Source: http://themelios.thegospelcoalition.org/article/for-your-sake-we-are-being-killed-all-day-long-romans-8-36
Timestamp: 2019-04-19 18:58:47+00:00

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David Starling is head of Bible and Theology at Morling College (University of Divinity and Australian College of Theology), in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
This article explores the function of Paul’s citation from Psalm 44:22 within the rhetoric of Romans 8:31–39. It offers a brief discussion of the meaning of Psalm 44:22 when the verse is read within its original historical and canonical contexts, then a summary and evaluation of the two main answers typically given by scholars to the question of whether and to what extent that meaning is retained in the verse’s new context in Romans 8. The final section of the article argues for a reading of Romans 8:36 in which the psalm-citation retains its original force and meaning as an expression of protest and lament, reinforcing the validity of the question in verse 35 before Paul answers it in verse 37.
Yet it is this verse that Paul quotes in the climactic final verses of Romans 8, in the midst of his rhapsodic assurance to his readers that nothing in all creation can separate them from the love of God in Christ. This paper will explore the function of this citation from Psalm 44:22 within the rhetoric of Romans 8:31–39 and the extent to which the lament and protest of the verse in its original context are intended to be carried across to the verse’s new home in Romans 8.
Commentators offer widely divergent suggestions for the date of the psalm’s composition, ranging from the early monarchy to the Maccabean period, with a significant number gravitating toward a date of composition in the early exilic period, or in the years that immediately preceded the exile.
What does the psalmist mean by not forgetting the name of God or not worshipping a foreign deity? Does he ignore the ethical demands of the Sinai Covenant? Innocent of idolatry, Israel may not be blameless in social equity. Is the poet consciously divorcing cultic fidelity from communal justice and compassion? This seems to be the case, for he not only asks, “Why?” but he also implies that God alone is responsible for his people’s plight: “Is it not on account of thee that we are slain every day?” (v. 23)….
Terrien’s interpretation of the psalm is admirably blunt, and is to be preferred in that respect over the readings of others who assign the psalm to the same period without feeling the need to offer any comment at all on the discord that is implied between the psalmist’s perspective and the perspective of the prophets who had warned of the Babylonian invasion and exile and interpreted those events as a divine judgement on the sins of the nation.3 If the psalm is to be read as a response to Judah’s exile or to the events that immediately preceded it, then there is no avoiding the conclusion that the psalm’s interpretation of those events is diametrically opposed to that of the prophets (and, in addition, to the perspective of the histories and history psalms that interpret the exile as a judgement on the sins of the nation and its kings).4 A reading of this sort strains the unity of the psalter, and of the Old Testament canon more broadly, to breaking point.
But the connection that Terrien and others draw between the language of the psalm and the events of the Babylonian invasion is not a necessary or compelling one. The language of verses 20–21 (if it is to be taken at face value) seems to imply the kind of protestation of innocence that is ignorant of any prophetic accusation, rather than a knowing rejection of the verdict of the prophets. Nor is the hypothesis of an exilic context necessary to explain the language of verses 10–19. The Babylonian invasion was not the first time that Israel had experienced the capture and deportation of prisoners (cf. Amos 1:6, 9),5 and the affinities of language and imagery between the psalmist and the Jeremianic circle can be explained just as easily by the literary influence of either on the other (or by the currency of the language as part of the stock phraseology of lament) as by the hypothesis that they are contemporaries writing in response to the same events.
Within a context of this sort, the protest of the psalmist is that these events have come on the nation not because of their own sin but “because of you” (v. 22; Heb. עָלֶיךָ). The strong assertions earlier in the psalm (vv. 9–14) about the way in which God has “rejected and abased” his people suggest that the primary sense of the psalmist’s language in verse 22 is a negative one, attributing (ultimate) responsibility for what has happened to God, who did not intervene to defend his people from the attacks of their enemies. A negative reading of this sort is consistent with the immediately preceding context of verses 17–22, where the psalmist’s claim appears to be not that the disaster has happened because of the nation’s covenant fidelity but that it has happened despite it.8 The image in verse 22b, similarly, in which the people are depicted as having been “accounted as sheep for the slaughter,” retains the negative sense that was carried by the similar expression in verse 11.
If this is the meaning of Psalm 44:22 and the function that it serves within its original context in the psalm, what does it mean and how does it function within the very different rhetorical context in which Paul cites it in Romans 8:36?
