04_Reasoner_388-404 28/10/14 10:43 Pagina 396 396 MARK REASONER tree when comparing Jer 2:21 with Romans 11, so here we see an inversion between the branches that are useless and get burned up in Jer 11,16 and the branches that continue to be the branches that belong by nature to the tree that can easily be grafted back into it (Rom 11,24). Seventh, in more consonant intertextuality with Jeremiah, there is a claim in Rom 11,32 that God has shut up all to disobedience that he might have mercy on all. We have already seen how God tells Jeremiah not to pray for mercy on the Jewish people (Jer 7,16; 11,14; 14,11-12), a prohibition Paul emphatically breaks (Rom 10,1). But in the restoration oracle of Jer 12,15-17, God promises to have mercy on his people’s Gentile neighbors, provided they learn the ways of God’s people and swear by God’s name 26. Jere- miah’s paragraph concludes by threatening total destruction on those among the nations who will not listen to God (Jer 12,17), a threat that is softened to the brief warning that unfaithful Gentiles can easily be cut off from the tree on to which they were grafted (Rom 11,22). The olive tree metaphor in Romans 11 seems to invert Jeremiah’s own bleak portraits of divine judgment on Israel and the nations in this section of the prophet and agree more with the hope- ful whisper that is audible in this section. Indeed, this restoration oracle of Jer 12,14-17 places God’s people in some form of parity with the Gentiles, a relationship that Romans affirms while still as- serting the Jewish people’s advantages 27. With regard to the idea of showing mercy, then, traced through the word evlee,w, Romans 9–11 inverts Jeremiah’s warnings against the Jewish people on the way to ending at a place very near to Jeremiah’s promise of uni- versal restoration held in tension with warning against unfaithful- ness to the God of Israel. While all these connections are not equally compelling, there is enough going on between Jeremiah 1–20 and Romans 9–11 to argue that W. D. Davies is wrong in rejecting Paul’s use of Jer 11,16 in Romans 11. Davies’s instincts are right that the olive tree metaphor is addressing anti-Semitism and showing that ethnic Jews do have an advantageous position over unfruitful Gentiles, but his rejection of Jer 11,16 is possibly flawed by a tacit assumption that 26 HOLLADAY, Jeremiah 1, 391: “This passage offers an astonishing mes- sage of ‘universal’ restoration”. 27 See Rom 2,11; 3,1-2.29-30; 11,28-32.