📜WEB · Romans 10:18
What does Romans 10:18 mean?
"But I say, didn’t they hear? Yes, most certainly, “Their sound went out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.”"
— Romans 10:18 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
And how will they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the Good News of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things!”
But they didn’t all listen to the glad news. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our report?”
So faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
But I say, didn’t they hear? Yes, most certainly, “Their sound went out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.”
But I ask, didn’t Israel know? First Moses says, “I will provoke you to jealousy with that which is no nation, with a nation void of understanding I will make you angry.”
Isaiah is very bold, and says, “I was found by those who didn’t seek me. I was revealed to those who didn’t ask for me.”
But as to Israel he says, “All day long I stretched out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.”
Explanation
Romans 10:18 comes in the middle of Paul's extended reflection on why so many of his fellow Jews had not embraced Jesus as the Messiah, even though the gospel had been preached widely. In plain language, the verse asks a question and immediately answers it: has the message about Christ actually reached people, or is the problem that they simply never heard it? Paul answers emphatically yes — the message has indeed gone out, quoting Psalm 19:4 to make his point: "their sound went out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world."
To understand the context, it helps to know that Paul is writing to the church in Rome, a mixed congregation of Jewish and Gentile believers, around the mid-first century. In Romans 9–11 he wrestles with a painful problem: God's promises seemed to center on Israel, yet many Israelites had rejected the gospel while Gentiles were responding to it. In chapter 10, Paul argues that faith comes by hearing the message about Christ (Romans 10:17), so he raises the natural objection: maybe people rejected the gospel because they never heard it. Verse 18 shuts that door. He points out that the gospel had already spread remarkably far in his lifetime, fulfilling in a sense the language of Psalm 19, which originally described how the created world itself declares God's glory to all people, everywhere, without words. Paul repurposes that psalm to describe the wide reach of the gospel proclamation.
Theologically, this verse underscores that human unbelief cannot be blamed on a lack of opportunity
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