While Paul remained a Pharisee he was the idol of his nation; but no sooner did he become a Christian, than their love was turned to hatred.  No other was so abhorred as he.  Against no other did they unite with such determined rancor.  Numbers soon leagued together, and even “bound themselves under a curse not to eat or drink till they had slain him.”  But all their machinations were vain.  “Obtaining help from God, of whom he was a chosen vessel, to bear his name to the Gentiles, and kings, and the people of Israel,” he continued many years, and did, perhaps, more than any other perform in the cause of Christ.  Jewish rancor towards him never abated, but he caught no share of their bitter spirit? the temper of Christ governed in him? he loved his enemies, and did them good.  Like another Moses he bore Israel on his heart before God, and made daily intercession for them, weeping at a view of their sad state, and the evils coming upon them.

Such is the spirit of the context.  “I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart.—­for I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ, for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh”.

The depressing occasion of his grief, was the infidelity and obduracy of his nation—­that they refused to hearken to reason and evidence —­were resolved to reject the only Savior; and the evils temporal and eternal, which he foresaw their temper and conduct would bring upon them—­therefore his “great heaviness and continual sorrow.”

In the text—­I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ, for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, the apostle hath been thought to imprecate evil on himself for the benefit of his people!  All the expositors we have seen on this passage, conceive him to have wished some sore calamity to himself for the advantage of his nation!  Though they have differed respecting the magnitude of the evil which he wished to suffer for their sake.

Doct.  Doddridge considers him, as “wishing to be made a curse for them, as Christ hath been made a curse for us, that so they might be delivered from the guilt which they had brought on themselves, and be entitled to the blessings of the rejected gospel.”

Doct.  S. Clark views him, as “desirous of suffering the calamities to which his people were doomed for rejecting and crucifying the Savior, so that, could they all centre in one person, he wished to be the person, that he might thereby procure salvation for them!”

Grotius and Pool understand him, as “wishing to be separated from the church of Christ for the sake of the Jews!” Which differs little from Doct.  Hunter’s sense of the passage—­to which Doct.  Guyse adds, “a desire of every indignity of man, and to be cut off from communion with Christ, for the sake of Israel;” whom he strangely considers as prejudiced against Christianity in consequence of their prejudices against Paul!