Romans 11:8
As it is written: God hath given them the spirit of insensibility; eyes that they should not see; and ears that they should not hear, until this present day.
The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- sicut scriptum est : Dedit illis Deus spiritum compunctionis : oculos ut non videant, et aures ut non audiant, usque in hodiernum diem.
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- καθὼς γέγραπται· Ἔδωκεν αὐτοῖς ὁ θεὸς πνεῦμα κατανύξεως, ὀφθαλμοὺς τοῦ μὴ βλέπειν καὶ ὦτα τοῦ μὴ ἀκούειν, ἕως τῆς σήμερον ἡμέρας.
Haydock's commentary
God hath given them, &c. 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 St. Chrysostom) to fall into the spirit of insensibility. Literally, the spirit of 1 compunction. Compunction is not here taken, as in some spiritual writers, for a great sorrow for sins. In the Latin Vulgate (Isaias vi. 9.) it is called the spirit of slumber, as in the Protestant translation. We cannot have a better judge of the sense of the word than St. 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, &c. And also out of David, (Psalm lxviii. 23.) let their table be made a snare, &c. 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
Read on
O curvæ in terram animæ et cœlestium inanes.
(Estius)
1 Spiritum compunctionis; pneuma katanuxeos. In the Latin Vulgate, Isaias xxix. 10, the same Greek words are translated, spiritum soporis; the spirit of slumber. See Mr. Legh, Crit. Sacr. on the word katanusso. St. Chrysostom, om. ith. p. 163. katanuxin, entautha ten peri to cheiron exin tes psuches, &c. See Cornelius a Lapide. St. Chrysostom in the same place; katanugenai gar ouden eteron esti to empagenai, kai proselosthai.
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St John Chrysostom The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom, Matthew X. 34
Yet was it not He that did this: of course not: but the wickedness of the other sort: nevertheless He saith it is His own doing. For such is the custom of the Scripture. Yea, and elsewhere also He saith, “God hath given them eyes that they should not see:”and here He speaks in this way, in order that having, as I said before, exercised themselves in these words, they might not be confounded on suffering reproaches and insults.
St John Chrysostom The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom on Paul's Epistle to the Romans, Homily XIX on Rom. xi. 7
Ver. 8 . “According as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber.” ( Is. xxix. 10 .)
St John Damascene An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, That God is not the cause of evils
It is to be observed that it is the custom in the Holy Scripture to speak of God’s permission as His energy, as when the apostle says in the Epistle to the Romans, Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour and another unto dishonour ? And for this reason, that He Himself makes this or that. For He is Himself alone the Maker of all things; yet it is not He Himself that fashions noble or ignoble things, but the personal choice of each one. And this is manifest from what the same Apostle says in the Second Epistle to Timothy, In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth: and some to honour and some to dishonour. If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour sanctified, and meet for the master’s use, and prepared unto every good work . …