THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS - Chapter 11 - Verse 3

Verse 3. Lord, they have killed, etc. This is taken from 1 Ki 19:10. The quotation is not literally made, but the sense is preserved. This was a charge which Elijah brought against the whole nation; and the act of killing the prophets he regarded as expressive of the character of the people, or that they were universally given to wickedness. The fact was true that they had killed the prophets, etc., (1 Ki 18:4,13) but the inference which Elijah seems to have drawn from it, that there were no pious men in the nation, was not well founded.

And digged down. Altars, by the law of Moses, were required to be made of earth or unhewn stones, Ex 20:24,25. Hence the expression, to dig them down, means completely to demolish or destroy them.

Thine altars. There was one great altar in the front of the tabernacle and the temple, on which the daily sacrifices of the Jews were to be made. But they were not forbidden to make altars also elsewhere, Ex 20:25. And hence they are mentioned as existing in other places, 1 Sa 7:17; 16:2,3; 1 Ki 18:30,32.

These were the altars of which Elijah complained as having been thrown down by the Jews; an act which was regarded as expressive of signal impiety.

I am left alone. I am the only prophet which is left alive. We are told that when Jezebel cut off the prophets of the Lord, Obadiah took a hundred of them and hid them in a cave, 1 Ki 18:4. But it is not improbable that they had been discovered and put to death by Ahab. The account which Obadiah gave Elijah when he met him, (1 Ki 18:13) seems to favour such a supposition.

Seek my life. That is, Ahab and Jezebel seek to kill me. This they did because he had overcome and slain the prophets of Baal, 1 Ki 19:1,2. There could scarcely be conceived a time of greater distress and declension in religion than this. It has not often happened that so many things that were disheartening have occurred to the church at the same period of time. The prophets of God were slam; but one lonely man appeared to have zeal for true religion; the nation was running to idolatry; the civil rulers were criminally wicked, and were the leaders in the universal apostasy; and all the influences of wealth and power were setting in against the true religion to destroy it. It was natural that the solitary man of God should feel disheartened and lonely in this universal guilt; and should realize that he had no power to resist this tide of crime and calamities.