The Remaining Root of the Olive Tree

The fullness of Israel in verse 12 refers then to the complete number of various remnants of elect Israelites over the centuries. Devolving all old covenant promises onto the Messiah, a root that some others have suggested, seems to get God off the hook with a technicality but undermines the very logic of the Messiah's representation," he says. For God to strip the olive tree of almost all of its natural branches and repopulate it with grafted wild branches instead raises serious questions about the tree's continued identity,. Paul is clear that the branches themselves, even while broken off, retain immense significance. They are natural branches, continuing to belong to a tree that is deprived of something proper to it