John Calvin Commentary Romans 10:19

"But I say, Did Israel not know? First Moses saith, I will provoke you to jealousy with that which is no nation, With a nation void of understanding will I anger you." — Romans 10:19 (ASV)

But I say, has not Israel known? This objection of an opponent is taken from the comparison of the less with the greater. Paul had argued that the Gentiles were not to be excluded from the knowledge of God, since he had from the beginning manifested himself to them, though only obscurely and through shadows, or had at least given them some knowledge of his truth.

What then is to be said of Israel, who had been illuminated by a far different light of truth? For how is it that aliens and the profane should run to the light manifested to them from a distance, and that the holy race of Abraham should reject it when it was so familiar to them?

For this distinction must be always kept in mind: What nation is so renowned, that it has gods coming near to it, as your God at this day descends to you? It was not, then, without reason asked why knowledge had not followed the doctrine of the law, with which Israel was favored.

First, Moses says, etc. He proves by the testimony of Moses that there was nothing inconsistent in God preferring the Gentiles to the Jews. The passage is taken from that celebrated song in which God, upbraiding the Jews with their faithlessness, declares that he would execute vengeance on them and provoke them to jealousy by taking the Gentiles into covenant with himself, because they had departed to fictitious gods.

You have, he says, by despising and rejecting me, transferred my right and honor to idols: to avenge this wrong, I will also substitute the Gentiles in your place, and I will transfer to them what I have until now given to you.

Now this could not have happened without repudiating the Jewish nation. For the jealousy which Moses mentions arose from this: God formed for himself a nation from that which was not a nation, and raised up from nothing a new people who were to occupy the place from which the Jews had been driven away, since they had forsaken the true God and prostituted themselves to idols.

For though, at the coming of Christ, the Jews had not gone astray into gross and external idolatry, they still had no excuse, since they had profaned the whole worship of God by their inventions. Indeed, they eventually denied God the Father, as revealed in Christ, his only-begotten Son, which was an extreme kind of impiety.

Observe that foolish nation, and no nation, are the same; for without the hope of eternal life people properly have no existence.

Besides, the beginning or origin of life is from the light of faith; hence spiritual existence flows from the new creation. In this sense, Paul calls the faithful the work of God, as they are regenerated by his Spirit and renewed after his image.

Now from the word foolish, we learn that all the wisdom of humanity, apart from the word of God, is mere vanity.