Romans 10:21

But as to Israel he saith, All day long did I spread out my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people.

This quotation of Isaiah 65:2 summarizes Isaiah's whole paragraph at that place (through the 7th verse), where it is plain that God's anger with Israel was not due merely to their disobedience, but also to the high-handed and arrogant manner of it. Their conduct was called "gainsaying" in Paul's quotation; but in the passage from which he quoted, their state is defined as

A people that provoketh me to anger continually to my face ... which say, I am holier than thou ... and have blasphemed me upon the hills ... and walketh after their own thoughts (Isaiah 65:1-7).

It was that same quality of arrogant presumption which Christ repeatedly pointed out in his parables, as in the marriage feast, where "they made light of it" (Matthew 22:5), or as in the parable of the husbandmen who said, "This is the heir; come let us kill him and take his inheritance" (Matthew 21:38).

Despite all that presumptuous wickedness, the loving attitude of the Father is seen even here in Paul's denunciation of it, where the figure is that of a loving Father with outstretched hands, pleading for his rebellious children to return. And yet, there is a limit to the patience, even of God; and before this letter was finished Paul would prophetically announce a fate of Israel that was worse than that of Sodom and Gomorrah, or that overwhelmed Pharaoh in the Red Sea (Romans 11:25).

Israel was totally to blame for the rejection and hardening that would fall upon them like an avalanche, indeed had already done so; only God would not formally announce it until the 11th chapter of Paul's epistle. The dreadful task committed unto Paul in the necessity of announcing the fate of Israel was not discharged lightly on his part. He carefully marshaled the scriptures of the Jewish prophets and read the tragic record of their rebellion and obtuseness from their own inspired writers, showing how they had been forewarned, protected, favored, and tolerated again and again in all manner of rebellions, and how, at last, it was not merely just for God to reject them, but it would have been an injustice on God's part not to have done so! Nor is there anywhere in any of Paul's writings the slightest hint that any such thing as "God's eternal decree" had required any such shameful conduct on the part of Israel. Their shame was of themselves: in the manner of their treatment of sacred privilege. J. Barmby quoted Tholuck's remark in this context as follows:

If from this passage we once more look back upon the tenth and ninth chapters, it is manifest how little Paul ever designed to revert to a "decretum absolutum", but meant to cast all blame upon the WANT OF WILL in man, resisting the gracious WILL of God.[18]

Murray wrote:

Romans 10:21 brings us to the termination of the condemnation. We may well ask, what then? Is this the terminus of God's loving kindness to Israel? Is Romans 10:21 the last word? The answer to these questions, Romans 11 provides.[19]

The eleventh chapter will indeed provide the answer regarding Israel's fate as a nation, but the fate of every Israelite, as an individual, is not revealed in God's word, but will be determined, like the fate of all others, by the individual's response to God's gracious offer of salvation through the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no separate plan for Jews, any more than there is for Australians or Canadians.

[18] J. Barmby, The Pulpit Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1963), Vol. 18 (ii), p. 296.

[19] John Murray, op. cit., p. 64.