The future δικαιώσει (dikaiōsei, future active indicative, third singular) expresses the certain and comprehensive saving verdict that the one God gives to both circumcised Jews and uncircumcised Gentiles. It does not postpone justification so that it becomes absent from the believer’s present experience. Paul has already said that those who believe are being justified freely by God’s grace (3:24), and that God presently justifies the one who has faith in Jesus (3:26). The future here follows naturally from the assertion of divine unity: since God is one, he will assuredly act as the righteous Judge and Justifier of both groups on the same gospel basis. The future tense also retains the eschatological horizon proper to Paul’s doctrine of justification. God’s justifying verdict is already pronounced in the present through faith in Christ, yet it will stand publicly and finally at the last judgment. Romans later speaks of a future justification in this forensic and vindicatory sense, especially when God renders judgment according to truth and when those who are in Christ await final acquittal (2:13; 8:33-34). Romans 3:30 therefore does not divide present justification from future salvation, nor does it make circumcision or uncircumcision determinative. The one God’s future verdict confirms the present gospel declaration: ethnic distinction cannot establish separate covenantal routes to righteousness before him.

Paul’s shortened conclusion, “did not attain to law,” does not shift the subject from righteousness to mere possession or observance of the Mosaic law. The phrase nomon dikaiosynēs, literally “a law of righteousness,” identifies the law as Israel understood and pursued it: the divinely given law regarded as the route to the righteousness required before God. The genitive dikaiosynēs is best taken as defining the law by its intended relation to righteousness, rather than simply asserting that the law itself is righteous. Paul can elsewhere affirm the law’s holiness and goodness (Rom 7:12), but his concern here is Israel’s pursuit of righteousness through the law. The second nomon is therefore an abbreviated repetition, with the qualifying genitive understood from the preceding phrase. Greek often permits such ellipsis when the omitted qualification remains clear from the immediate context. The movement from nomon dikaiosynēs to eis nomon gives the sentence rhetorical compression: Israel pursued the law in relation to righteousness, yet failed to arrive at the very law-goal it sought. The point is clarified in 9:32, where the failure arose because Israel pursued it “not by faith but as though by works,” and in 10:3-4, where Israel’s effort to establish its own righteousness stands over against God’s righteousness fulfilled in Christ. Some scribal witnesses expand the final expression by adding dikaiosynēs after nomon, apparently to remove the abruptness. The shorter reading is more likely original, both because it is harder and because Paul’s compact style prepares for the explanatory question of v. 32. Thus “law” in the final clause retains its righteousness-related sense from the first clause; Paul does not deny Israel’s historical reception of Torah, but declares that Israel’s law-pursuit did not reach the righteousness to which the law, rightly received in faith, pointed.

The masculine singular relatives ᾧ ... ᾧ are best read substantivally: “the one to whom” persons present themselves and “the one whom” they obey. No expressed antecedent governs the relatives, and they cannot agree directly with either ἁμαρτία (hamartia, “sin”) or ὑπακοή (hypakoē, “obedience”), since both nouns are feminine and occur subsequently in the genitive. Paul first states the general relation of slavery to a master, then identifies the two possible masteries as slavery “of sin” or “of obedience.” The gender therefore reflects the implied personal master appropriate to the slavery metaphor rather than the grammatical gender of the abstractions that name the alternatives. This syntax accords with Paul’s sustained personification of sin in Romans. Sin entered, reigned in death, deceived, and produces death (5:12, 21; 6:12, 23; 7:8-11); it functions as a tyrannical lord whose commands are obeyed. “Obedience” is cast in the corresponding position because Paul is describing the actual allegiance displayed by obedience, not proposing an impersonal rival deity to sin. The immediately following thanksgiving clarifies its content: the Roman believers became obedient from the heart to the pattern of teaching delivered to them (6:17), and the later counterpart to slavery under sin is explicitly slavery to God (6:22). Thus the masculine construction heightens the personal and covenantal character of the alternatives: deeds of obedience reveal service under a lord, either sin issuing in death or God’s righteous rule issuing in righteousness.

