Jews at Rome and Paul’s mission to Israel (9:1–5)

Says Paul has "deep sorrow and unceasing anguish" (9:2, BSB) for "my brothers, my own flesh and blood" (9:3), "the people of Israel" (9:4). The gospel is "first to the Jew, then to the Greek" (1:16). In Acts, Paul goes to the synagogue "As was his custom" (Acts 17:2), and with Barnabas he tells the Jews, "It was necessary to speak the word of God to you first" (13:46). At Rome he calls together "the leaders of the Jews" (28:17); "Some of them were convinced by what he said, but others refused to believe" (28:24). Acts says "Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome" (18:2).

Philo, recalling Augustus’s reign, describes "the great division of Rome which is on the other side of the river Tiber" as inhabited by Jews, who "were mostly Roman citizens, having been emancipated" after being brought to Italy as captives; they kept synagogues, met on the sabbath and sent first fruits to Jerusalem (Legat. 155–157). Tiberius had expelled Jews from Rome in AD 19 (Josephus, Ant. 18.81–84; Tacitus, Ann. 2.85), and Suetonius reports Claudius’s expulsion (Claud. 25.4); the Romans 1 and 2 notes discuss these sources.

Ambrosiaster (fourth century) held that Jewish believers at Rome taught the Romans to confess Christ while keeping the law, and that the Romans received faith in Christ without seeing miracles or any apostle, ritu licet Judaico (“though in the Jewish rite”; Comm. Rom., prologue).

This background does not settle the meaning of 9:6–29; Israel’s future comes at 11:25–27.