What Does Romans 3:9 Mean?

(9-20) Once more the argument returns to the main track, and at last the Apostle asserts distinctly and categorically what he had already proved indirectly, that the Jew is every whit as bad as the Gentile. (9) **Are we better than they?**—“Can we claim a preference?” The form of the Greek verb is peculiar. It seems upon the whole best to take it as middle for active, which would be apparently unexampled, but is tenable as a question of language, and seems to be compelled by the context. There is no real opposition between the “by no means” of the reply and the “much every way” of Romans 3:2. There the reference was to external advantages, here it is to real and essential worth in the sight of God; as much as to say, “For all our advantages are we really better?” **Proved.**—Adopt rather the marginal rendering, *For we before charged both Jews and Gentiles with being all under sin.* The verses are a striking instance of the way in which the Apostle weaves together passages taken from different sources. It also affords an example of the corruptions in the text of the Old Testament to which this practice gave rise. The whole passage as it stands here is found in some manuscripts of the LXX. as part of Psalms 14, whence it has been copied not only into the Vulgate but also our own Prayer Book, which will be seen to differ from the Bible version. The quotations have different degrees of appositeness, so far as they may be considered in the modern sense as probative rather than illustrative. The first, from Psalms 14, is couched in such general terms as to be directly in point; the second and third, from Psalms 5, 140, are aimed specially against the oppressors of the Psalmist; and so, too, the fourth, from Psalms 10, but in a more general and abstract form; that from Isaiah indicates the moral degradation among the prophet’s contemporaries that had led to the Captivity; while the last, from Psalms 36, is an expression applied, not to all men, but particularly to the wicked.