The genitive phrase μετὰ πάντων ὑμῶν, “with all of you,” gives the benediction an explicitly comprehensive scope. Μετά with the genitive denotes accompaniment or presence: Paul invokes the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ as abiding with the whole Roman Christian community. Πάντων, the genitive masculine plural of πᾶς (pas), governs the plural pronoun ὑμῶν and encompasses the congregation collectively in all its members. The wording is stronger than a generic congregational salutation, since Paul has repeatedly addressed the Roman believers as a body whose unity includes differing peoples and convictions. This inclusiveness accords with the argument and exhortation of Romans. The letter has established that Jews and Gentiles alike stand under sin (1:16–3:20), are justified through the same Christ (3:21–4:25), and belong together within God’s saving purpose (9–11). Its immediate ethical section addresses tensions between the “strong” and the “weak” over food and days, requiring mutual welcome because Christ has welcomed both groups (14:1–15:13). The final blessing therefore gathers no favored party around the apostle’s gospel. “Our Lord Jesus Christ” identifies the one from whom grace comes, while “all of you” identifies the undivided, though socially diverse, people upon whom that grace rests. The concluding ἀμήν confirms the blessing as a solemn liturgical affirmation.

The future indicatives in Romans 13:9 carry imperative force; they are not predictions that the addressed person will or will not perform certain actions. Each prohibition, οὐ μοιχεύσεις, οὐ φονεύσεις, οὐ κλέψεις, οὐκ ἐπιθυμήσεις, consists of οὐ with a second-person singular future active indicative. This is the established Greek form of the Decalogue in the Septuagint and reflects the Hebrew construction of לֹא with the imperfect. In this legal and covenantal idiom, “you shall not” expresses a categorical divine prohibition. The same form occurs in the climactic citation, ἀγαπήσεις τὸν πλησίον σου ὡς σεαυτόν, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev. 19:18). Its future indicative likewise functions as a command. Paul therefore preserves the scriptural wording rather than contrasting predictive statements with an imperative summary. The present passive ἀνακεφαλαιοῦται (anakephalaioō), “is summed up,” identifies the love command as the comprehensive heading under which the cited commandments are gathered. Their future forms retain their normative character within Paul’s argument that love fulfills the law, since love excludes the adultery, murder, theft, and coveting that injure one’s neighbor.

Paul portrays a settled self-confidence that is formally grounded in Israel’s possession of the law but is exposed by the ensuing questions as morally unwarranted. Πέποιθας (from πείθω, perfect active indicative, second singular) denotes a confidence already formed and continuing in the present: the interlocutor has come to regard himself as qualified to be "a guide of the blind" and "a light of those in darkness." The perfect does not itself mean that the confidence is false; rather, it underscores its established character. Its irony emerges from the larger accusation, especially 2:21-23, where the one who teaches others proves unable or unwilling to live consistently with the law he teaches. The infinitive εἶναι governs the two accusative predicates, ὁδηγόν and φῶς: the Jewish claimant is confident that he is both a guide and a light. The conjunction τε joins this description to the preceding claim of reliance upon the law and boasting in God (2:17-18), while verses 20-23 complete the indictment. Paul therefore does not deny that the law gives Israel genuine knowledge of God’s will or that Israel has a divinely given witness before the nations. His point is that covenantal knowledge and instructional office become grounds for judgment when they produce boasting without obedience. The confidence condemned is not confidence in God’s revelation as such, but confidence in one’s own religious standing and pedagogical superiority while transgressing the very law that supplies the instruction.

