Vessels of wrath prepared for destruction

This is a rather technical examination of Jason Staples’ argument in Paul and the Resurrection of Israel: Jews, Former Gentiles, Israelites that when Paul speaks of Israel as “vessels of wrath,” he does not mean that the people are are the objects of God’s wrath; rather they are the instruments of God’s redemptive purposes. My view has been that Paul is saying that part of Israel really has become liable to destruction—much as Jesus foresaw destruction coming upon Jerusalem and the temple. But perhaps I’ve got it wrong.

God is repairing his instruments of wrath

Staples’ argument rests partly on the likely sense of the metaphor, partly on a rethinking of Paul’s vocabulary. He seems principally concerned to refute the Calvinist view that God has predestined a certain group of people to destruction (397).

Here’s how the ESV translates the verse:

What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured (ēnegken) with much patience vessels of wrath prepared (katartismena) for destruction… (Rom. 9:22 ESV)

It does not make sense, in Staples’ view, to say that God has patiently endured a vessel. The verb pherō (ēnegken is an aorist form) does not mean “bear,” “carry,” “endure” here but “produce.” Paul’s language is drawn from an oracle against Babylon in Jeremiah 27:25* LXX:

The Lord opened his treasury and brought out his vessels of wrath (exēnegken ta skeuē orgēs autou), because there is a work for the Lord God in the land of the Chaldeans. (Jer. 27:25* LXX = 50:25 MT)

The sense of “vessels of wrath” in this context is instrumental: they will be used to bring judgment upon Babylon because it “resisted the Lord, the holy God of Israel” (27:29 LXX).

A “vessel” is a functional instrument: a vessel of something is a vessel for the purpose of that thing. So “vessels of wrath” are not vessels subject to wrath but vessels for the purpose of wrath, just as “vessels of mercy” are vessels for the purpose of mercy—they fulfil Israel’s function of being a “light to the nations.”

However, Paul has dropped the prefix from ekpherō, so his meaning is not that God has “brought out” these instruments of wrath from his armoury but that he has “produced” or “formed” them. The potter has shown great patience “in the process of producing vessels of wrath” (399).

These vessels have not been arbitrarily predestined for destruction or damnation, as often supposed. The “vessels of mercy” have been “prepared beforehand” (proētoimasen) for glory (9:23), but the vessels of wrath have been “mended,” “repaired,” “restored” (katērtismena).

The image is of the potter working interactively with his people for their good, constructively rather than destructively: “God does not set out to condemn but patiently works with stubborn clay to achieve his purposes” (403).

So God is “working out his wrath through these vessels” in the larger scheme of the salvation of Israel and the gentiles (405).

Why I am not convinced

I agree that predestination is not a factor here, but I don’t think that Staples’ attempt to erase the element of a destructive judgment against part of Israel works, for reasons which I will explain.

1. In the Old Testament the potter image is used in different ways.

• Isaiah depicts rebellious Israel as clay in the hands of a God who is angry (ōrgisthēs, orgizou), who has handed them over because of their sins (Is. 64:4-8 LXX). Nothing is said about what the clay is being made into, but the association with the theme of a destructive judgment against an unrighteousness people is clear: “Your holy city has become a wilderness; Zion has become like a wilderness, Jerusalem a curse” (64:9 LXX).
• Having just heard the warning that, if the sabbath is not observed, God will start a fire in Jerusalem that will devour the city, Jeremiah watches a potter rework a broken container (aggeion) into “another container” (aggeion heteron) (Jer. 17:27-18:4 LXX). The house of Israel is like clay in the hands of the potter. God has power to destroy it or rebuild it if it turns from its evil.

In Paul’s metaphor, the potter has clay in his hands but he does not repair or restore or remake the vessels of clay. He chooses to use some of the clay to make a vessel for honour and some of the clay—from the same lump (ek tou autou phuramatos)—to make a vessel for dishonour. The point is that the same material can be put to contrasting ends. So God can use the same material of Israel for contrasting purposes—two sides of the same eschatological coin: by destruction to make a public demonstration of his wrath; by “glory” to make a public demonstration of his mercy. Contrary to Staples’ interpretation, there is no restoration of a failed vessel.

