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32 For God has assigned all of us together—Jews and non-Jews, insiders and outsiders—to disobedience so He can show His mercy to all.

Paul says that God’s mysterious plan for the ages is being revealed as the number of outsiders swells in the churches and as a part of Israel is hardened, at least for a time. But let’s not forget that hardening is not God’s unilateral action. Whatever hardening takes place happens first on our side before God reluctantly agrees. That part of Israel now hardened has already rejected God’s Anointed. Yet when the full complement of non-Jewish outsiders enters God’s kingdom, “all Israel will be saved.” But clearly “all Israel” can’t mean every last Jew, because Paul has already shown that not every son or daughter of Abraham is an heir to the promise.

33 We cannot wrap our minds around God’s wisdom and knowledge! Its depths can never be measured! We cannot understand His judgments or explain the mysterious ways that He works! For,

34 Who can fathom the mind of the Lord?
    Or who can claim to be His advisor?[a]

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Footnotes

  1. 11:34 Isaiah 40:13

32 For God has bound everyone over to disobedience(A) so that he may have mercy on them all.

Doxology

33 Oh, the depth of the riches(B) of the wisdom and[a] knowledge of God!(C)
    How unsearchable his judgments,
    and his paths beyond tracing out!(D)
34 “Who has known the mind of the Lord?
    Or who has been his counselor?”[b](E)

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Footnotes

  1. Romans 11:33 Or riches and the wisdom and the
  2. Romans 11:34 Isaiah 40:13