4. St. Paul's singularly free, but deeply inspired, manner of applying texts from the Old Testament is especially illustrated in this passage.
Thus the passages quoted from Isaiah about the Stone, which St. Paul applies to Christ, refer originally to Jehovah simply in one case (Isa. viii. 14), and probably to His will and covenant as the foundation of Israel's polity in the other (Isa. xxviii. 16). Jewish tradition had possibly already referred them to the Christ[[18]]; and certainly our Lord's use of Ps. cxviii. 22—'The stone which the builders rejected'—as applying to His own rejection, made the reference more obvious. It is indeed in deepest accordance with the spirit of Isaiah: and St. Peter (1 Peter ii. 6), we notice, follows St. Paul in the use of them. Another passage (lii. 7) about 'the feet of those who preach good tidings' is transferred, with added meaning, from the heralds of the redemption from Babylon, to the heralds of the greater redemption. And the opening of chapter lxv, which originally refers altogether to apostate Israel, is divided, and applied in part to the Gentiles, in part to the Jews. (Other passages in the prophets, we should observe, would justify the former application.) Again, a passage from Ps. xix is transferred very beautifully from the witness of the heavens to the witness of the Gospel; as if St. Paul would say—grace is become as universal as nature. The language of a passage from Deuteronomy, as we have seen, is taken from the law to express the spirit of the gospel. The calling upon Jehovah in Joel becomes in St. Paul's quotation the calling upon Christ. All this free citation, uncritical according to our ideas and methods, yet rests upon a profoundly right apprehension of the meaning of the Old Testament as a whole. The appeal to the Old Testament, even if not to the particular passage, is justified by the strictest criticism.
[[1]] I have endeavoured sometimes in this analysis to expand what St. Paul means by 'pursuing righteousness,' by 'works' and by 'faith,' in accordance with the meaning already assigned to these words; see vol. i. pp. 7-24.
[[2]] Isa. viii. 14; xxviii. 16. Cf. Matt. xi. 6.
[[3]] See above, vol. i. p. 17.
[[4]] Levit. xviii. 5.
[[5]] Deut. xxx. 11-14. I have italicized the words substantially reproduced by St. Paul, but I have quoted the whole passage because its whole meaning is in his mind.
[[6]] Isa. xxviii. 16.
[[7]] Joel ii. 32.
[[8]] Isa. lii. 7.