As most commentators recognize, Romans 8:31–39 functions as a kind of peroratio, drawing out the chief implications of the preceding chapters (either chs. 1–8 or, more specifically, chs. 5–8) and evoking an emotional response to them within the affections of the letter’s hearers.13 Having commenced this section of the letter with a bold assertion about the certain hope of those who have been justified by faith, enabling them to boast even in the midst of their present sufferings (5:1–11), Paul now concludes it by reasserting their status as those whom God has justified (8:33; cf. v. 30) and assuring them that “neither death, nor life … nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (8:38–39).
Within this section of the letter, explicit citations of Scripture are extremely rare, compared with the far greater density of citation elsewhere in the letter: apart from 8:36, the only other direct quotation from the Old Testament in chapters 5–8 is the fleeting reference to the commandment against covetousness in 7:7. Why then does Paul choose this moment, right in the middle of the section’s climactic final paragraph, to break the flow of his rhetoric with a citation from the psalms? Commentators who suggest an answer to the question of how the psalm citation functions within the rhetoric of Romans 8:31–39 tend to propose one of two main alternative viewpoints: (i) that the psalm-citation functions within Paul’s argument as a proof for the proposition that sufferings are the expected lot of the people of God; or (ii) that the citation (reinterpreted in light of the gospel) is appropriated by Paul as a prophecy of the sufferings of the church.
Then, secondly, there is the fact that the proposition asserted in Psalm 44:22 does not function simply to record the fact of Israel’s tribulations but to protest against them, and (within the larger context of the psalm) to cry out for their cessation. The originally intended force of the verse Paul cites from the psalm is hardly to normalize the experience of suffering (or, still less, to paint it as one of the indifferent things over which the wise man triumphs by his calm equanimity),22 but to scream out against it.
It is possible, of course, that Paul’s use of the psalm citation could have involved a transformation of its force and meaning so radical in its effect that the end result is one in which “the Lord of the church . . . removes the tone of protest from the psalm,” converting an anguished outpouring of lament into a bare statement of “the necessity … of unmerited suffering.” 23 There are certainly other places within his letters where a transformation of similar magnitude (though not, perhaps, the same nature) would seem to have taken place. But a conclusion of that sort would require a more careful reading of the way in which the psalm citation contributes to the rhetoric of its new context within Romans 8:31–39 than the proponents of the traditional view generally offer. A plausible explanation is needed, too, for why it is this text of Scripture that Paul has chosen to cite, when so many others could have proved the required point without the need for such a radical transformation of their original force.
In view of some of these difficulties and questions, a number of scholars in recent decades have proposed an alternative to the traditional view, arguing that the psalm citation in Romans 8:36 functions not as a proof that the people of God have always suffered in the manner that is presupposed by the questions of verse 35, but rather as a prophecy and redemptive interpretation of the sufferings of the church.
he is sounding a theme that reverberates in complex patterns with and against his letter’s other images of election, faithfulness, and sacrifice. This quotation prepares the way for his direct exhortation in Rom. 12:1: “I beseech you then, brothers and sisters, through the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice.” That is what is required of the eschatological people of God; God’s elect must suffer and groan along with—and even behalf of—the unredeemed creation….
There is much that can be said in support of a reading of this sort. The ἕνεκα σοῦ of the LXX, as we have already observed above, is certainly capable of being read in a positive sense, to speak of suffering and death willingly embraced by the community as an imitation of (and participation in) the redemptive sufferings of Christ. The description of the people of God as “sheep to be slaughtered,” similarly, can readily be converted into an image of cruciform participation in the saving mission of God, if it is heard in concert with the similar image in Isaiah 53:7.26 The presence of these two phrases in close proximity within the psalm citation and their potential to be understood in this manner would help to explain why, on this reading of Paul’s intentions in Romans 8:36, he has chosen this particular verse to cite.
It must still be granted, however, that this reading, no less than the previous one, involves a thoroughgoing transformation of the original force of the text that Paul cites; it is, as Stewart puts it, “a radical rereading based on the turn of the ages that has occurred in Jesus’ death and resurrection.”28 Such a possibility should not be ruled out. A re-reading of similar magnitude can be found, for example, in the modified quotation Hosea 13:14 in 1 Corinthians 15:55, where a summons to Death and Hades to come and execute judgement becomes a taunt over death, whose penal sting has now been destroyed by Christ. In that instance, however, the triumphant function of the citation within the rhetoric of the surrounding paragraph is made abundantly clear, and the warrant for the hermeneutical transformation effected in v. 55 is provided explicitly in v. 56. The same cannot be said in the case of the psalm citation in Romans 8:36.