Paul’s οὐ γὰρ ἐπαισχύνομαι (ou gar epaischunomai), “for I am not ashamed,” is a settled public repudiation of the dishonor that the gospel could attract; it does not imply a prior period of private embarrassment. The present middle indicative ἐπαισχύνομαι (epaischunomai) expresses Paul’s continuing stance toward the gospel as he anticipates ministry in Rome (1:13-15). In an honor-conscious Roman setting, a message centered on a crucified Jewish Messiah, proclaimed as Lord over all peoples and rulers, could readily be dismissed as socially contemptible or politically dangerous. Paul refuses that verdict. The first γάρ grounds his eagerness to preach in Rome (v. 15): his willingness arises from confidence rather than reticence. The second γάρ supplies the decisive reason for that confidence: the gospel is δύναμις θεοῦ (dynamis theou), God’s power, operating εἰς σωτηρίαν (eis sōtērian), unto salvation. Thus Paul does not deny that the gospel bears the appearance of weakness before worldly standards; later he explicitly acknowledges that the word of the cross is regarded as folly and weakness by many (cf. 1 Cor. 1:18-25). Romans 1:16 declares, however, that this apparent disgrace is overturned by the gospel’s actual character as the effective means through which God saves every believer.

In Romans 7:5, “when we were in the flesh” (hote ēmen en tē sarki) denotes the believers’ former existence under the dominion of fallen humanity and sin, rather than bodily existence as such. The imperfect indicative ēmen (“we were”) marks an ongoing past state, set in deliberate contrast to the present condition described in v. 6: “but now we have been released from the law.” Paul can therefore include himself and his Christian readers in the plural without implying that the Christian still remains in this defining sphere. Sarx (“flesh”) in this context has the ethical and redemptive-historical sense developed in Romans 6:6, 8:3-9, and Galatians 5:16-24. It refers to human life as weakened, corrupted, and ruled by sin in Adam. The term does not identify the material body as intrinsically evil, since Paul elsewhere speaks of the body as capable of being presented to God (Rom. 6:13) and awaiting redemption (Rom. 8:23). The immediate reference to sinful passions working “in our members” distinguishes the bodily faculties, which sin exploits, from the encompassing realm of “the flesh” in which those faculties formerly served sin. This past-tense description is essential to Paul’s argument about release from the law through union with Christ’s death (7:4-6). To be “in the flesh” is to belong to the old order in which sin seizes the commandment and produces conduct leading to death. By contrast, believers have died to that former jurisdiction and serve “in newness of the Spirit” (v. 6). Romans 8:9 makes the implication explicit: those indwelt by the Spirit are no longer characterized as being “in the flesh,” though the flesh remains an active hostile power against which they must contend in their mortal life.

Paul does not identify the body or its members as intrinsically evil. The “other law” is the law of sin, a hostile ruling power that operates “in” (en) the members, that is, through the embodied faculties by which human purposes are enacted. The final appositional phrase, “the one being in my members” (tō onti en tois melesin mou), identifies the law of sin as the law previously described as resident in the members. Sin has found an operational sphere in the fallen human person, and it turns the faculties of the body into instruments of opposition to God. This wording accords with Romans 6:13, where the members may be presented either to sin as instruments of unrighteousness or to God as instruments of righteousness. The members therefore are not themselves the evil principle. Paul’s concern is with sin’s dominion over the mortal, unredeemed condition, a dominion that manifests itself in concrete bodily actions. Romans 8:10-13 likewise distinguishes the body’s present mortality from the Spirit’s life-giving work and anticipates the body’s resurrection rather than its abandonment. The contrast in Romans 7:23 is consequently not between an inherently good mind and an inherently evil material body, but between the mind that delights in God’s law (7:22) and sin’s contrary power working through the whole person’s bodily capacities.

