You will say then, “Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.”
19. Thou wilt then say, etc. In the person of the Gentiles he brings forward what they might have pleaded for themselves; but that was of such a nature as ought not to have filled them with pride, but, on the contrary, to have made them humble.
The apostle proposes here a plausible objection, which might be urged against the divine conduct in casting off the Jewish nation (Rom 11:1): "Hath God cast away his people? Is the rejection total and final? Are they all abandoned to wrath and ruin, and that eternal?
Commenting on Romans 11:1-32
Thou wilt say then,.... This is an objection which the apostle foresaw the Gentiles would make against what he had said, and in favour of their boasting; the branches were broken off, that I might be grafted in. The sense of which is, that the Jews were rejected and left out of the Gospel church, on purpose to make way for the Gentiles, that they...