16 If the first fruit is holy, so is the lump. If the root is holy, so are the branches.
"Speak to the children of Israel, and tell them, 'When you have come into the land which I give to you, and shall reap its the harvest, then you shall bring the sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest:
The first of all the first fruits of every thing, and every offering of everything, of all your offerings, shall be for the priest: you shall also give to the priests the first of your dough, to cause a blessing to rest on your house.
And the feast of harvest, the first fruits of your labors, which you sow in the field: and the feast of harvest, at the end of the year, when you gather in your labors out of the field.
Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel, and tell them, When you come into the land where I bring you, then it shall be that when you eat of the bread of the land, you shall offer up a heave-offering to Yahweh. Of the first of your dough you shall offer up a cake for a heave-offering: as the heave-offering of the threshing floor, so shall you heave it. Of the first of your dough you shall give to Yahweh a heave-offering throughout your generations.
Honor Yahweh with your substance, With the first fruits of all your increase:
But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, being a wild olive, were grafted in among them, and became partaker with them of the root and of the richness of the olive tree;
"You shall not delay to offer from your harvest and from the outflow of your presses. "You shall give the firstborn of your sons to me.
The first of the first fruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of Yahweh your God. "You shall not boil a kid in its mother's milk.
and to bring the first fruits of our ground, and the first fruits of all fruit of all manner of trees, year by year, to the house of Yahweh; also the firstborn of our sons, and of our cattle, as it is written in the law, and the firstborn of our herds and of our flocks, to bring to the house of our God, to the priests who minister in the house of our God; and that we should bring the first fruits of our dough, and our heave-offerings, and the fruit of all manner of trees, the new wine and the oil, to the priests, to the chambers of the house of our God; and the tithes of our ground to the Levites; for they, the Levites, take the tithes in all the cities of our tillage.
Yet I had planted you a noble vine, wholly a right seed: how then are you turned into the degenerate branches of a foreign vine to me?
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Romans 11
Commentary on Romans 11 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 11
The apostle, having reconciled that great truth of the rejection of the Jews with the promise made unto the fathers, is, in this chapter, further labouring to mollify the harshness of it, and to reconcile it to the divine goodness in general. It might be said, "Hath God then cast away his people?' The apostles therefore sets himself, in this chapter, to make a reply to this objection, and that two ways:-
Rom 11:1-32
The apostle proposes here a plausible objection, which might be urged against the divine conduct in casting off the Jewish nation (v. 1): "Hath God cast away his people? Is the rejection total and final? Are they all abandoned to wrath and ruin, and that eternal? Is the extent of the sentence so large as to be without reserve, or the continuance of it so long as to be without repeal? Will he have no more a peculiar people to himself?' In opposition to this, he shows that there was a great deal of goodness and mercy expressed along with this seeming severity, particularly he insists upon three things:-
Rom 11:33-36
The apostle having insisted so largely, through the greatest part of this chapter, upon reconciling the rejection of the Jews with the divine goodness, he concludes here with the acknowledgment and admiration of the divine wisdom and sovereignty in all this. Here the apostle does with great affection and awe adore,