Murray:

2:4. In verse 4 we have another question introduced by “or”, and “despisest thou” is parallel to “reckonest thou” in verse 3. The purpose of this “or” is not that of proposing alternatives; it is rhetorical like the questions themselves. And the effect is to press home upon the Jew in crescendo fashion the impiety of which he is guilty. In other words, these are not alternative ways of interpreting his attitude but different ways of stating what his attitude is. And that the apostle entertains no doubt respecting the contempt offered by the Jew to the riches of God’s goodness is demonstrated by verse 5. Paul is dealing with a hardened Jew and with increasing intensity of derogation points him to the perversity of which he is guilty.

“The riches” of God’s goodness refer to the abundance and magnitude of the goodness bestowed upon the Jew. The strength of the expression indicates that the covenant lovingkindness of which the Jew was the partaker is contemplated (cf. 3:2; 9:4, 5). And the same holds true for “forbearance and longsuffering”. The word “riches” governs all three terms. The abundance of God’s “forbearance and longsuffering” to Israel was exemplified again and again in the history of the Old Testament but the apostle must be thinking particularly, if not exclusively, of the forbearance and longsuffering exercised to the Jew at the time of writing. For in the rejection of the grace and goodness manifested in Christ the Jew had given the utmost of ground for the execution of God’s wrath and punishment to the uttermost. Only “the riches” of forbearance and longsuffering could explain the preservation accorded to him. We must not press unduly and thus artificially the distinction between “forbearance” and “longsuffering”. Together they express the idea that God suspends the infliction of punishment and restrains the execution of his wrath. When he exercises forbearance and longsuffering he does not avenge sin in the instant execution of wrath. Forbearance and longsuffering, therefore, reflect upon the wrath and punishment which sin deserves and refer to the restraint exercised by God in the infliction of sin’s desert. It needs to be noted that the apostle does not think of this restraint as exercised in abstraction from the riches of God’s goodness, the riches of his benignity and lovingkindness. There is a complementation that bespeaks the magnitude of God’s kindness and of which the gifts of covenant privilege are the expression.⁶ It is a metallic conception of God’s forbearance and longsuffering that isolates them from the kindness of disposition and of benefaction which the goodness of God implies.

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