God Foretold in Scripture the Exclusion of Some Jews
Isaiah cries out concerning Israel:
“Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved.
For the Lord will carry out his sentence on earth with speed and finality.”
It is just as Isaiah said previously:
“Unless the Lord Almighty had left us descendants,
we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah.” Romans 9:27-29
Paul is still responding to the question: why does God still blame us? (9:19). He has said firstly that God as the potter has the right over His clay (9:20,21). His second response was that God reveals Himself as He really is (9:22,23). We have come to his third explanation: God foretold these things in Scripture (9:24-29). Having touched on the inclusion of the Gentiles in 9:25,26 Paul now turns from Hosea to Isaiah, from the inclusion of the Gentiles to the exclusion of the Jews (apart from the remnant).
Isaiah cries out concerning Israel:
“Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved.
For the Lord will carry out his sentence on earth with speed and finality” (quoting Isaiah 10:22f)
It is just as Isaiah said previously:
“Unless the Lord Almighty had left us descendants,
we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah” (quoting Isaiah 1:9)
The historical background to both Isaiah texts is again one of national apostasy in the eighth century BC, although it now relates to the southern kingdom of Judah. The ‘sinful nation’ has forsaken Yahweh and has been judged through an Assyrian invasion. The whole country lies desolate and very few survivors are left. God goes on to promise however, that Assyria will be punished for its arrogance and that a believing remnant will return to the Lord.
The significance of both texts lies in the contrast they contain between the majority and the minority. The ‘number of the Israelites’ was ‘like the sand by the sea’ (9:27). This was God’s promise to Abraham after his surrender of Isaac. In comparison with the countless numbers of Israelites, only a remnant would be saved. Similarly in 9:29, from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah only a handful were spared, only Lot and his two daughters.
By bringing the Hosea and Isaiah texts together, Paul is providing Old Testament warrant for what He sees God doing in his day. God has called people to Himself from both the Jews and the Gentiles (9:24). So there is a fundamental Jewish-Gentile solidarity in God’s new society. But Paul is conscious of a serious imbalance between the number of Gentile Christians and the number of Jewish Christians in the redeemed community. Following the wording of Hosea’s prophecy multitudes of Gentiles, formerly disenfranchised, have now been welcomed as the people of God. Following the wording of the Isaiah prophecy however, Jewish membership was only a remnant of the nation, so small that it constituted an exclusion, a ‘rejection’ (11:15). Jesus Himself had foretold this situation when He said: ‘I say to you that many will come from the east and the west, and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown outside …’ (Matthew 8:11f)