Paul does not reproduce the Decalogue’s wording verbatim, but casts its prohibition into an infinitival expression governed by the participle κηρύσσων (kērussōn, present active participle, nominative masculine singular), “the one proclaiming not to steal.” The negative μή (mē), rather than οὐ (ou), is the expected negative with an infinitive, particularly where the infinitive expresses the content of an injunction. Paul thus summarizes the commandment as the moral message publicly proclaimed by the Jewish teacher. By contrast, the Septuagintal form of the commandment in Exodus 20:15 and Deuteronomy 5:19 is οὐ κλέψεις, “you shall not steal,” using οὐ with a future indicative. The present infinitive κλέπτειν (kleptein) need not establish that every person addressed was engaged in continuous or habitual stealing. In prohibitive and preceptive speech, the present infinitive can express the general activity forbidden, “to engage in stealing,” without specifying duration or frequency. Paul’s following κλέπτεις (klepteis, present active indicative, second singular) functions as a rhetorical accusation: the one who announces the law’s prohibition stands exposed when his conduct contradicts that proclamation. The present tense gives the charge a vivid, characterizing force, but the argument is directed against presumptuous reliance upon possession and instruction of the law, not a statistical assertion that every Jew literally committed theft. The alteration from the Decalogue’s direct second-person prohibition to “proclaiming not to steal” also serves Paul’s larger indictment in 2:17-24. The issue is the public teaching and boasting associated with the law, set against the moral transgression that dishonors God. Theft is selected as a representative commandment, alongside adultery and sacrilege in the verses that follow, to demonstrate that knowledge and proclamation of God’s will cannot shield its possessors from the judgment pronounced by that same will.

Paul does not mean that sin was literally nonexistent before the Law or whenever an explicit command is absent. “Dead” (nekra) continues the personification of Sin as an active hostile power: apart from the Law’s prohibitory command, Sin lacks the occasion by which it rouses rebellion, exposes guilt, and brings its deadly verdict to expression in the sinner. Sin is therefore “dead” in the restricted sense of being inactive or quiescent with respect to the operation Paul is describing, not in the sense of being abolished. The aorist participle labousa, “having taken,” portrays Sin as seizing an aphorme, an “opportunity” or strategic base, through the commandment. The commandment is good (v. 12), but Sin perversely exploits its prohibition, particularly the prohibition of coveting cited in v. 7, to produce transgression and awakened evil desire. Romans 5:13 supplies the necessary qualification: sin was indeed in the world before the Law, though it was not reckoned in the same manner where no law stood. Death nevertheless reigned (5:14). Thus Romans 7:8 does not contradict the earlier argument; it explains how the Mosaic commandment makes Sin’s enslaving and condemnatory activity manifest. In this context nomos refers primarily to the Mosaic Law, although Paul’s reasoning also states the wider principle that explicit divine command exposes and aggravates human rebellion rather than curing it.

Paul’s expression τὰ ἀσθενήματα τῶν ἀδυνάτων (ta asthenēmata tōn adynatōn) denotes the liabilities and limitations arising from the weak believers’ deficient assurance in matters of food and sacred days, rather than bodily sickness or a catalogue of moral offenses. The noun ἀσθένημα (asthenēma), used here in the accusative plural as the object of βαστάζειν (bastazein, “to bear, carry”), identifies the concrete manifestations of weakness that have occupied Romans 14: abstention from certain foods, observance of days, and the troubled conscience that would be wounded by acting against faith (14:2, 5, 14, 23). Paul therefore distinguishes the persons, “the weak” (τῶν ἀδυνάτων), from the burdens created by their weakness. The wording does not treat these believers as morally contemptible. Their weakness is real because their conscience remains constrained where Paul knows that nothing is intrinsically unclean (14:14), yet it is weakness within the fellowship of those whom God has received and for whom Christ died (14:3, 15). For this reason, “faults” can be an unduly harsh rendering if it suggests settled rebellion or vice. “Weaknesses,” “infirmities,” or “limitations” better preserves Paul’s pastoral category. Βαστάζειν does not mean that the strong are to approve the weak conscience as the norm for all Christians, nor does it mean merely to endure weak believers with private irritation. In this context it signifies accepting the inconvenience and restraint that their weakness occasions, rather than using Christian liberty in a manner that wounds or destroys them. The following contrast, “and not to please ourselves,” defines the bearing as self-renouncing concern for the neighbor’s good, a concern Paul will ground in the pattern of Christ in 15:3.

