Charles Ellicott Commentary Romans 16:27

"to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory for ever. Amen." — Romans 16:27 (ASV)

To God.—Our English translation has evaded the difficulty of this verse by leaving out two words. The Greek stands literally as follows: “To the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever.” If “To whom” refers to God, as it is decidedly more probable that it was intended to refer, it is ungrammatical.

If it is inserted, the words “To him that is able . . . to God, the only wise” are left without a governing grammatical element. While this might, under ordinary circumstances, be overlooked, as such broken constructions are frequent with St. Paul, it is somewhat different in the final solemn words of an Epistle. This would be especially true if this doxology were composed by itself, separately from the rest of the Epistle. In that case, there would not be the usual excuse of haste; and for so short a passage, it is doubtful whether the Apostle would even employ a secretary.

The difficulty increases when we ask what is meant by the phrase “through Jesus Christ.” If separated, as it would then be, from the ascription of glory, and joined to “the only wise God,” it would seem impossible to derive any truly satisfactory meaning from it. The interpretation, “To God, who through Christ has shown Himself as the alone wise,” is maintained, but is surely very forced.

Our conclusion then, before examining the evidence, would be that there was a mistake in the reading, and that the words “to whom” had erroneously been inserted.

And now we find that a single uncial manuscript, but that precisely the oldest and best of all the uncials, the Codex Vaticanus, along with two cursive manuscripts, omits these words. The suspicion would indeed naturally arise that they had been left out specifically on account of their difficulty.

However, this is a suspicion from which, on the whole, the Vatican manuscript is notably free. On the other hand, it is just as natural to assume that another common cause of textual corruption has been at work. Doxologies so frequently begin with the relative pronoun, “To whom be glory,” etc., that the copyist would be liable to inadvertently use the phrase, even in places where it was not originally written.

The probabilities of corruption may therefore be taken to balance each other. It will seem, perhaps, on the whole, the most probable solution that the relative pronoun has indeed been inserted at a very early date, and that the English version as it stands is substantially correct. There are some exceptions to the rule that “the more difficult reading is to be preferred,” and this is perhaps one of them.

The subscription in its present form scarcely dates back beyond the ninth century. The earliest form of subscription, until the sixth century, was simply “To the Romans.”