Just as it is written, “FOR YOUR SAKE WE ARE BEING PUT TO DEATH ALL DAY LONG; WE WERE COUNTED AS SHEEP FOR the SLAUGHTER. 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. But the primary sense of the expression, read within the context of the complaint and protest in the preceding paragraphs, must surely be the negative one, which interprets the sufferings that the nation has endured not as the inevitable consequence of covenant fidelity but as a bewildering enigma—a disaster that God has brought upon the nation despite the fact that they have remained faithful to him. I have spread out My hands all the day | To an apostate people, | Who are going in the way [that is] not good, | After their own thoughts. Just as it is written, “FOR THY SAKE WE ARE BEING PUT TO DEATH ALL DAY LONG; WE WERE CONSIDERED AS SHEEP TO BE SLAUGHTERED.

Paul has made it clear that God's love is absolute, and God will fulfill His purpose for them: He will succeed in bringing them to glory. 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.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. It is possible too, as Tyler Stewart suggests, that Paul could have anticipated that some at least among his intended readers in Rome might have been aware of the urgent summons with which Psalm 44 concludes (“Rouse yourself! 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.

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. A more positive reading, in which the sufferings are understood as something that the nation has endured (and has, perhaps, willingly chosen to expose itself to) “for your sake,” as an outcome of its covenantal loyalty to YHWH, is certainly a grammatical possibility.

Choral works include the Mass for five parts, Turn our Captivity, A Remembrance and O Lord, support us all the day long. Perhaps he was one of his antagonists (religious superpatriots) who denounced him to the authorities. One old man, the local sexton and gravedigger, is described as a 'complete human being', and that I had never forgotten. Longenecker, The Epistle to the Romans: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 744–49; see also A.