I suggest we continue to read Paul’s argument in the shadow of an overarching narrative that takes Christ’s death on behalf of the ungodly as a timely intervention before the wrath of God comes upon Israel. This story has certainly become harder to discern in this passage: echoes from the Old Testament have faded; we are moving towards the universalized argument of 5:12-21. But the language is still reminiscent of Old Testament archetypes, and nothing obliges us to think that the eschatological narrative has been superseded, has become too tight for the soteriology that is being developed here.

In due time denotes not a turning point in the whole of human history but a decisive moment in the story of second temple Judaism. It is possible that Paul’s thought also encompasses the Gentile world, but it is in the first place Israel that was weak or sick, ungodly, sinners, and enemies of YHWH - Israel in rebellion against God and destined for destruction. If Christ’s death was an ‘atonement’, it was an atonement not for humankind in general but for sinful Israel, the means by which a nation under judgment, or at least part of it (cf. Amos 9:8 below), would be put right with God. Those who are justified by the death of Christ will be saved or delivered through him from the wrath, which in Romans should still be understood as the divine termination of a nation or culture that has persistently defied the creator God. The following texts illustrate the Old Testament and Intertestamental resonances:

For the sinners shall perish, and the enemies of the Lord, at the moment when they were honoured and exalted, having come to an end vanished away like smoke. (Ps. 36:20 LXX = Ps. 37:20)

You will set apart gracious rain, O God, for your inheritance, and you restored it when it was weak. (Ps. 67:10 LXX = Ps. 68:9)

And their heart was brought low in troubles; they were weak, and there was no helper; and they cried to the Lord in their state of affliction, and he saved them from their distresses. (Ps. 106:12-13 LXX = Ps. 107:12-13)

And the pride of Israel of shall be brought low before his face; and Israel and Ephraim are weak in their iniquities, and Judah shall be weak with them. (Hos. 5:5 LXX)

Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are upon the kingdom of sinners, and I will remove it from the face of the earth; only that I will not utterly remove the house of Jacob, says the Lord. (Amos 9:8 LXX)

He (Judas Maccabeus) went through the cities of Judah; he destroyed the ungodly out of the land; thus he turned away wrath from Israel. (1 Macc. 3:8)