BishopImpartial judgment

Romans 2 — Greek text and reception

Saints Translation: Romans 1–16 [V2]

Each card preserves the Greek reading and its textual and reception notes. This source provides a Greek study edition; Hebrew counterparts and Hebrew–Greek classifications are not supplied.

Chapter 2

God’s impartial judgment and circumcision of the heart

Verse 2:1

Greek–English Saints Priority

Therefore you are without excuse, O man, everyone who judges; for in what you judge the other, you condemn yourself, because you who judge practice the same things.

Textual & Reception Notes

The address ὦ ἄνθρωπε is generic to a human judge, not exclusively a male. Paul turns the accusation back upon the judging hearer; the chapter’s opening therefore belongs with the preceding indictment.

Verse 2:2

Greek–English Saints Priority

And we know that God’s judgment against those who practice such things is according to truth.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 2:3

Greek–English Saints Priority

But do you reckon this, O man, you who judge those practicing such things and do them yourself, that you will escape God’s judgment?

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 2:4

Greek–English Saints Priority

Or do you despise the wealth of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness leads you to repentance?

Textual & Reception Notes

Kindness, forbearance, and patience are three distinct terms. Repentance is the stated direction of divine kindness.

Verse 2:5

Greek–English Saints Priority

But according to your hardness and unrepentant heart, you store up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath and revelation of God’s righteous judgment,

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 2:6

Greek–English Saints Priority

who will repay each according to his works:

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 2:7

Greek–English Saints Priority

to those who, through perseverance in good work, seek glory and honor and incorruptibility, eternal life;

Textual & Reception Notes

‘Perseverance in good work’ renders the singular ἔργου ἀγαθοῦ. The sentence’s promised eternal life is not paraphrased away to predetermine its relation to the later faith-and-works argument.

Verse 2:8

Greek–English Saints Priority

but to those acting from selfish ambition, who disobey the truth but obey unrighteousness, wrath and fury,

Textual & Reception Notes

Ἐριθεία is selfish ambition or factional self-seeking. Disobedience to truth and obedience to unrighteousness form an explicit reversal.

Verse 2:9

Greek–English Saints Priority

affliction and distress upon every soul of a person who works evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek;

Textual & Reception Notes

‘Every soul of a person’ preserves the comprehensive personal expression. The paired priority for Jew and Greek occurs in both the judgment and the blessing clauses.

Verse 2:10

Greek–English Saints Priority

but glory and honor and peace to everyone who works good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 2:11

Greek–English Saints Priority

For there is no partiality with God.

Textual & Reception Notes

Προσωπολημψία is favoritism or partiality, literally the regard paid to a person’s outward status.

Verse 2:12

Greek–English Saints Priority

For all who sinned without law will also perish without law; and all who sinned under law will be judged through law.

Textual & Reception Notes

The phrases ‘without law,’ ‘under law,’ and ‘through law’ preserve different relations. Paul does not say here that all who lacked the Mosaic law lacked any moral accountability.

Verse 2:13

Greek–English Saints Priority

For it is not the hearers of law who are righteous before God, but the doers of law will be justified.

Textual & Reception Notes

‘Will be justified’ preserves the future passive δικαιωθήσονται and its relation to righteous judgment. No qualifying ‘only seem’ is added.

Verse 2:14

Greek–English Saints Priority

For whenever Gentiles who do not have law do by nature the things of the law, these, though not having law, are a law to themselves,

Textual & Reception Notes

‘By nature’ is attached provisionally to doing the law’s things. It can also be attached to the Gentiles’ not possessing law by nature; the Greek placement leaves a real interpretive question.

Verse 2:15

Greek–English Saints Priority

who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness with it, and their reasonings among themselves accusing or even defending,

Textual & Reception Notes

The source says the ‘work of the law,’ singular, is written in their hearts. The conscience’s accompanying testimony and the competing accusing or defending reasonings are both retained.

Verse 2:16

Greek–English Saints Priority

on the day when God judges people’s hidden things according to my gospel through Christ Jesus.

Textual & Reception Notes

The Greek present κρίνει occurs within the future-day reference; English retains ‘judges.’ The connection of this clause to the preceding parenthetical argument should be reviewed as punctuation rather than a different source text.

Verse 2:17

Greek–English Saints Priority

But if you bear the name Jew, and rest upon law and boast in God,

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 2:18

Greek–English Saints Priority

and know His will and approve the things that matter, being instructed from the law,

Textual & Reception Notes

Τὰ διαφέροντα may be what is excellent or what matters, or matters that differ and must be discerned. ‘His’ supplies the evident referent of ‘the will.’

Verse 2:19

Greek–English Saints Priority

and are confident that you yourself are a guide of the blind, a light to those in darkness,

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 2:20

Greek–English Saints Priority

an instructor of the senseless, a teacher of infants, having in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth—

Textual & Reception Notes

Μόρφωσις is an embodiment or formulated expression; the word itself need not mean merely an empty outward appearance. The rhetorical interruption leads into the questions.

Verse 2:21

Greek–English Saints Priority

you then who teach another, do you not teach yourself? You who proclaim that one must not steal, do you steal?

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 2:22

Greek–English Saints Priority

You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?

Textual & Reception Notes

Ἱεροσυλεῖς is ‘rob temples’ or commit sacrilege. The precise practice Paul evokes is not identified by the verb alone.

Verse 2:23

Greek–English Saints Priority

You who boast in law, do you dishonor God through transgression of the law?

Textual & Reception Notes

The draft follows the source’s interrogative punctuation; the wording may alternatively be read as an assertion within the accusation.

Verse 2:24

Greek–English Saints Priority

For “the name of God is blasphemed among the nations because of you,” just as it is written.

Textual & Reception Notes

The source’s quotation speaks of God’s name being blasphemed because of the addressed people; it does not authorize an ethnic insult by the translator.

Verse 2:25

Greek–English Saints Priority

For circumcision benefits you if you practice law; but if you are a transgressor of law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 2:26

Greek–English Saints Priority

So if the uncircumcised person keeps the law’s righteous requirements, will not his uncircumcision be reckoned as circumcision?

Textual & Reception Notes

Ἀκροβυστία, literally uncircumcision, is used metonymically for the uncircumcised person in the first clause. The second occurrence retains the abstract term.

Verse 2:27

Greek–English Saints Priority

And the one uncircumcised by nature who fulfills the law will judge you who, with the written letter and circumcision, are a transgressor of law.

Textual & Reception Notes

The written letter and circumcision accompany the transgressor; English does not make possession of those gifts itself the cause of transgression.

Verse 2:28

Greek–English Saints Priority

For the Jew is not the one outwardly so, nor is circumcision what is outward in flesh;

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 2:29

Greek–English Saints Priority

but the Jew is the one inwardly so, and circumcision is of the heart, in Spirit, not in letter, whose praise is not from people but from God.

Textual & Reception Notes

‘In Spirit’ is provisionally capitalized for the divine Spirit in contrast to letter; reference to an inward human spirit remains grammatically possible. ‘Whose praise’ refers to the inwardly identified person. This rhetorical account is not supplemented with a universal denial of the Jewish people’s continuing place in the later argument.