Romans Chapter 2 Vs. 19

God's Judgment and the Law

And art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness, Rom 2:19

Though the next verb (in Rom. 2:19) continues the first-class conditional structure begun in Rom. 2:17, it also marks a transition of thought. It is the perfect tense of a verb which means “to seek to persuade,” in which tense it has the meaning “to believe.” Many Jews were convinced and as a result believed certain things about themselves in relationship to Gentiles. Paul listed four of these: a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, an instructor (paideutēn, “one who disciplines, a trainer”) of the foolish, and a teacher of infants. This belief by Jews rested in their having in the Law the embodiment (morphōsin, “outline, semblance”; used elsewhere in the NT only in 2Tim. 3:5) of knowledge and truth (the Gr. has the definite article “the” with both nouns: “the knowledge and the truth”).