Romans 10:2

For I bear them witness that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.

What made the loss of Israel so tragic was the fact that they were actually a very zealous and God-fearing people, superior in every way to the Gentiles, whose godlessness was the shame of all nations. Sanday's quotation from Josephus stresses this character of the Jews, thus:

They had a zeal of God .... The Jew knew the Law better than his own name .... The sacred rules were punctually obeyed .... The great feasts were frequented by countless thousands .... Over and above the requirements of the Law, ascetic religious exercises advocated by the teachers of the Law came into vogue .... Even the Hellenized and Alexandrian Jews under Caligula died on the cross and by fire, and the Palestinian prisoners ... died by the claws of African lions in the amphitheater, rather than sin against the Law .... The tenacity of the Jews, and their uncompromising monotheism, were seen in some conspicuous examples. In the early part of his procuratorship, Pilate, seeking to break through their known repugnance to everything that savoured of image-worship, had introduced into Jerusalem ensigns surmounted with silver busts of the emperor. Upon this, the people went down in a body to Caesarea, waited for five days and nights in the marketplace, bared their necks to the soldiers that Pilate sent among them, and did not desist until the order for the removal of the ensigns had been given. Later, he caused to be hung up in the palace in Jerusalem certain gilded shields bearing a dedicatory inscription to Tiberius. Then again, the Jews did not rest until, by their complaints addressed directly to the emperor, they had succeeded in getting them taken down. The consternation caused by Caligula's order for the erection of his own statue in the Temple is well known. None of the Roman governors dared to carry it into execution; and Caligula himself was slain before it could be accomplished.[1]

It would take volumes and libraries to recount the heroic zeal of the Jews which finally culminated in the bloody sorrow of Masada, where Eleazar ben Yair made his courageous stand against the Tenth Legion of Rome. When all hope was cut off:

Rather than become slaves to their conquerors, the defenders - 960 men, women, and children thereupon ended their lives at their own hands. When the Romans reached the heights next

morning, they were met by silence.[2]

How fitting it was that Paul should have here paid his tribute to the nobility and zeal of that wonderful people who were, until they rejected the Christ, God's chosen people.

But not according to knowledge ... is a reference far more than Israel's rejection of our Lord and their failure to recognize him as the Messiah. As just noted, Josephus said that they knew the Law "better than" their own names; but it was such a knowledge as failed to take account of the spiritual nature of God's word. Jesus said to the Jews of his day:

Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God (Matthew 22:29).

Ye have made void the word of God because of your tradition .... But in vain do they worship me, teaching as their doctrines the precepts of men (Matthew 15:6,9).

Thus the Jewish ignorance of God's word extended to the very heart of it, which they had so corrupted with human tradition and so glossed over with their own interpretations that many of the plainest precepts were countermanded. Thus, the failure of Israel, about to be mentioned in the next verse, refers not merely to their rejection of Christ (which they also did), but to their failure to keep even the commandments of the Law which they acknowledged, preferring their own traditions and precepts instead of it.

[1] W. Sanday, Ellicott's Commentary on the Holy Bible (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1959), p. 244.

[2] Yigael Yadin, Masada (New York: Random House, 1966), p. 12.