Rom. 5:12-14 - Death reigned from Adam to Moses

Two important thoughts have emerged from 5:6-11. The first is that Christ died for unrighteous Israel: one man died, but many were justified, were reconciled to God, have peace with God. The second is that the rescue of the community from the wrath of God has a ’much more’ character to it: reconciliation is much more than enmity, life is much more than death. In Romans 5:12-21 Paul then develops these two thoughts by means of a typological relationship between Adam and Christ.

First, the typology accounts for the fact that the righteous action of one man had consequences for many. Sin passed-into the world through one man, and as a consequence death passed-through to all men. In the same way (though Paul does not complete the argument at this point), righteousness passed-into the world though one man, and as a consequence many have received the gift of life. Paul is not greatly interested in the nature of the connection between the sin of the one man and the sin of the many (cf. Dunn, Romans, 273).

The analogical argument that Paul begins in 5:12 is left hanging in mid-air, like a half-finished bridge. It may make sense to suppose that the disjuncture occurs before the troublesome clause on the basis of which all sinned rather than than after it as is usually assumed. This would make it more natural to think that the clause attributes the fact that all sinned to the entry of sin into the world through Adam (cf. J.A. Fitzmyer, Romans, 416-417). Then in 5:13-14 Paul explains why it was necessary to interrupt the train of thought and emphasize the fact that not only Adam sinned but all sinned. The more usual reading these days is to take eph hō pantes hēmarton as part of Paul’s intended argument, with the sense ’inasmuch as or because all sinned’.

The connection between sin and death was in force before the Jewish law came into being: people died because sin was in the world - in that sense death reigned from Adam until Moses. What changed with the introduction of the law was that sin came to be counted or reckoned to a person’s account. Israel was not merely subject to the law of sin and death: Israel, because like Adam it had the commandment, was accountable. There is an implicit distinction here between sin that is like the transgression of Adam and sin that is unlike it. Adam’s sin was an act of disobedience to the command of God and in that respect prefigures Israel’s disregard of the commandments, its rebellion against YHWH.

In view of this it is worth considering the minority exegetical view (Robinson, Scroggs) which understands the one to come (tou mellontos) to refer not to Christ but to Moses: Moses received the commandment of God just as Adam received the commandment of God, with the result that Israel, like Adam, was liable to condemnation and destruction on that basis; but death nevertheless reigned from Adam to Moses, even though sin was not legally reckoned, simply because it was in the world.

So there is a general human condition in which sin and death hold sway. Israel is not exempt from that condition, but the law has superimposed on this condition a covenantal obligation that connects national disobedience with the wrath of God, understood not as a final but as a historical judgment on the people. These are not merely two sides of the ’human condition within the epoch of Adam’ (Dunn, Romans, 275). What we see here is again how the universal and the particular, the existential and the eschatological, relate in Paul’s argument.

Secondly, the typology establishes the fact that the righteousness introduced through Christ surpasses the sin introduced into the world through Adam, and that the life which is vouchsafed by this righteousness surpasses the death that was the consequence of that sin. This basic thought is developed in 5:15-21.