This is the second question the heart is told not to ask. If the first imagines climbing to heaven to bring Christ down (Romans 10:6), this one imagines going down into the deep to bring Him back from the dead. Both picture salvation as something far away that a person must go and fetch. Barnes says Paul is not claiming here that Christ went down to those regions; his point is that there is no such difficulty in the way. Matthew Henry (full commentary) puts it: "We need not go to the deep, to fetch Christ out of the grave, or from the state of the dead."

The parenthesis gives the answer: the question would mean trying "to bring up Christ again from the dead," and God has already raised Him. Paul goes on: "The word is nigh thee" (Romans 10:8), and whoever believes "that God hath raised him from the dead" "shall be saved" (Romans 10:9).

Moses' words were "Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us" (Deuteronomy 30:13). Gill notes that where Paul says "the deep," the text of Moses has "who shall go over the sea," and that the Jerusalem Targum (an ancient Aramaic paraphrase) speaks of descending into the depths of the sea like Jonah the prophet. The Greek word here is abussos, "abyss." Barnes says it is applied to anything whose depth or bottom is not known, and in the New Testament usually to the abode of departed spirits.

The two questions in Romans 10:6-7 match the two great facts of the gospel: Christ came down, and Christ was raised. No one needs to bring Him down from heaven or up from the dead, because God has done both. That is why the word is near.

Matthew Henry (Concise) explains that when we speak of receiving Christ, "it is not Christ in heaven, nor Christ in the deep, that we mean; but Christ in the promise, Christ offered in the word." The resurrection, which no one could accomplish, is now the very thing to be believed (Romans 10:9).