (in verse 22) to an intermediate standpoint, showing that God has not in point of fact acted arbitrarily, in a freedom uncontrolled by moral law; and from that again he advances in the following chapter to do full justice to the other side of the antinomy—the liberty and responsibility of man. The act of Israel, as well as the will of God, lies behind the painful situation he is trying to understand.”
“Repliest” is antapokrinomai (ἀνταποκρινομαι), made up of apokrinomai (ἀποκρινομαι), “to give off a judgment,” thus, “to answer,” and the prefixed preposition anti (ἀντι) “against,” thus, “to answer by contradicting.” Vincent says, “The word signifies here to reply to an answer which God had already given, and implies, as Godet observes, a spirit of contention.”
Denney remarks that the phrase O man “is not used contemptuously, but is set intentionally over against ‘God’: the objector is reminded emphatically of what he is, and of the person to whom he is speaking. It is not for a man to adopt this tone toward God.” The adaptability of the illustration of a lump of clay in the potter’s hand to the idea of man in God’s hand is seen in Vincent’s note: “Lump, from phuraō (φυραω), ‘to mix so as to make into dough.’ Hence any substance mixed with water and kneaded. Philo uses it of the human frame as compounded. By the lump is here meant human nature with its moral possibilities, ‘but not yet conceived of in its definite, individual, moral stamp’ (Meyer). The figure of man as clay moulded by God carries us back to the earliest traditions of the creation of man (Gen. 2:7). According to primitive ideas man is regarded as issuing from the earth. The traditions of Libya made the first human being spring from the plains heated by the sun. The Egyptians declared the Nile mud, exposed to the heat of the sun, brought forth gems which sprang up as the bodies of men. A subsequent divine operation endowed these bodies with soul and intellect, and the divine fashioner appears upon some monuments moulding clay, wherewith to form man, upon a potter’s wheel. The Peruvians called the first man ‘animated earth’; and the Mandans of North America related that the Great Spirit moulded two figures of clay, which he dried and animated with the breath of his mouth, one receiving the name First Man, the other that of companion.”
The word “vessel” is skeuos (σκευος), “a vessel such as a receptacle, household utensil, the tackle and armament of ships, an implement,” here, a human being as an implement or utensil to be used of God for a special purpose. As the potter moulds some clay into a utensil to be used for noble purposes such as eating, and other clay to be used for ignoble purposes such as a depository for refuse, so God is sovereign in His use of an incorrigible such as Pharaoh for the purposes of demonstrating His power in the case of such an evil character, hardening his heart by forcing him to an issue which he did not want to meet, and in His use of Moses, the man meek above all men on the face of the earth, demonstrating His grace in using him to His glory. “The thing formed” is plasma (πλασμα), from which we derive our word “plastic.”
Translation. Then you will say to me, Why does He still persist in finding fault? For with respect to His counsel, who has taken a permanent stand against it? O man; nay, surely, as for you, who are you who contradicts God? The plastic material shall not say to the one who moulds it, Why did you make me thus, shall it? Or, does not the potter possess authority over the clay, out of the same lump to make on the one hand an instrument which is for honorable purposes, and on the other hand, one which is for dishonorable uses?
(9:22–24) Of God, “willing to show His wrath,” Vincent says; “Although willing, not because. Referring not to the determinate purpose of God, but to His spontaneous will growing out of His holy character. In the former sense, the meaning would be that God’s long-suffering was designed to enhance the final penalty. The emphatic position of willing prepares the way for the contrast with long-suffering. Though this holy will would lead Him to show His wrath, yet He withheld His wrath and endured.”
As to “vessels of wrath,” the same authority understands them to be, “not filled with wrath, nor prepared to serve for a manifestation of divine wrath; but appertaining to wrath. Such as by their own acts have fallen under His wrath.” “Fitted” is from katartizō (καταρτιζω). Vincent says; “Literally, adjusted … Not fitted by God for destruction, but in an adjectival sense, ready, ripe for destruction, the participle denoting a present state previously formed, but giving no hint of how it has been formed. An agency of some kind must be assumed. That the objects of final wrath had themselves a hand in the matter may be seen from I Thessalonians 2:15, 16. That the hand of God is also operative may be inferred from the whole drift of the chapter. ‘The apostle has probably chosen this form because the being ready certainly arises from a continual reciprocal action between human sin and the divine judgment of blindness and hardness. Every development of sin is a net-work of human offenses and divine judgments’ (Lange).”
The word “and” presents a difficulty in interpretation as to just what the connection is. Westcott and Hort omit it from their text on the single authority of the manuscript B.
