Paul asks who may receive the blessing David described. "The circumcision" means the Jews and "the uncircumcision" the Gentiles (as in Romans 3:30). A Jewish reader might grant that faith is counted for righteousness and still assume the blessing belongs only to the circumcised. Gill says the design of the question is "to prove that the blessing of justification belongs to Gentiles as well as Jews." Barnes explains how Paul will settle it by timing. If Abraham was justified after his circumcision, a Jew could still claim it came by keeping the Law; "but if it was before, the point of the apostle would be established, that it was without the works of the law."

Paul restates the fact both sides accept, "faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness" (Romans 4:9), and then asks when it happened. His answer: "Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision" (Romans 4:10). Abraham received circumcision afterward as "a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised," so that he might be "the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised" and also of circumcised believers who "walk in the steps of that faith" (Romans 4:11-12).

Circumcision was given to Abraham as "a token of the covenant" between God and his household, required of every male (Genesis 17:10-11). By Paul's day it marked the line between Jew and Gentile, which is why Paul can call the two groups simply "the circumcision" and "the uncircumcision."

The word "blessedness" (Greek makarismos, glossed "blessing" on the interlinear) points back to David's words, quoted from Psalm 32:1-2 in Romans 4:7-8: "Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin."

This question reveals a God whose blessing is wider than people expected. Paul has already asked, "Is he the God of the Jews only? is he not also of the Gentiles?" (Romans 3:29). Now he shows from Abraham's own story that God counted a man righteous before he bore the mark that set Israel apart.

God had promised to make Abraham "a father of many nations" (Romans 4:17). The order of events in Genesis shows that God intended from the start to gather a family of faith from every people, Jew and Gentile together, with Abraham as "the father of us all" (Romans 4:16).