Romans 11:11

I say then, Did they stumble that they might fall? God forbid: but by their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles, to provoke them to jealousy.

This verse is admittedly difficult because of the uncertainty of just what is meant by the pronoun "they." In view of there being TWO Israels in view throughout this portion of Romans, it may not be amiss to refer the first "they" to fleshly Israel and the second "they" to the true Israel. Although this usage of pronouns may be a little unusual, it is by no means ungrammatical, and would seem to be absolutely required by the difficulty of understanding the passage without this device. As Lard said,

Did Israel stumble that they might fall? The answer is, "Not at all." But what is the precise point denied? Not certainly Israel's stumbling, for this the question concedes. It must be the fall; and yet unqualifiedly a fall cannot be denied, for the next clause concedes one.[11]

Lard resolved the difficulty by amending "fall" to mean "fall without remedy"; but there is far less authority for that than there is for understanding different antecedents for the two pronouns "they." It is plain that a fall is admitted and denied in this verse, and no logic occurs to this writer by which that can be understood otherwise than affirming a fall for fleshly Israel and denying it for spiritual Israel.

A paraphrase of what Paul's thought here probably was is thus:

Did fleshly Israel then stumble so completely as to involve even the spiritual Israel also in their fall? God forbid. Just the opposite happened, because their fall has greatly advanced the conversion of Gentiles, thus provoking the old Israel to increased acts of violence against the faith, through their jealousy.

Such appears to be the thought of this verse. The other device of understanding this place through imposing a different meaning upon "fall" so as to make it mean "fall without remedy as far as individuals are concerned," does no violence to the truth, if properly understood, but seems to this writer to be more cumbersome and unnatural than supposing the two Israels to be in Paul's purview. However, Lard's method of understanding this is subject to the gravest abuse. Allow God's word, "fall," to mean anything else, or anything different from total and final apostasy and hardening of fleshly Israel; and the result will be all kinds of wild speculation about fleshly, or national, Israel and God's supposed ultimate plans for them.

Nothing that Paul wrote in Romans, or elsewhere, may rightly be construed as a plain promise that the hardening of Israel will ever cease; and although such a promise MIGHT be intended in Romans 11:25, through Paul's use of the word "until," there is no authority in the word of God for so reading that word there (see Romans 11:25). Against the possibility of so reading "until" in that place, is the prophetic statement of Psalms 69:19, just cited by Paul (Romans 11:10), to the effect that Israel's condition is for "always."

Provoke them to jealousy ... is read as emulation by many commentators; but the word "provoked" does not go with that thought at all. What is intended is the explanation of why fleshly Israel should have been so murderously vindictive against the Christians of the Pauline age, not even the savage persecutions of Roman emperors exceeding it in fierceness.

By their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles ... Hodge commented that

The rejection of the gospel on the part of the Jews was the means of its wider and more rapid spread among the Gentiles, as clearly intimated in several passages of the New Testament.[12]

This came about through persecutions which multiplied the centers of propagation of the new faith, like that which resulted from the martyrdom of Stephen, and also from the result of freeing the church of encumbering Jewish practices. Thus, as Hodge said:

If Jews, for example, had made up the principal body of the primitive church, they would have proved a hindrance by their efforts to clog up the gospel with the ceremonial observances of the law, and such things as circumcision, abstaining from certain meats, and many others.[13]

[11] Moses E. Lard, op. cit., p. 354.

[12] Charles Hodge, op. cit., p. 361.

[13] Ibid., p. 362.