Romans 9:27

And Isaiah crieth concerning Israel, If the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, it is the remnant that shall be saved; for the Lord will execute his word upon the earth, finishing it and cutting it short. And, as Isaiah hath said before,

Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, We had become as Sodom, and had been made like unto Gomorrah.

The first two verses of this passage are from Isaiah 10:22,23, which in the KJV reads thus:

For though thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them shall return: the consumption decreed shall overflow with righteousness. For the Lord God of hosts shall make a consumption, even determined, in the midst of the land.

Paul's use of that scripture is interesting. He quoted it giving the sense, not the exact words. Paul used Isaiah's prophecy that only a remnant of Israel should return from captivity as an argument that only a small part of Israel would be saved. All of this fitted perfectly into Paul's reasoning that merely being a Jew was insufficient grounds for expecting salvation.

Paul next quoted Isaiah 1:9, thus:

Except the Lord of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.

Paul's quotation in the English Revised Version (1885) has "Lord of Sabaoth" for "Lord of hosts," the meaning being the same. Hodge's comment on the actual meaning of this expression is interesting:

As the word "host" is used in reference to any multitude arranged in order, as of men in an army, of angels, of the stars, or of all the heavenly bodies, including the sun and moon, so the expression "Lord of hosts" may mean Lord of armies, Lord of angels, Lord of heaven, or of the universe as a marshaled host .... It is most probable, therefore, that God is called Lord of hosts being equivalent to the Lord of the universe.[20]

Of particular significance, it seems, is the root meaning that clings to the expression "arranged in order." God is always to be understood as a God of order; and, as Paul said in another place, "God is not the author of confusion" (1 Corinthians 14:13). Moule explained Paul's use of Isaiah's words in this place, thus:

Here again is a first and second incidence of the prophecy. In every stage of the history of sin and redemption, the apostle, in the Spirit, sees an embryo of the Great Development. So in the woefully limited number of the exiles who returned from the old captivity, he sees an embodied prophecy of the fewness of the sons of Israel who shall return from the exile of incredulity to their true Messiah.[21]

[20] Charles Hodge, op. cit., p. 328.

[21] H. C. G. Moule, The Epistle to the Romans (London: Pickering and Inglis, Ltd.), p. 257.