“That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart.”
For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race, the Israelites. — The ἀνάθεμα (anathema, "cursed") and separation from Christ—Paul would undergo damnation itself for Israel's salvation (cf. Moses in Exodus 32:32). The intensity exposes the existential anguish of Israel's stumbling. No theological abstraction obscures the pastoral wound.
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