And severity of God] As crhstothv, goodness, signifies the essential quality of the Divine nature, the fountain of all good to men and angels, so apotomia, severity, as it is here translated, signifies that particular exercise of his goodness and holiness which leads him to sever from his mystical body whatsoever would injure, corrupt, or destroy it. The apostle in these verses uses a metaphor taken from engrafting, egkentrisiv, from the verb egkentrizw, from en, in, and kentrizw, to puncture, because engrafting was frequently done by making a puncture in the bark of a tree, and then inserting a bud taken from another. This was the practice in the Roman agriculture, as we learn from Virgil, Georg. ii, ver. lxxiii. - Nam qua se medio trudunt de cortice gemmae, Et tenues rumpunt tunicas, angustus in ipso Fit nodo sinus: huc aliena ex arbore germen Includunt, udoque docent inolescere libro.

For where the tender rinds of trees disclose Their shooting gems, a swelling knot there grows; Just in that space a narrow slit we make, Then other buds from bearing trees we take; Inserted thus, the wounded rind we close, In whose moist womb the admitted infant grows. DRYDEN.

In all countries the principle is the same, though the mode is various.

The apostle, having adopted this metaphor as the best he could find to express that act of God's justice and mercy by which the Jews were rejected, and the Gentiles elected in their stead, and, in order to show that though the Jewish tree was cut down, or its branches lopped off, yet it was not rooted up, he informs the Gentile believers that, as it is customary to insert a good scion in a bad or useless stock, they who were bad, contrary to the custom in such cases, were grafted in a good stock, and their growth and fruitfulness proclaimed the excellence and vegetative life of the stock in which they were inserted. This was the goodness of the heavenly gardener to them; but it was severity, apotomia, an act of excision to the Jews.

The reader will observe that this term belongs to engrafting: often, in this operation, a part of a branch is cut off; in that part which remains in connection with the tree a little slit is made, and then a small twig or branch taken from another tree is, at its lower end, shaved thin, wedge-like, and then inserted in the cleft, after which the whole is tied together, clayed round, &c., and the bark unites to bark; and the stock and the scion become thus one tree, the juices of the whole stock circulating through the tubes of the newly- inserted twig; and thus both live, though the branch inserted bears a very different fruit from that which the parent stock bore.

I have often performed this operation, and in this very way, with success: and I cannot conceive that the apostle could have chosen a more apt or more elegant metaphor. The Jewish tree does not bring forth proper fruit; but it will answer well to ingraft a proper fruit-bearing tree on. The Gentiles are a wild olive, which is a tree that bears no fruit; but it may be made to bear if grafted on the Jewish stock. Some of the branches were cut off, that the branches of this wild olive might be inserted: the act by which this insertion is made is termed apotomia, goodness, benignity: the act by which the branches of the original stock are broken off is termed apotomia, excision; from apo, from, and temnw, I cut, still keeping the metaphor taken from engrafting in view. Now, let the apostle's mode of reasoning be observed: the tree is cut down, or its branches lopped off; but the tree is not rooted up. The Jews have stumbled, but not so as to fall irrecoverably; for if they abide not still in unbelief, they shall be grafted in, ver. 23. The Gentiles which are grafted in on these cut-off branches, like the scion inserted into another stock, partake of the root, which absorbs from the earth the nutritious juices, and the fatness of the Jewish tree, the blessings and privileges which that people have long enjoyed, in consequence of the Abrahamic covenant, ver. 17; the root, the Jewish covenant, bears them: not they the root, ver. 18.

As, therefore, the continuance of the Gentiles as the Church and people of God depends upon their interest in the Abrahamic covenant, the blessings of which they derive through the medium of the Jews, they should be grateful to God, and tolerant to those through whom they have received such blessings. And as, in the case of grafting, the prosperity of the engrafted scion depends on the existence of the parent stock, so the continuance of the Gentiles in this state of favour, (following the metaphor,) in a certain way depends on the continuance of the Jewish people: and they are preserved, as so many scions which are in process of time to be engrafted on the Gentiles; and thus the Gentiles shall become the means of salvation to the Jews, as the Jews have been the means of salvation to the Gentiles. Following, therefore, the metaphor a little farther, which seems to have been so well chosen in all its parts, the continued existence of the Jews as a distinct people, together with the acknowledgment of the Gentiles, that they have derived their salvation and state of blessedness through them-of which Jesus Christ, born of the stock of David, is the author; and the Jewish Scriptures, which the Gentiles receive as inspired by God, are the evidence-then, the restoration of the Jews to the favour of God is a necessary consequence, and indeed seems to be the principal end in reference to which the apostle reasons. The Gentiles, however, are to take care that the restoration of the Jews be not at their expense; as their calling and election were at the expense of the Jews: the latter being cut off, that the former might be grafted in, ver. 19. Of this there is no kind of necessity, for the original stock, the Abrahamic covenant, is sufficient to receive them all; and so Jews and Gentiles become one eternal flock, under one Bishop and Shepherd of all their souls.

John Gill's Bible Commentary

Greek Textus Receptus