In verse 22 the vessels of wrath are fitted (katartizō (καταρτιζω)) to destruction. In verse 23, the vessels of mercy are previously prepared (proetoimazō (προετοιμαζω)) for glory. Vincent says; “The studied difference in the use of this term instead of katartizō (καταρτιζω), to fit (v. 22) cannot be overlooked. The verb is not equivalent to foreordained (proorizō (προοριζω)). Fitted, by the adjustment of parts, emphasizes the concurrence of all the elements of the case to the final result. Prepared is more general. In the former case the result is indicated; in the latter, the previousness. Note before prepared, while before is wanting in verse 22. In this passage the direct agency of God is distinctly stated, in the other, the agency is left indefinate. Here a single act is indicated; there a process.”
In this connection, Vincent quotes such precious thoughts that the present author must share them with the reader; “Ah, truly, if the last word of the Christian revelation is contained in the image of the potter and the clay, it is a bitter derision of all the deep needs and legitimate desires of a soul aspiring toward its God. This would be at once a satire of reason upon herself and the suicide of revelation. But it is neither the last word nor the only word: nor has it any immediate observable bearing on the concrete development of our lives. It is not the only word, because, in nine-tenths of Scripture, it is as wholly excluded from the sphere of revelation as though it had never been revealed at all; and it is not the last word, because, throughout the whole of Scripture, and nowhere more than in the writings of the very apostle who has faced this problem with the most heroic inflexibility, we see bright glimpses of something beyond. How little we were intended to draw logical conclusions from the metaphor, is shown by the fact that we are living souls, not dead clay; and St. Paul elsewhere recognized a power, both within and without our beings, by which, as by an omnipotent alchemy, mean vessels can become precious, and vessels of earthenware be transmuted into vessels of gold” (Farrar).
Translation. But if, as is the case, desiring to demonstrate His wrath and to make known His power He endured with much long-suffering instruments of wrath fitted for destruction, in order that He might make known the wealth of His glory upon instruments of mercy which were previously prepared for glory, even us whom He called, not only from among the Jews but also from among the Gentiles.
(9:25, 26) The contents of these verses refer back to the fact that Paul includes the Gentiles with the Jews within the scope of God’s mercy. The “my people which were not my people,” and the “beloved which was not beloved” are the Gentiles. Alford says: “It is difficult to ascertain in what sense the apostle cites these two passages from Hosea as applicable to the Gentiles being called the people of God. That He does so, is manifest from the words themselves and from the transition to the Jews in verse 27. In the prophet they are spoken of Israel, … who after being rejected and put away, was to be again received into favor with God.” He suggests that the explanation is as follows: “He (Paul) brings them forward to show that it is consonant with what we know of God’s dealings, to receive as His people those who were formerly not His people—that this may now take place with regard to the Gentiles, as it was announced to happen with regard to Israel,—and even more,—that Israel in this as in so many other things was the prophetic mirror in which God foreshowed on a small scale, His future dealings with mankind.”
Translation. As also in Hosea He says, I will call those not my people, my people, and those not beloved, beloved. And it shall come to be that in the place where it was said to them, Not my people are you, there they shall be called sons of the living God.
(9:27–29) The word “crieth” is krazō (κραζω). Vincent says, “an impassioned utterance, mostly an inarticulate cry,” and quotes Morison, “The prophet in an awful earnestness, and as with a scream of anguish, cries over Israel.” Denney explains, “From the calling of the Gentiles, as foretold in prophecy, Paul passes now to the partial, but only partial, calling of Israel, as announced by the same authority. The Jews cannot quarrel with the situation in which they find themselves when it answers so exactly to the Word of God.” Paul speaks of the remnant in Israel during its apostasy as a nation, elected to salvation by the sovereign grace of God.
As to verse 28, there is considerable difficulty with regard to the translation. Vincent quotes the Revision, “The Lord will execute His word upon the earth, finishing and cutting it short.” The reader need not be bothered with the problems involved. The word “work” of the a.v., is logos (λογος) in the Greek text, which latter Vincent says “does not mean work, but word, utterance, doctrine; not decree, which logos (λογος) never means, though the idea may underlie it. Better, reckoning.” This saving the remnant of verse 27 is the matter referred to by the word “utterance” or “word.” “Remnant” is from hupoleima (ὑπολειμα), “that which is left.”
Translation. And Isaiah cries in anguish concerning Israel, If the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant will be saved. For the Lord will execute His word upon the earth, finishing and cutting it short. And even as Isaiah said before, Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us seed, we would in that case have become even as Sodom and been made like Gomorrha.
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