“Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see, and bow down their back alway.”
Romans 11:10, KJV
“let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and bend their backs forever.””
Romans 11:10, ESV
Table of Contents
Romans 11:10 Meaning – Let their eyes be darkened … and bow down their back alway
[David] then devotes them to blindness of spirit, and prostration of strength, and points out the first by blindness of their eyes, and the last by the bending of their back.
We need not be surprised on finding the denunciations and imprecations of David to be extended to the whole nation of the Jews, for it is well known that many of the nobility, and the great body of the people, were opposed to the Psalmist.
When we consider David was a type of Christ, it is easy to transfer the denunciations pronounced by the king of the Jews against his enemies, to the Antitype, Christ Jesus, whose enemies imprecated curses even upon themselves, “Let his blood be upon us and our children.”
Since, therefore, this curse awaits all the enemies of the Messiah, that their very food is converted into poison, and the gospel is to them an odour of death unto death, let us embrace the grace of God with humility and trembling.
Since David speaks of the Israelites, in this psalm, who were descended from Abraham according to the flesh, and possessed at that period the chief pre-eminence in the kingdom, Paul very properly applies this testimony of the sweet singer of Israel to the Jews of his own time, that the blindness of a large portion of the lineal descendants of Abraham, when the apostle lived, might neither appear a new nor uncommon event.
Calvin, John – Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans tr. Francis Sibson (1834)