2. The comparison with Jeremiah’s “brought out his vessels of wrath” is intriguing. Staples has a point, I think. The obvious sense of the expression “vessels of wrath” would be instrumental: “he prepared for him vessels of death (skeuē thanatou), making his arrows for those being burned” (Ps. 7:14*); “wisdom is good beyond vessels of war (skeuē polemou)” (Eccl. 9:18; cf. Jer. 28:20 LXX).

So Paul could be saying that God has patiently made ready instruments of judgment which will be used to destroy something—just as God brought out vessels of wrath to be used in judgment against Babylon.

But who or what are those instruments of judgment in Paul’s case, and whom or what will they be used against? He cannot mean that God has patiently shaped Rome as an instrument of wrath to be used against Israel because Rome is not “from the same lump.” Nor can he mean that part of Israel has been patiently shaped as an instrument of wrath for destruction. Against whom? Against Rome? Hardly.

3. The vessels metaphor does not have to be instrumental. We find this statement in the Life of Adam and Eve:

After he said these things to me, he spoke to the serpent in great wrath (orgēi), saying: ‘Since you have done this, and become a thankless vessel (skeuos achariston), until you have deceived the innocent heart, accursed are you among all beasts.’ (LAE 26:1)

The serpent has become a vessel which is the object of wrath and accursed, not an instrument of wrath.

4. The simple verb pherō can mean to “endure” or “bear” or “put up with” bad behaviour:

But in the tenth year of Archelaus’s government, both his brethren and the principal men of Judea, and Samaria, not being able to bear (pherontes) his barbarous and tyrannical usage of them, accused him before Caesar, and that especially because they knew he had broken the commands of Caesar, which obliged him to behave himself with moderation among them. (Josephus, Ant. 17.342)

5. The verb katartizō can mean “to cause to be in a condition to function well, put in order, restore” (BDAG). Jesus finds James and John in a boat with their father “mending (katartizontas) their nets” (Matt. 4:21).

But the underlying sense of the verb is to prepare for a purpose: artizō means “get ready, prepare” (LSJ). The prefix kata- may carry the idea of completion, as Staples suggests (400), but what is determinative for meaning is the purpose in view: a thing may be got ready for its original purpose (“restored”) or for some other purpose (“prepared”).

In Romans 9:22 the purpose is made clear: God wishes to “put his wrath on display and make known his power.” God does not demonstrate his wrath by repairing a worthless object—that would be an expression of mercy, and mercy is being shown by means of a different set of vessels (9:23). So Paul must mean that God has finally given up on part of Israel and is now ready to hand that part over to destruction.

There is no thought of predestination—not in any eternal or absolute sense. God has simply come to the decision that Israel by and large is not fit for purpose, therefore part of the clay must be consigned to dishonour. There is nothing arbitrary about it.

The whole contraption breaks down

In the end, I fail to see how Staples integrates the various elements of his interpretation (“God… produced with much patience vessels of wrath reshaped for destruction”) or how he differentiates these “vessels of wrath” from the “vessels of mercy.”

The meaning of some of the component parts can be adjusted, but then the contraption as a whole breaks down.

If one set of vessels is prepared and the other is repaired (400), how does that fit with the antithetical patterns: honour and dishonour, wrath and mercy, destruction and glory? Why would you need to repair a vessel of wrath unless it were subject to wrath? In what sense is a vessel of wrath repaired for destruction? I may have missed something, but it seems to me that “destruction” just drops out of the argument. And if God is patiently repairing rebellious Israel, are they not also a vessels of mercy?

The quotations from Hosea and Isaiah that follow reinforce the antithesis. A remnant of Israel will be saved—perhaps, in Paul’s view, including gentiles; but the rest of Israel will fare no better than Sodom and Gomorrah (9:25-29), which does not sound as though they are being repaired. The prophetic type is the destruction of many and the salvation of a few. This was also Jesus’ perspective: most Jews were going through a broad gate leading to destruction, only a few would find the narrow path leading to the life of the age to come (Matt. 7:13-14).