Romans 2:1-16 Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are that judge: for wherein you judge another, you condemn yourself… The tests of the Jews' pretentious lay to hand in the facts of Jewish life. Did the morals of his countrymen fit them to stand before the righteous tribunal of Eternal Justice? Had they so kept their boasted law as to attain by it to practical righteousness? Let the observation of the Roman world reply. The appeal is a rough and ready one — fit for the occasion. In his own case, Paul's Hebrew life had been outwardly pure. Like a good many of his contemporaries, especially among the Palestinian schools, he could accuse himself of no patent vices. Here, however, he is writing to a community familiar with foreign Jews resident in a city where of all others the basest elements from every land flowed together to make one another worse; and he could appeal to the observation of the Roman Christians whether the Jews of Rome were not as bad in morals as any pagan — nay, whether the very name of Jew had not come to be on Gentile lips a word of opprobrium and reproach. A vagrant life, association with the servile population of great towns, an equivocal position in the eyes of Roman law, social exclusion, the necessity of living by their wits and amassing bullion instead of stable property, these causes were already at work creating that deteriorated type of Hebrew character which has long been fixed in Europe. From independent witnesses we know that the Jews were at that day the gipsy, the usurer, the fortune teller, the pander, and the slave agent of the Roman world; everywhere living on the vices of the heathen whom he despised; one of the most restless, turbulent, and despicable elements in that corrupt society. And this is what has come of Israel's religious privileges and ancestral glories. This was the upshot of the national attempt to attain to the righteousness of God by the works of "the law." An open rupture betwixt profession and performance, between religion and morals; on one side, a faith which was mocked by their life; on the other, a life which was condemned by their faith. For while in morals they were a byword even to the heathens, these same Jews were eaten up with religious self-importance, and looked down on heathens as outcasts and unclean. Arrogant and bigoted zeal for proselytysing went hand in hand, therefore, with personal profligacy. It was nothing to be a cheat or a procurer: it was everything to know the true God, and to be circumcised and to be instructed in the law. (J. Oswald Dykes, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things. |
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