The sufferings in view in this verse, which function as the occasion for the “groan[ing]” of believers, are not exclusively the missional sufferings which the church embraces as part of the cost of their solidarity with Christ; read in context, Paul’s words make best sense when taken as a broad reference to all of “the sufferings of this present time” (v. 18), which believers experience in common with the whole groaning creation. They include, therefore—in part, at least—the unchosen and unanticipated sufferings that come upon believers “without answer or evident basis,”34 like the perplexing, unexplained sufferings that occasion the lament and protestation of Psalm 44.
On this reading, the original sense of the Psalm’s ἕνεκα σοῦ and its image of the people of God as “sheep to be slaughtered” can be retained,35 as can the verse’s original function as an expression of lament and protest. The effect of the psalm citation in verse 36 is not to answer the question in the previous verse but to validate it and to intensify its force. In principle, given what Paul has already said in Romans 5:1–8:34, he could have safely made the assumption that his readers were capable of answering the rhetorical question of verse 35 for themselves, in the negative. But Paul’s purpose, it seems, is not for verse 35 to be heard as an easily and obviously self-answering question. Instead, he allows the question to linger unanswered for a moment, reinforcing its validity by giving it the endorsement of the psalm citation in verse 36, before answering it decisively and triumphantly in verses 37–39.
The implications of this reading are of great theological and pastoral importance. Lament, for Paul—even protesting lament—retains its validity as an authentic expression of Christian faith. It is not faith’s last word on suffering, but it is still a valid word to be spoken by God’s people in response to sufferings that are unexplained and (at least from a human standpoint) inexplicable. Christians are to voice that which creation is unable to articulate—and when that fails, know that the Spirit is able to articulate for us that which we can say neither for ourselves nor for a groaning creation.
The message of the gospel does not explain the inexplicable, or restrict its comfort only to those sufferings that are uniquely Christian sufferings, experienced as the direct outworking of the faithfulness of believers. Nor does it work by a kind of hermeneutical alchemy to convert Old Testament lament into Stoic indifference or New Testament assurance. Its effect is not to silence the voice of lament or to convert it into some better, more Christian utterance; it is, rather, to offer assurance that the voice of the lamenter, and of the whole groaning creation, has been heard (and, indeed, that in the groanings of the Spirit the burden of the lament has been shared by God himself) and that it will ultimately find its answer through what God has already accomplished in the death and resurrection of Jesus.
 Samuel L. Terrien, The Psalms: Strophic Structure and Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 361.
 Ibid., 360–61. Cf. the similar interpretation of the psalm’s relationship to the “orthodox” tradition of Israelite prophecy and historiography in Dalit Rom-Shiloni, “Psalm 44: The Powers of Protest,” CBQ 70 (2008): 683–84.
 E.g. Nancy L. DeClaissé-Walford, Rolf A. Jacobson, and Beth LaNeel Tanner, The Book of Psalms, NICOT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 408–15; Gerald Henry Wilson, Psalms: From Biblical Text to Contemporary Life, NIVAC (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 683–93.
 In an earlier publication I attempted to avoid that conclusion by reading the psalm as referring to “the exilic … sufferings of the righteous remnant within the nation”; cf. David I. Starling, Not My People: Gentiles as Exiles in Pauline Hermeneutics, BZNW (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011), 147. This is an unconvincing reading of the psalm, however, since the lamenting “we” whose innocence the psalm insists on is also a “we” that is presented as possessing armies and fighting battles (vv. 9–10), descriptions that point unambiguously toward the nation as a whole, not a righteous remnant within the nation.
 Note, too, the way in which the catalogue of curses in Deut 28:15–68 includes language about the defeat of the nation’s armies at the hand of their enemies, such that “you will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth” (v. 25), within the portion of the curse-catalog that precedes the climactic paragraphs which speak of the nation’s final defeat and exile.
 Cf. the discussions in Gordon J. Wenham, “Towards a Canonical Reading of the Psalms,” in Canon and Biblical Interpretation, ed. Craig G. Bartholomew, et al. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006), 342–43, and David M. Howard, “The Psalms and Current Study,” in Interpreting the Psalms: Issues and Approaches, ed. Philip Johnston and David G. Firth (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2006), 24–27. Admittedly, theories regarding the composition history of the psalter and the intentions of the collection’s editors are necessarily somewhat speculative, and a post-exilic date for the psalm, and for the composition of Book II, cannot be ruled out. The presence within Book II of Psalm 51 (the language of which—particularly the postscript in vv. 18–19 is so strongly redolent of exilic prophecy) is a reminder of the complexity of the relationship between the psalm titles, the contexts of their original composition, and the editorial understanding implied by their placement within the collection.
 Cf. Peter C. Craigie, Psalms 1–50, WBC (Waco: Word, 1983), 332–33; John Goldingay, Psalms, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 2:49–50; Allen P. Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2013), 40–41.
