Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Romans 8:31-39, Angels, rulers and powers
With God on the believers' side, Paul asks who could oppose them, then names hardships and powers, from the sword to angels, rulers, height and depth, and none of them can cut believers off from God's love in Christ.
Romans 8:31-39, in every translation this tool compares.
Paul asks who can bring a charge against God's chosen when God is the one who justifies and Christ intercedes for them. He lists trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger and sword, and quotes a psalm about being killed all day long like sheep for the slaughter. He ends sure that neither death nor life, angels nor rulers, things present nor things to come, powers, height, depth or anything else in creation can separate them from God's love in Christ Jesus.
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Keener notes Jewish texts in which God clears Israel at the final judgment the way the Day of Atonement cleared his people every year. Lists of hardships showed that a wise man had passed his tests, and the sword was the usual way Roman citizens were executed (Keener and his notes). By the second century rabbis applied Psalm 44:22 to martyrs; some Roman believers had recently come back after the expulsion of AD 49, and from AD 64 Nero killed hundreds of Christians in the city (the cultural backgrounds notes). The rulers and powers named with angels are probably the spiritual rulers of the nations (the cultural backgrounds notes; Keener; Heiser), though the ESV Study Bible says only angelic and demonic authorities. Arnold reads the angels here as rebellious angels in league with Satan, as Paul uses the word in 2 Corinthians 12:7. Height and depth may be astrological terms for powers that ruled through the stars, or simply everything from heaven to Hades (Keener and his notes). Arnold takes the first view: in astronomical texts the words named the highest and lowest points a star reached, and he reads them as the astral spirits believed to control human destiny.
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Romans 8:33-34, 8:35-36, 8:38 and 8:39
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Romans 8:35, 8:36, 8:38 and 8:39
- ESV Study Bible, study note on Romans 8:38-39
- Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm, ch. 37, This Means War
- Clinton E. Arnold, Powers of Darkness, ch. 8, A New Kingdom and Identity for Believers, Secure and Protected
