Romans 9:2

That I have great sorrow, and unceasing pain in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were anathema from Christ for my brethren's sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh.

Paul had more than sufficient reason, if he had been of a mean and vindictive spirit, to hold bitterness against his Jewish kinsmen because of their unrelenting persecutions and harassment of his ministry and apostleship. Forty of them, on occasion, had bound themselves with an oath not to eat or drink until they had murdered him; and emissaries from the Jews in Jerusalem had dogged his every step on the mission field. They had preferred charges against him before kings and governors; and yet, despite all this, his love for Israel was undiminished. How noble are Paul's thoughts in such a context as that which frames them here.

Lard and others have pointed out that Paul here omitted a clause which is essential to his meaning, that being "I have great grief and continual sorrow in my heart ON ACCOUNT OF MY COUNTRYMEN." For Paul, that was the unspeakable thing, and he could not, at that point in this letter, bring it out; and thus he approached it from a different angle. Lard has this with reference to this amazing fact:

His countrymen had repudiated Christ; that was the fact which caused his grief and sorrow; that any person should do this is painful enough; that one's own kin should do it is exquisitely so. The apostle does not yet name the fact that gave him pain, but conceals it until he can bring it out with better effect.[3]

I could wish ... is the key to understanding Romans 9:3. As Hodge wrote:

The expression is evidently hypothetical and conditional, "I could wish, were the thing allowable, possible, or proper."[4]

Paul's grief was like that of Jesus who "had compassion on the multitude "(Matthew 9:6), and like that of Moses who said, "Blot me out of thy book, I pray thee" (Exodus 32:32); and yet it was not possible for Paul to do the thing which he mentioned, nor should his statement here be viewed as a true expression of what he actually desired to do. That this is true appears from God's response to the similar request of Moses. The Lord said,

Whosoever hath sinned against me, him will I blot out of my book (Exodus 32:33).

That Moses truly felt such a desire and expressed it to God in prayer is a scripturally-authenticated fact; and we may credit Paul with exactly the same emotion here. How great is such love!

Anathema ... is used only five times in the New Testament, the other instances of its use being in Acts 23:14,1 Corinthians 12:3,16:22, and Galatians 1:8,9. It means "accursed" and implies eternal death as well as physical death. After a careful and critical study of the New Testament texts where this word is used, Hedge declared that

An anathema was a person devoted to death as accursed.[5]

[3] Moses E. Lard, op. cit., p. 292.

[4] Charles Hodge, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1968), p. 297.

[5] Ibid., p. 296.