 Assuming that the “yet” with which v. 19 (NRSV) commences correctly conveys the intended force of the כִּי that introduces the same verse (v. 20) in the Hebrew.
 For an analogous example of ἕνεκεν used in a similar context and with a similar sense (translating the Hebrew עַל־דְּבַר), see Abraham’s expression of anxiety in Gen 20:11 that “they will kill me because of my wife (ἀποκτενοῦσιν ἕνεκεν τῆς γυναικός μου).” Even on this reading, of course, the passive-voice form of the verb, in the Greek as well as in the Hebrew, does not imply a focus on the motivation of the community in “facing” or “enduring” death, but on the cause or motive for which they were “killed” by others.
 For one such example, see the (admittedly speculative) suggestion in Harold M. Parker, “Artaxerxes III Ochus and Psalm 44,” JQR 68 (1978).
 Cf. b. Soṭah 48a, cited in DeClaissé-Walford, Jacobson, and Tanner, The Book of Psalms, 409.
 Cf. the comments in Goldingay, Psalms, 47.
 Cf. Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 532, 535; Richard N. Longenecker, The Epistle to the Romans: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 744–49; see also A. H. Snyman, “Style and the Rhetorical Situation of Romans 8:31–39,” NTS 34 (1988): 227–28.
 Contra Ernst Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, trans. G. W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), 246; Ben Witherington III with Darlene Hyatt, Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 231; and Longenecker, The Epistle to the Romans, 745, all of whom read 8:31–39 as a further instance of diatribe.
 Cf. Jewett, Romans: A Commentary, 533. See also the brief comments of the recapitulative function of ἐρώτησις in Aristotle, Rhetoric 3.19.5 and the similar observations on the function of interrogatio in Rhetorica ad Herrenium 4.22.
 Charles E. B. Cranfield, Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, 2 vols., ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975–1979), 1:440.
 Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 543–44.
 Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AB (New York: Doubleday, 1993), 534.
 Witherington with Hyatt, Romans, 233–34.
 Jean Calvin, The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Romans and to the Thessalonians, trans. Ross Mackenzie, Calvin’s Commentaries (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1961), 188.
 Although Paul’s intended readers are likely, on the basis of what they have already been told in 5:1—8:34, to have been capable of answering the rhetorical question of v. 35 for themselves (with a confident “no”), the shape of the paragraph as a whole suggests that the rhetorical question in v. 35 is intended to function not as a self-answering question but as one that is allowed to hang in the air for a moment, unanswered, until it receives its answer in vv. 37–39.
 Cf. the depiction of the “invincible” (ἀνίκητος) philosopher “whom none of the things disturb which are independent of the will,” in Epictetus, Discourses, 1.18.21–23 (trans. George Long).
 Bruce K. Waltke, J. M. Houston, and Erika Moore, The Psalms as Christian Lament: A Historical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 208.
 Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 58.
 Echoes of Scripture, 62–63. See also the similar conclusions drawn in Tyler Stewart, “The Cry of Victory: A Cruciform Reading of Psalm 44:22 in Romans 8:36,” JSPL 3 (2013): 44–45, Jewett, Romans: A Commentary, 548, Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 328–29, Becoming the Gospel: Paul, Participation, and Mission (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015), 283 and Siu Fung Wu, Suffering in Romans (Cambridge: James Clarke, 2015), 193–94.
 See especially the discussion in Wu, Suffering in Romans, 207–21.
 Stewart, “The Cry of Victory,” 45. Cf. the similar suggestion in N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (London: SPCK, 2013), 635–36. On the question of the likely scriptural competence of Paul’s readers in Rome, see the brief discussion in J. Ross Wagner, Heralds of the Good News: Paul and Isaiah ‘in Concert’, NovtSup 101 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 36–39.
 Stewart, “The Cry of Victory,” 44–45.
 Sylvia C. Keesmaat, “The Psalms in Romans and Galatians,” in The Psalms in the New Testament, ed. S. Moyise and M. J. J. Menken (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 149–52.
 Mark A. Seifrid, “Romans,” in Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, ed. G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), 636–37.
 Channing L. Crisler, Reading Romans as Lament: Paul’s Use of Old Testament Lament in His Most Famous Letter (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2016), 143–44.
 As it happens, Seifrid does take the latter as a reminiscence of “Christ, the Suffering Servant, who likewise was led as a ‘sheep to slaughter’” (“Romans,” 636), but the identification of this intertextual echo does not require the conclusion that the total meaning of Christ’s sufferings is transferred to all of the sufferings of believers that the verse is referring to.

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