Romans 9:22

What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering vessels of wrath fitted unto destruction: and that he might make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he afore prepared unto glory.

The sense of these words is clearly presented in Locke's paraphrase, above.

Much longsuffering ... God's almost endless patience with the repeated rebellions and departures of the chosen people is the burden of the Old Testament and the theme of many a prophetic message. In a sense, God was trapped by the promise of the Messiah's revelation through the seed of Abraham, which holy intention necessitated the preservation of the covenant people (regardless of what they did) until the Messiah should at last appear. The Jews had absolutely no doubt whatever of the validity of the promise of the Messiah; and their leaders were accustomed to stabilize the people and allay their fears and apprehensions in the presence of any threatened calamity by saying, "The Messiah has not come, so we are safe!" They also extended this confidence to a state of presumption in regard to their sins. God judicially hardened the ten northern tribes and cast four-fifths of the whole Jewish nation into the ash can of history; but not even that quelled the overconfidence and self-righteousness in which Israel continued stubbornly in a course of sin against God. But the Messiah had indeed come at last; and, upon Israel's rejection and murder of the Anointed One, no further reason existed for their perpetuation. God hardened them, as indeed they were already hardened for generations; and Paul was warning them in this letter that their doom was as certain as that of Pharaoh. In all revealed instances of God's hardening, as in the case of Pharaoh (and now Israel), total destruction was the immediate and summary result. True, Israel was to be destroyed also, even their capital razed and burned, but there was to be a startling difference. That difference is the great mystery announced in Romans 11:25.

Fitted for destruction ... Israel rejected Moses, their great deliverer, murmured against him, despised the manna, fainted in the wilderness, cried for a king like the nations around them, went a whoring after the gods of the Canaanites, slew God's prophets, despised his mercies, and at last slew the King himself when he came. Such a nation had long been ripe for destruction; but, as noted above, God was, in a sense, "stuck with them" until Jesus came. The extent of Israel's deserving God's rejection is implicit in the fact that the prophet Jeremiah categorically stated that they were worse than Sodom and worse than the ten northern tribes. Thus, there was absolutely nothing unjust on God's part in his rejection of Israel and the calling of all people (including Israel, of course) in Christ.