Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Romans 2:19

"and art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them that are in darkness," — Romans 2:19 (ASV)

Paul now begins to dialogue with a representative Jew, and his razorsharp irony is superb for its deftness. He first builds up the Jew, citing his various distinctives and appearing to appreciate them (vv.17–20), only to swing abruptly into a frontal assault by exposing the inconsistency between his claims and his conduct (vv.21–24). Jews were characterized by their reliance on the law, given by God through Moses. Such reliance came as the result of a relationship with God enjoyed by no other people. In Paul’s time some of the leaders of Judaism were making such extravagant statements about the law as to put it virtually in the place of God. Many Jews were trying to keep the law for its own sake, to honor the law rather than its Giver. This tendency became even more developed after the fall of Jerusalem, when the law became the rallying point for a nation that had lost its holy city and its temple.

Paul concedes that the use of the law brings knowledge of God’s will and a recognition of its superior teaching. But this is not all, for Jews think that this advantage had made them superior to Gentiles. We can paraphrase Paul’s statement to his Jewish opponent: “You come to Gentiles and propose yourself as a guide for their blindness (when, as a matter of fact, as I have already shown, they have a light and a law as well as you). You come to the Gentiles as though they were dumb and childish, giving you the whip hand, which you thoroughly relish. To you they are mere infants, knowing next to nothing.” By employing terms actually used by the Jews for the Gentiles, one after the other, not once suggesting that the Gentile has anything to his credit, but invariably magnifying the Jew, Paul has succeeded in exposing Jewish pride and boasting as utterly ridiculous.