Paul deliberately presents a composite Isaianic citation: the universal bowing and confession come from Isaiah 45:23, while Ζῶ ἐγώ, λέγει κύριος ("As I live, says the Lord") corresponds closely to Isaiah 49:18 in the Septuagint. Isaiah 45:23 in the Greek text begins instead with the divine oath, “I swear by myself.” The variation is therefore neither a denial of Isaiah’s wording nor an incidental paraphrase. Paul has rendered the self-binding certainty of Isaiah 45:23 by employing a familiar prophetic oath formula in which the Lord swears by his own life. The perfect passive γέγραπται (gegraptai, “it stands written”) introduces the resulting form as Scripture, while the oath establishes the certainty of the future verbs κάμψει (kampsei, “will bow”) and ἐξομολογήσεται (exomologēsetai, “will confess”). In its Isaianic setting, the declaration belongs to the God of Israel, who alone is God and before whom the nations’ false loyalties are exposed. In Romans 14 it substantiates Paul’s assertion that each person will stand before God’s tribunal and render an account to God (vv. 10, 12). The adapted opening thus sharpens the judicial force of the citation: universal acknowledgment of God is grounded in the living Lord’s irrevocable oath, not in a merely general prediction of future worship.

Paul does not prohibit ordinary provision for embodied life; he forbids arrangements made with a view to gratifying the flesh’s sinful desires. The noun πρόνοια (pronoia, “forethought,” “provision”) commonly denotes advance planning, and the present middle imperative μὴ ποιεῖσθε (mē poieisthe) calls for the cessation or rejection of such ongoing self-provision. The phrase τῆς σαρκὸς πρόνοιαν is qualified by εἰς ἐπιθυμίας (eis epithymias), “for desires” or “unto desires.” The preposition marks the intended end of the provision: the planning in view is planning that gives the flesh opportunity for its cravings. In Romans, σάρξ (sarx, “flesh”) can denote physical human existence, but here the surrounding catalogue of reveling, drunkenness, sexual immorality, sensuality, strife, and jealousy (13:13) establishes its moral sense: fallen humanity in its resistance to God. Paul therefore distinguishes legitimate bodily existence from the corrupt desire that seeks occasions for sin. The contrast with the aorist middle imperative ἐνδύσασθε (endysasthe, “clothe yourselves”) is decisive. Those who are to be identified with the Lord Jesus Christ are not to cultivate the habits, settings, and anticipatory calculations by which the old fleshly pattern secures satisfaction. The clause concerns the direction and purpose of forethought, not an ascetic repudiation of food, rest, marriage, or other creational goods.

Paul identifies Abraham as the father of the entire believing family promised to him, comprising both Jewish and Gentile believers, rather than as the spiritual father of humanity without distinction. The relative clause, ὅς ἐστιν πατὴρ πάντων ἡμῶν (hos estin patēr pantōn hēmōn), grounds the preceding reference to “all the seed” (panti tō spermati). The genitive πάντων (pantōn, “of all”) is qualified by ἡμῶν (“of us”), and its scope is supplied by the two descriptions immediately preceding: those “from the law” and those “from the faith of Abraham.” The phrase “those from the law” includes Jewish heirs only insofar as they stand within the same faith-pattern as Abraham, as Romans 4:12 has already made explicit. “Those from the faith of Abraham” particularly embraces uncircumcised Gentiles who believe, corresponding to Abraham’s fatherhood of uncircumcised believers in 4:11. Paul therefore does not deny Israel’s historical descent from Abraham, nor does he erase the distinction between Jew and Gentile; he denies that physical descent and possession of the Mosaic law establish participation in the promised inheritance. The following citation of Genesis 17:5, “I have made you the father of many nations” (Rom. 4:17), confirms this reading. Abraham’s fatherhood extends beyond ethnic Israel because the promise was constituted by grace and received through faith. The “all” is thus covenantal and eschatological: all who belong to Abraham’s seed by the faith through which God justifies the ungodly, whether their former identity was defined by the law or by Gentile exclusion from it.

