Romans 11:8

Verse 8. God hath given them, and so forth Not by his working, or acting in them; but by his permission, and by withdrawing his grace in punishment of their obstinacy. Challoner.—Permitted them (says Saint John Chrysostom) to fall into the spirit of insensibility. Lit. the spirit of [1] compunction. Compunction is not here taken, as in some spiritual writers, for a great sorrow for sins. In the Latin Vulg. (Isaiah 6:9) it is called the spirit of slumber, as in the Prot. translation. We cannot have a better judge of the sense of the word than Saint John Chrysostom who tells us, that it signifies a habit of the soul, firmly fixed in evil, and an insensible disposition: as, saith he, persons under a pious compunction are not to be removed from their good resolutions; so the wicked, under a hardened compunction, are nailed, as it were, to vice. And that here this is the true sense, appears by the following words out of Isaias: he hath given them eyes that they should not see, and so forth And also out of David, (Psalms 68:23) let their table be made a snare, and so forth We may understand the spiritual food of the word of God, and of the Scriptures; which by the blindness of this people, have served to their great condemnation.—And a recompense, that is, for a just punishment of their obstinacy.—And bow down their back always, a metaphor to represent the condition of such, as are under heavy oppressions. Witham.—Although by bending their back is literally understood the yoke of servitude and captivity, with which the Jews were oppressed at the destruction of Jerusalem; yet it seems more conformable to the apostle’s meaning, when considered in a spiritual sense, and then it will signify the insensibility of the Jews, as to heavenly things, and their anxious solicitude for the things of the earth. This their avaricious and carnal disposition was so manifest, that the poet said of them—

O curvæ in terram animæ et cœlestium inanes.—Estius.