So the servant brings his sorrows for consolation to--may we write the words in reverence?--the sorrows of his Master. He mourns over an Athens, an Ephesus, and above all over a Jerusalem, that "will not come to the Son of God, that they might have life" (John v. 40). And his grief is not only inevitable; it is profoundly right, wise, holy. But he need not bear it unrelieved. He grasps the Scripture which tells him that his LORD has called those who would not come, and opened the eternal arms for an embrace--to be met only with a contradiction. He weeps, but it is as on the breast of Jesus as He wept over the City. And in the double certainty that the Lord has felt such grief, and that He is THE LORD, he yields, he rests, he is still. "The King of the Ages" (1 Tim. i. 17) and "the Man of Sorrows" are One. To know Him is to be at peace even under the griefs of the mystery of sin. [167] We thus attempt to convey the force of μέν. [168] So read; not "_for Israel_." [169] Cp. 1 Pet. i. 2; εἰς ὑπακοὴν ... Ἰησοῦ Χριτοῦυ; an "_obedience_" which means the decisive _submission_ of the sinner to the Saviour's _method of mercy_. [170] Ὁ ποιήσας: the aorist sums up acts into a single idea of action. [171] Ἐν αὐτῇ: "_in the righteousness_"; such seems to be the true reading. To "_live in_" a righteousness is to live as it were surrounded, guaranteed, by it. [172] Observe that the context in Deut. xxx. is full of the thought that rebels and law-breakers shall be welcome back when they come penitent to their God, "without one plea," but taking Him at His word. [173] Or, with an alternative reading, "_that Jesus is Lord_." [174] See above, ix. 33. [175] Throughout these questions we read the verbs in the conjunctive. [176] We thus represent, with hesitation, the aorist tense. [177] No doubt the immediate reference of Isai. lii. 7 is to good news _for_ "Zion" rather than _from_ her to the world. But the context is full not only of Messiah but (ver. 15) of "_many nations_." [178] The aorist gathers up the history of evangelization into a point of thought. [179] Read Χρισυοῦ, probably. [180] So we paraphrase πρῶτος (not πρῶτον) Μωϋσῆς λέγει. [181] So we attempt to give the force of ἐπ' οὐκ ἔθνει, ἐπὶ ἔθνει. [182] Ἐμὲ is emphatic in both clauses. Ἐπερωτᾶν is used of the consultation of an oracle. Our translation thus seems better than the more secondary explanation, "_who sought not to do My will_." CHAPTER XXII _ISRAEL HOWEVER NOT FORSAKEN_ ROMANS xi. 1-10