Critical And Exegetical

Commentary

on

The New Testament

Handbook

to

The Epistle to the Romans

by

HEINRICH AUGUST WILHELM MEYER, Th.D.,

oberconsistorialrath, hannover.

translated from the fifth edition of the german by

Rev. John C. Moore, B.A.

and

Rev. Edwin Johnson, B.A.

the translation revised and edited by

William P. Dickson, D.D.,

professor of divinity in the university of glasgow

vol. ii.

Edinburgh:

T. & T. Clark, 38 George Street.

MDCCCLXXIV.

Prefatory Note

THE work of translating Dr. Meyer’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans was, for reasons of practical convenience, divided between the Rev. John C. Moore, B.A., Hamburg (now of Galway), and the Rev. Edwin Johnson, B.A., Boston, Lincolnshire. The first portion of the present volume—down to the close of the eighth chapter—has been translated by the former, and the remainder (nearly three-fourths of the volume) by the latter. I have bestowed considerable care on the revision of the translation, and have carried it through the press.

With a view to expedite the progress of this undertaking, in which my interest deepens as it advances, but which I find to involve a greater expenditure of time and labour than I had anticipated, I have, with the consent of the Publishers, asked Professor Crombie of St. Andrews to join me in the editorship; and I am glad that a volume of the Commentary on the Gospel of John, edited by him, is ready to be issued along with this one on my part.

W. P. D.

Glasgow College, August 1874.

the

Epistle of Paul to the Romans

Chapter 7

Vv. 7–13. How easily might the Jewish Christian, in his reverence for the law of his fathers, take offence at ver. 5 (τὰ διὰ τ. νόμου) and 6, and draw the obnoxious inference, that the law must therefore be itself of immoral nature, since it is the means of calling forth the sin-affections, and since emancipation from it is the condition of the new moral life! Paul therefore proposes to himself this possible inference in ver. 7, rejects it, and then on to ver. 13 shows that the law, while in itself good, is that which leads to acquaintance with sin, and which is misused by the principle of sin to the destruction of men.

Paul conducts the refutation, speaking throughout in the first person singular (comp. 1 Cor. 6:12, 13:11). This mode of expression, differing from the μετασχηματισμός (see on 1 Cor. 4:6), is an ἰδίωσις; comp. Theodore of Mopsuestia on ver. 8: τὸ ἐν ἐμοὶ ὅτε λέγει, τὸ κοινὸν λέγει τῶν ἀνθρώπων, and Theophylact on ver. 9: ἐν τῷ οἰκείῳ δὲ προσώπῳ τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην φύσιν λέγει. Thus he declares concerning himself what is meant to apply to every man placed under the Mosaic law generally, in respect of his relation to that law—before the turning-point in his inner life brought about through his connection with that law, and after it. The apostle’s own personal experience, so far from being thereby excluded, everywhere gleams through with peculiarly vivid and deep truth, and represents concretely the universal ...