But why should the apostle wish evil to himself for their sakes?  What possible advantage could his sufferings have been to his nation?  Is it possible that those learned expositors should conceive that pains and penalties inflicted on him could have made atonement for their sins, and expiated their guilt!  They must never have read Paul’s epistles or never have entered into the spirit of them, who could entertain such views as these; or even suspect that aught, save the blood of Christ, can atone for human guilt.  It is strange, therefore, that they could have imagined that he wished to suffer with this view.  And it is no less so, that it should be thought that prejudices against Paul could have occasioned Jewish prejudices against Christianity, when it is so evident that their prejudices against Paul were wholly occasioned by his attachment to Christianity—­he having been high in their esteem till he became a Christian.

David once asked to suffer in Israel’s stead; but the circumstances of the case were then totally different from those of the case now before us.  Israel were suffering for his sin in numbering the people; “I have sinned and done wickedly; but these sheep, what have they done?  Let thine hand, I pray thee be against me.”—­But Paul had not sinned, to bring evil on his people—­the guilt was all their own.

Expositors having mistaken Moses’ prayer “to be bloated out of God’s book,” seem generally to have had that prayer in their eye when they have attempted to explain the text; and supposing that Moses prayed to be made sacrifice for Israel, have thought that Paul had the same spirit, and here followed his example!  But that neither of them ever entertained the thought of suffering to expiate the sin of their people, and that the two passages bear no kind of relation to each other, we conceive indubitably certain.

But let us consider the text and judge for ourselves the meaning.

Perhaps the difficulties which have perplexed it may have chiefly arisen from the translation.  The silence of expositors on this head, while puzzled with the passage, is strange, if the difficulty might have been obviated by amending to the original.  The translation is plausible solely from this consideration.

Mr. Pool is the only expositor we have ever seen, who hath noted the difference between the translation and the original; and he labors hard to bring them together, but, in our apprehension, labors it in vain.

The passage literally translated stands thus? For I myself boasted that I was a curse from Christ, above my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh. *

* * * * *

* Euxoman gar autos ego anathema einai apo tou xristou uper tou adelphon mou suggenon mou kata sarxa.

Euxoman, rendered in translation by I could wish forms in the imperfect of the indicative mood, in the Auic dialect.  Mr. Pool was too accurate a scholar not to observe the disagreement of the translation with the original.  Some read it as in the indicative; but it is generally considered as in the optative, and altered by a figure which takes on iota from the middle, and cuts an an end of the word forming Euxoman, instead of auxoiman an. +