I actually got stuck on Mike’s comment about the Geneva Bible note on Romans 10:17.
Doing a cross-reference to my Geneva Bible notes based on the later 1599 edition revealed this interesting distinction. I did use AI to run a preliminary summary comparison. I enjoyed reading this. It seems to repoint the interpretation to not only the consistent view about the centrality of the Word of God. But also the relevant discussion of our election. Which we read about in Ephesians 2:8-9 and John 6:44,65. As well as here in Ephesians 1:
Eph 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:
Eph 1:4 According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:
Eph 1:5 Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,
Eph 1:6 To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.
As long as we take all those great concepts and doctrines to heart we are on safe ground.
Let’s not miss the over points being made.
Yes. You have spotted a real difference between the 1560 and 1599 Geneva annotations, and your impression is correct: the 1599 note is substantially shorter and does leave out an interpretive statement that was present in 1560.
The two notes side by side
1560 Geneva — Romans 10:17
“That is, by Gods commandement, of whome they are sent that preache the Gospel. It may be also taken for the very preaching itself.”
The 1560 note therefore gives two possible senses of “the word of God”:
- God’s commandment by which preachers are sent.
- The preaching itself—the Gospel that is preached.
1599 Geneva — Romans 10:17
“By God’s commandment.”
So yes—the second sentence, “It may be also taken for the very preaching itself,” has disappeared, as has the fuller explanation that the preachers are sent by God’s commandment.
But there is an important point here: this wasn’t simply a 1599 decision to delete one sentence from the 1560 note. The history of the Geneva annotations is more complicated.
What happened to the Geneva notes?
The 1560 Geneva Bible contained the original Genevan annotations, which were largely associated with the Marian-exile scholars and the Reformed theological tradition surrounding Geneva. The New Testament notes, however, were subsequently revised and replaced in a number of editions.
Beginning in 1576, many Geneva New Testaments used annotations associated with Laurence Tomson, who translated and adapted notes based on the work of Theodore Beza. Scholarly research on the Geneva marginalia confirms that the annotations changed considerably over the decades: the original 1557 NT marginalia were reproduced in 1560, but many later editions substituted Tomson’s notes.
That’s significant in your example.
The 1599 note is not merely the 1560 note with a sentence accidentally omitted. It represents a different form of the Geneva NT annotation tradition.
In fact, the 1599 note’s wording:
“A conclusion of the former discussion: we must ascend from faith to our vocation, for by our vocation we came to the testimony of our election.”
is itself a much more explicitly theological interpretation of Paul’s argument than the 1560 note you quoted. The 1599 edition preserves this as note (11), followed by the very brief explanation of “word of God” as “By God’s commandment.”
And there is something especially interesting here
The change actually makes the 1599 note less explicit about preaching.
The 1560 annotation says:
faith → hearing → God’s commandment → sent preachers → Gospel preached
and then explicitly says that “word of God” can itself mean “the very preaching itself.”
The 1599 annotation reduces the immediate explanation to:
“word of God” = “By God’s commandment.”
So if you’re studying Romans 10:17 as a statement about the ordinary means by which God creates faith through the preached Gospel, the 1560 annotation is actually more explicit and useful.
And this fits the context of Romans 10 very naturally:
- Romans 10:13 — calling upon the Lord
- Romans 10:14 — believing → hearing
- Romans 10:14 — hearing → a preacher
- Romans 10:15 — preacher → being sent
- Romans 10:16 — Israel hears the Gospel
- Romans 10:17 — faith → hearing → the word of God
The 1560 note makes that chain particularly clear.
Why would they change it?
I don’t think we can responsibly say that the translators deliberately removed this sentence for a theological reason. I haven’t found evidence documenting a specific decision by the 1599 editors saying, in effect, “We are removing this because we no longer believe the preached Gospel is meant here.”
What we can establish is that the Geneva Bible was not a static work. Its marginal notes were repeatedly revised, and the New Testament notes especially underwent substantial changes. Scholarly research describes the annotations as evolving over time rather than simply being reproduced unchanged from 1560.
So I would characterize the Romans 10:17 change this way:
The 1599 edition did not necessarily “correct” the 1560 note; it represents a later editorial form of the Geneva New Testament annotations, in which the explanatory note was abbreviated and the emphasis shifted toward the theological progression from faith to vocation/calling and election.
There is another fascinating detail: the 1599 wording “by God’s commandment” actually agrees very closely with the basic idea in the 1560 note, so the later editors did not discard the original interpretation. They compressed it.
The part they removed was the explicit statement:
“It may be also taken for the very preaching itself.”
That omission is worth noticing because it makes the 1599 note less explicit about “hearing” being the hearing of the Gospel preached, even though that concept remains embedded in the surrounding notes and context.
Rainbow Trout 