intimation of extreme barbarity, when the throat is said to be so great a gulf, that it is sufficient to
swallow down and devour men whole and entire. Their tongues are deceitful, and, the poison of
asps is under their lips, import the same thing,
- Then he says, that their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness^101 — a vice of an opposite
character to the former; but the meaning is, that they are in every way full of wickedness; for if
they speak fair, they deceive and blend poison with their flatteries; but if they draw forth what they
have in their hearts, bitterness and cursing stream out. - Very striking is the sentence that is added from Isaiah, Ruin and misery are in all their
ways;^102 for it is a representation of ferociousness above measure barbarous, which produces
solitude and waste by destroying every thing wherever it prevails: it is the same as the description
which Pliny gives of Domitian. - It follows, The way of peace they have not known: they are so habituated to plunders, acts
of violence and wrong, to savageness and cruelty, that they know not how to act kindly and
courteously. - In the last clause^103 he repeats again, in other words, what we have noticed at the beginning
— that every wickedness flows from a disregard of God: for as the principal part of wisdom is the
fear of God, when we depart from that, there remains in us nothing right or pure. In short, as it is
a bridle to restrain our wickedness, so when it is wanting, we feel at liberty to indulge every kind
of licentiousness.
And that these testimonies may not seem to any one to have been unfitly produced, let us
consider each of them in connection with the passages from which they have been taken. David
says in Psalm 14:1, that there was such perverseness in men, that God, when looking on them all
in their different conditions, could not find a righteous man, no, not one. It then follows, that this
evil pervaded mankind universally; for nothing is hid from the sight of God. He speaks indeed at
the end of the Psalm of the redemption of Israel: but we shall presently show how men become
holy, and how far they are exempt from this condition. In the other Psalms he speaks of the treachery
of his enemies, while he was exhibiting in himself and in his descendants a type of the kingdom of
Christ: hence we have in his adversaries the representatives of all those, who being alienated from
Christ, are not led by his Spirit. Isaiah expressly mentions Israel; and therefore his charge applies
“issues forth an offensive and pestilential vapor; so from the mouths of slanderous persons issue noisome and pestilential words.
Their words are like poison, they utter the poisonous breath of slander.” — Ed.(^101) Psalm 10:7. Paul corrects the order of the words as found in the Septuagint, and gives the Hebrew more exactly, but retains
the word “bitterness,” by which the Septuagint have rendered , which means deceit, or rather, mischievous deceit. Some think
that it ought to be , “bitterness;” but there is no copy in its favor. — Ed.
(^102) Romans 3:15, 16, and 17 are taken from Isaiah 59:7, 8. Both the Hebrew and the Septuagint are alike, but Paul has abbreviated
them, and changed two words in the Greek version, having put for , and for , and has followed that version in
leaving out “innocent” before “blood.” — Ed.
(^103) It is taken from Psalm 36:1, and verbatim from the Greek version, and strictly in accordance with the Hebrew. It is evident
from several of these quotations, that Paul’s object, as Calvin says, was to represent the general meaning, and not to keep strictly
to the expressions.
There is a difference of opinion as to the precise object of the Apostle; whether in these quotations he had regard to the
Jews only, or to both Jews and Gentiles. In the introduction, Romans 3:9, he mentions both, and in the conclusion, Romans 3:19,
he evidently refers to both, in these words, “that every, mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before
God.”
The most consistent view seems to be, that the passages quoted refer both to Jews and Gentiles; the last, more especially,
to the Jews, while some of the preceding have a special reference to the Gentile world, particularly Psalm 14, as it describes the
character of the enemies of God and his people, to whose liberation the Psalmist refers in the last verse. — Ed.