But why should the apostle wish evil to himself for their sakes? What possible advantage could his sufferings have been to his nation? Is it possible that those learned expositors should conceive that pains and penalties inflicted on him could have made atonement for their sins, and expiated their guilt! They must never have read Paul's epistles or never have entered into the spirit of them, who could entertain such views as these; or even suspect that aught, save the blood of Christ, can atone for human guilt. It is strange, therefore, that they could have imagined that he wished to suffer with this view. And it is no less so, that it should be thought that prejudices against Paul could have occasioned Jewish prejudices against Christianity, when it is so evident that their prejudices against Paul were wholly occasioned by his attachment to Christianity—he having been high in their esteem till he became a Christian.
David once asked to suffer in Israel's stead; but the circumstances of the case were then totally different from those of the case now before us. Israel were suffering for his sin in numbering the people; "I have sinned and done wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done? Let thine hand, I pray thee be against me."—But Paul had not sinned, to bring evil on his people—the guilt was all their own.
Expositors having mistaken Moses' prayer "to be bloated out of God's book," seem generally to have had that prayer in their eye when they have attempted to explain the text; and supposing that Moses prayed to be made sacrifice for Israel, have thought that Paul had the same spirit, and here followed his example! But that neither of them ever entertained the thought of suffering to expiate the sin of their people, and that the two passages bear no kind of relation to each other, we conceive indubitably certain.
But let us consider the text and judge for ourselves the meaning.
Perhaps the difficulties which have perplexed it may have chiefly arisen from the translation. The silence of expositors on this head, while puzzled with the passage, is strange, if the difficulty might have been obviated by amending to the original. The translation is plausible solely from this consideration.
Mr. Pool is the only expositor we have ever seen, who hath noted the difference between the translation and the original; and he labors hard to bring them together, but, in our apprehension, labors it in vain.
The passage literally translated stands thus? For I myself boasted that I was a curse from Christ, above my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh. [32]
For the justice of the criticisms we appeal to the learned. If they are just, our sense of the text will be admitted.
If we consider the context, and the part which had been formerly acted by the apostle, it will not be difficult to ascertain his meaning, nor strange that he should express himself as in the text. He begins the chapter with strong expressions of concern for his nation, who had rejected him "whose name alone is given under heaven," for the salvation of men. If they continued to neglect the grace offered them in the gospel, he knew that they could not escape. And when he looked on them and mourned over them, the dangers which a few years before had hung over himself, rose up before him. He had been an unbeliever, a blasphemer, and a persecutor of the church of Christ; had boasted his enmity to Christ and opposition to the gospel; in which he had even exceeded the body of his nation—he had taken the lead against Christianity—been unrivalled in zeal against the cause, and rancour against the followers of the Lamb. When warned of his danger, and admonished to consider what would be his portion, should Jesus prove to be the Messias, he seems to have derided the friendly warnings, and imprecated on himself the vengeance of the Nazerene!—to have defied him to do his worst! to pour his curse upon him!
It is not strange that witnessing the temper of his nation, should call these things to his remembrance—that the consideration should affect him—that he should shudder at the prospect of the destruction which hung over them, and at the recollection of that from which himself had been "scarcely saved"—that he should exclaim, "God and my conscience witness my great heaviness and continual sorrow, when I look on my brethren the Jews, and consider the ruin coming upon them, from which I have been saved, so as by fire! Lately I was even more the enemy of Christ than they, and boasted greater enmity.. against him! And should have brought on myself a more intolerable doom, had not a miracle of power and mercy arrested me in my course!" That such considerations and a recollection of the share which he had formerly taken in strengthening the prejudices of his nation against the truth, should deeply affect him, and draw such expression from him as we find in the text and context, is not strange. They appear natural for a person circumstanced as he was at that time; and especially to one divinely forewarned of the devastation then coming on his place and nation.