Bible Strands
Romans 2:22
You who forbid adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples?
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Paul addresses a Jewish instructor who publicly teaches the law while privately violating it. He poses this challenge mid-argument to expose the contradiction between religious instruction and personal conduct.
The words — ὁ βδελυσσόμενος (ho bdelussomenos) translates literally as "you who abhor." Paul pairs this term with the charge of temple robbery to show how religious aversion fails to produce righteous action.
The thread — The accusation of robbing sacred spaces recalls Malachi 3:8, where withheld tithes constitute theft from God. Jeremiah 5:7 and Matthew 12:39 similarly connect idolatrous practices with generational unfaithfulness and empty spiritual demands.
Why it lands — The text requires that moral teaching be verified by personal obedience. It compels the reader to test whether outward devotion masks private transgression.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Greek words
King James Version
Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?
Cross-references
- Malachi 3:8 Will a man rob God? Yet you are robbing Me! But you ask, ‘How do we rob You?’ In tithes and offerings.
- Matthew 12:39 Jesus replied, “A wicked and adulterous generation demands a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.
- Jeremiah 5:7 “Why should I forgive you? Your children have forsaken Me and sworn by gods that are not gods. I satisfied their needs, yet they committed adultery and assembled at the houses of prostitutes.
- Jeremiah 7:9 Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal, and follow other gods that you have not known,
- Jeremiah 9:2 If only I had a traveler’s lodge in the wilderness, I would abandon my people and depart from them, for they are all adulterers, a crowd of faithless people.
- Ezekiel 22:11 One man commits an abomination with his neighbor’s wife; another wickedly defiles his daughter-in-law; and yet another violates his sister, his own father’s daughter.
- Malachi 1:8 When you offer blind animals for sacrifice, is it not wrong? And when you present the lame and sick ones, is it not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would he be pleased with you or show you favor?” asks the LORD of Hosts.
- Malachi 1:14 “But cursed is the deceiver who has an acceptable male in his flock and vows to give it, but sacrifices a defective animal to the Lord. For I am a great King,” says the LORD of Hosts, “and My name is to be feared among the nations.
- Matthew 16:4 A wicked and adulterous generation demands a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.” Then He left them and went away.
- Mark 11:17 Then Jesus began to teach them, and He declared, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”