Romans 10:8-10
10:8 But what does it say? “The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” 1 (that is, the word of faith that we preach),
10:9 because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord 2 and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
10:10 For with the heart one believes and thus has righteousness 3 and with the mouth one confesses and thus has salvation. 4
Romans 10:17
10:17 Consequently faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the preached word 5 of Christ. 6
1 sn A quotation from Deut 30:14.
2 tn Or “the Lord.” The Greek construction, along with the quotation from Joel 2:32 in v. 13 (in which the same “Lord” seems to be in view) suggests that κύριον (kurion) is to be taken as “the Lord,” that is, Yahweh. Cf. D. B. Wallace, “The Semantics and Exegetical Significance of the Object-Complement Construction in the New Testament,” GTJ 6 (1985): 91-112.
3 tn Grk “believes to righteousness.”
4 tn Grk “confesses to salvation.”
5 tn The Greek term here is ῥῆμα (rJhma), which often (but not exclusively) focuses on the spoken word.
6 tc Most mss (א1 A D1 Ψ 33 1881 Ï sy) have θεοῦ (qeou) here rather than Χριστοῦ (Cristou; found in Ì46vid א* B C D* 6 81 629 1506 1739 pc lat co). External evidence strongly favors the reading “Christ” here. Internal evidence is also on its side, for the expression ῥῆμα Χριστοῦ (rJhma Cristou) occurs nowhere else in the NT; thus scribes would be prone to change it to a known expression.
tn The genitive could be understood as either subjective (“Christ does the speaking”) or objective (“Christ is spoken about”), but the latter is more likely here.