Romans 11:32

"For as ye in times past have not believed God, yet have now obtained mercy through their unbelief; even so have these also now not believed, that through your mercy they may also obtain mercy. For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that He might have mercy upon all." He shows here that those of the Gentiles were called first. Then, as they would not come, the Jews were elected, and the same result occurred again. For when the Jews would not believe, again the Gentiles were brought over. And he does not stop here, nor does he draw the whole to a conclusion at their rejection, but at their having mercy shown them again. See how much he gives to those of the Gentiles, as much as he did to the Jews before. For when ye, he would say, "in times past did not obey," being of the Gentiles, then the Jews came in. Again, when these did not obey, ye have come. However, they will not perish forever. "For God hath concluded them all in unbelief," that is, hath convinced them, hath shown them disobedient; not that they may remain in disobedience, but that He may save the one by the captiousness of the other, these by those and those by these. Now consider; ye were disobedient, and they were saved. Again, they have been disobedient, and ye have been saved. Yet ye have not been so saved as to be put away again, as the Jews were, but so as to draw them over through jealousy while ye abide.

This, therefore, was the [object of the] long-suffering of God, that man, passing through all things, and acquiring the knowledge of moral discipline, then attaining to the resurrection from the dead, and learning by experience what is the source of his deliverance, may always live in a state of gratitude to the Lord, having obtained from Him the gift of incorruptibility, that he might love Him the more; for "he to whom more is forgiven, loveth more:" and that he may know himself, how mortal and weak he is; while he also understands respecting God, that He is immortal and powerful to such a degree as to confer immortality upon what is mortal, and eternity upon what is temporal; and may understand also the other attributes of God displayed towards himself, by means of which being instructed he may think of God in accordance with the divine greatness.

That is, He convicted them, declared them disobedient, in order to save some by the stubbornness of others. For previously, when the Gentiles were disobedient, He saved, as was said, the Jews; again, when the Jews did not obey Christ, the Gentiles were saved, and …

This is not to be taken in the sense of God acting but in the sense of God permitting, because of free will and because virtue is not forced.

Then, when he says for God has concluded, he assigns the reason for this similarity, namely that God has willed to have mercy on all. And this is what he adds, for God has concluded, i.e., permitted to be concluded, all, i.e., every race of …

Afterwards he permitted them to fall through unbelief, and took in the believing gentiles. And he did even this to provoke the Jews to jealousy, and so bring them also in the end to faith. This was truly a mystery in the divine conduct, which the apostle adores with such holy astonishment.

For God hath concluded them all in unbelief,....

And what he here says is that God's purpose was to shut each of these divisions of men to the experience first of an humbled, condemned state, without Christ, and then to the experience of His mercy in Christ.

For God hath concluded ... - The word translated here “concluded” sunekleise, is rendered in the margin “shut them all up together.” It is properly used in reference to those who are shut up in prison, or to those in a city who are shut up by a besieging army; 1 Macc. 5:5; 6:18; 11:65; 15:25; Jos 6:6; Isa 45:1. It is used in the New Testament of fish taken in a net; Luk 5:6, “They enclosed a great multitude of fishes;” Gal 3:22, “But the Scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise, etc.” In this place the Scripture is declared to have shut them up under sin, that is, declared them to be sinners; gave no hope of rescue by any works of their own; and thus kept them Rom 11:23 “shut up unto the faith which should afterward be revealed.” All are represented, therefore, as in prison, enclosed or confined by God, and to be liberated only in his own way and time. In regard to the agency of God in this, we may remark: (1) That the word does not mean that God compelled them to disbelieve the gospel. When, in Gal 3:22, the Scripture is said to have included all under sin, it is not meant that the Scripture compelled them not to believe. (2) The word does not imply that the sin and unbelief for which they were shut up were not voluntary. Even when a man is committed to prison, the crime which brought him there is voluntary, and for it he is responsible. (3) The keeper of a prison does no wrong in confining a criminal; or the judge in condemning him; or the executioner in fulfilling the sentence of the Law. So of God. What he does is not to compel people to remain under unbelief, but to declare that they are so; so to encompass them with the proof of it that they shall realize that there is no escape from the evidence of it, and thus to press on them the evidence of their need of a Saviour. […]