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1 [Normal voice and delivery are to resume.] It follows from this directly, however, that all of you who judge others in this way lack any excuse as well. For by means of the very judgment by which you condemn others you condemn yourself, because you who judge others practice the same things. 2 Now we know that the deity’s judgment on those doing these acts is an unwavering judgment, consistent and true. 3 So are you seriously thinking that you, the one judging those practicing these things and yet also doing them yourself, will escape the divine judgment? 4 “Or despiseth thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?” 5 Your hard and unrepentant heart is only storing up a vast payment of anger for yourself that will be poured out on the day of anger when the just judgment of the deity is finally revealed, 6 the one “who will render to every man according to his deeds.” 7 To those, on the one hand, who persevere in good deeds, seeking glorious light, honor, and immortality, he will gift eternal life; 8 to those, on the other hand, who are contentious and unpersuaded by truth, being persuaded by wrongdoing, he will gift anger and rage. 9 Suffering and crushing will come upon every soul that works assiduously at wickedness, so on the soul of “the Jew first” but also on the pagan, 10 and glorious light and honor and peace will surround everyone who works assiduously at goodness, so on “the Jew first” and then on the pagan. 11 “For there is no respect of persons with God.”
12 Those who sin independently of the Teaching of Moses will also be destroyed independently of that Teaching while those who sin using the Teaching of Moses will be sentenced by means of that Teaching. 13 Moreover, it is not the people who merely hear Moses’s Teachings who will be pronounced righteous before the deity; the people who do what the Teachings say will be declared righteous. 14 (Note, when pagans who do not possess the Teaching of Moses do the things set forth in the Teaching naturally, those particular pagans who do not possess the written Teachings are nevertheless clearly a teaching for themselves. 15 Such figures prove that the work prescribed by the Teachings is written in the heart of all their thinking, something their consciences attest to as their deliberations contend with one another, back and forth, attacking and defending.) 16 These judgments all take place on the day the deity judges even people’s secret behavior (an event which, according to my proclamation, will take place through our compassionate ruler, Jesus [this being something I will talk about much later in the letter (ed. see chs. 11 and 14)]).
17 Now, if you name yourself “a Judean” and rest on the Teachings of Moses and boast about the deity 18—that you know his will and can parse the critical from the non-critical issues because you have been catechized by the Teachings. 19And you are deeply convinced that you yourself are a guide for the blind, a light for those in darkness, 20 an instructor of the ignorant, and a teacher of children, having the very form of knowledge and of truth in the Teachings of Moses. 21 Do you, the teacher of others, teach yourself?;[i] do you, the one who declares that ‘thou shalt not steal,’ actually steal?; 22 do you, the one who instructs us ‘thou shalt not commit adultery’ in fact commit adultery?; do you, who flees the contemptible worship of pagan idols in their temples, nevertheless despise your own sacred temple by robbing it? 23 You who boast about the Teachings of Moses have, by breaking that Teaching’s rules, brought dishonor upon God; 24 as Scripture says, “the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you.”
25 Now cutting off your foreskin will give you an [ethical] advantage—if you practice the Teachings; but if you violate the Teachings, then your surgery will in effect be useless and it will be as if your foreskin has been retained. 26 In like manner, if some male still possessing his foreskin carefully keeps the just requirements of the Teaching, then will not his foreskin in effect be considered removed? 27 And more than this: will not a man who still has his foreskin but naturally keeps the Teachings not sentence you, a man who has removed his foreskin and possesses the very letters of the Teachings but who nevertheless violates those Teachings? 28 It follows from all this that it is clearly not the person who appears to be a Judean who is a real Judean and neither is the man whose foreskin has been obviously removed really circumcised. 29 The person who is a hidden Judean is a real Judean since true circumcision is a circumcision of the heart effected by divine spirit and not in mere obedience to a written instruction. Praise for such a man [and praise is the meaning of Judah] does not come from other men but from the deity itself.
[i] Negative particle expects a positive response.