The root is best understood as the patriarchal source of Israel’s covenantal identity, together with the promises and electing grace bound up with them, rather than as a direct designation of Christ alone. The olive tree represents the historic people of God as constituted by the Abrahamic promise; its natural branches are Israelites, some of whom have been removed because of unbelief, while Gentiles have been incorporated through faith. This reading accords with v. 16, where the holiness of the root grounds the holiness of the branches, and with v. 28, where Israel remains beloved “because of the fathers.” The phrase συγκοινωνὸς τῆς ῥίζης τῆς πιότητος τῆς ἐλαίας (synkoinōnos tēs rhizēs tēs piotētos tēs elaias) portrays the Gentile as a fellow participant in the root and in the olive tree’s richness. Πιότης (piotēs) denotes richness, fertility, or nourishing abundance, evoking the life-giving sap supplied through the root. The genitive sequence is compressed: the root belongs to the olive tree and is characterized by, or supplies, its rich nourishment. Gentile believers therefore do not receive a separate spiritual stock; they share in the covenantal blessings that proceed from God’s promise to the fathers. Christ is not excluded from this image, since the patriarchal promises reach their fulfillment in him and all saving nourishment comes through union with him. Yet Christ is more naturally the promised seed and Davidic deliverer within Paul’s argument than the specific referent of “root” in this metaphor. Paul’s immediate concern is to deny Gentile self-exaltation by locating their salvation within the prior history of God’s gracious covenant with Israel. The root does not make Gentile believers dependent on ethnic Israel for salvation, but it does establish that their inclusion is participation in the one people formed by God’s irrevocable promise.

The masculine plural forms χαιρόντων and κλαιόντων do not restrict Paul’s exhortation to male believers or to occasions affecting men alone. They are present active participles of χαίρω (chairō, “rejoice”) and κλαίω (klaiō, “weep”), functioning substantivally after μετά (meta): “with those who are rejoicing” and “with those who are weeping.” In Greek, the masculine plural regularly serves as the unmarked form for a mixed group or for persons whose sex is not specified. The grammar therefore identifies persons engaged in rejoicing or weeping, without limiting the reference by sex. This inclusive sense accords with the immediate paraenetic setting. Romans 12:9-21 addresses the whole believing community in its mutual love, honor, hospitality, and endurance, while Romans 16 explicitly recognizes women as prominent servants and fellow laborers in the Roman churches. The present participles portray rejoicing and weeping as actual, ongoing human circumstances, and the paired clauses require the community’s identification with either condition. Paul’s wording thus encompasses every member of the body whose joy or grief becomes the occasion for shared affection.

Paul’s ἥττημα (hēttēma), “defeat,” denotes Israel’s diminution or loss through unbelief, especially in contrast with the πλήρωμα (plērōma), “fullness,” anticipated at the verse’s close. The noun can signify defeat, loss, or a reduced state. Within this tightly constructed antithesis, its sense is not primarily military defeat or an inward feeling of failure, but the present reduction of Israel as the covenant people: the nation has not entered into the Messiah’s salvation as a whole, though a remnant has believed (11:5, 7). Their present condition is therefore one of corporate impoverishment relative to the eschatological fullness Paul foresees. This diminished condition arises from the παράπτωμα (paraptōma), “trespass,” of Israel, namely its stumbling over Christ in unbelief (11:11). Yet Paul’s argument does not treat that trespass as either ultimate or beneficial in itself. God has sovereignly turned Israel’s transgression into “wealth” (πλοῦτος, ploutos) for the world and for the Gentiles, since the gospel’s advance among the nations has followed Israel’s rejection of it. The comparative formula πόσῳ μᾶλλον, “how much more,” argues from the lesser, paradoxical result to the greater: if Israel’s present diminution has served the enrichment of the Gentiles, Israel’s future full participation in the saving purposes of God will yield a still greater consummation. The term ἥττημα thus safeguards both the reality of Israel’s present unbelief and Paul’s conviction that this condition will not define Israel’s final place in God’s redemptive history.

The phrase ἐν τῷ θελήματι τοῦ θεοῦ (“in the will of God”) most directly qualifies εὐοδωθήσομαι (“I may be prospered” or “granted a favorable journey”), yet its sense extends to the whole purpose expressed by the infinitive ἐλθεῖν πρὸς ὑμᾶς, “to come to you.” Paul asks that his intended journey and arrival might occur within, and in conformity with, God’s governing purpose. The future passive εὐοδωθήσομαι, from εὐοδόω (euodoō), presents the hoped-for success as something received rather than achieved by Paul’s own planning. The aorist infinitive ἐλθεῖν specifies the desired outcome of that divinely granted success: arrival at Rome. This appeal to God’s will is not a vague pious qualification appended to a settled travel plan. The preceding εἴ πως ἤδη ποτὲ, “if somehow now at last,” and the participle δεόμενος (deomenos, present middle participle, “continually entreating”) express earnest petition joined to genuine uncertainty concerning God’s providential timing. Romans 1:13 explains that Paul had often purposed to visit Rome but had been prevented “until now”; thus he recognizes that even apostolic intention is subordinate to God’s ordering of events. The same perspective recurs in Romans 15:32, where Paul hopes to come to the Roman believers “with joy by the will of God.” The expression refers principally to God’s sovereign, providential will concerning Paul’s travel, rather than to the moral will of God stated in commandments. It does not imply that Paul doubts the goodness of his desire to strengthen the Roman church, for vv. 11-12 present that desire as governed by apostolic ministry and mutual encouragement. It does mean that the manner and timing of the visit remain God’s prerogative. Paul did reach Rome, though the circumstances recorded in Acts were far removed from an uncomplicated journey, confirming that the prayer sought God’s appointed access to Rome rather than control over the route by which it would be granted.

Paul’s reference to “their females” (αἱ θήλειαι αὐτῶν) introduces the first half of a deliberately paired description that continues in v. 27 with “the males” (οἱ ἄρσενες). The order is rhetorically significant: Paul portrays the sexual disorder as extending to both sexes, rather than treating it as a vice confined to one sex or as an exceptional male practice. The γυναῖκες and ἄνδρες terminology, often used for women and men in their social or marital relations, would not serve this creational contrast as precisely as θήλειαι and ἄρσενες, terms denoting female and male. The vocabulary also recalls the creation idiom of Genesis. The Septuagint describes humanity as created “male and female” (ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ, Gen. 1:27), and Paul’s θήλειαι and ἄρσενες in vv. 26-27 evoke that binary distinction. His appeal to what is “according to nature” and “contrary to nature” is therefore framed by the Creator’s ordering of sexed humanity, not by a bare appeal to conventional roles. The plural adjectival nouns, functioning substantivally, identify females and males as such, rather than specifying marital status, ethnicity, or a particular social class. Beginning with females may also heighten the force of the indictment in its ancient setting, since discussions of same-sex conduct commonly focused on male behavior. Yet the text does not rest its judgment on social surprise or on a supposed lesser culpability of either sex. The conjunction τε, joined with γάρ in αἵ τε γὰρ, links the female conduct closely to the broader explanation of divine handing over and anticipates the corresponding male example. Together the two verses present a comprehensive reversal of the male-female sexual relation grounded in creation.