To HAND OVER, deliver up — a judicial word: what a magistrate does when he hands a prisoner to the executioner. It tolls three times in Romans 1 (vv 24, 26, 28), 'God gave them over', and the three occurrences are the skeleton of the paragraph. ⚠ It is also the word used all through the Gospels of Jesus being handed over — by Judas, by the priests, by Pilate — and by Paul of God who 'did not spare his own Son but gave him over for us all' (Romans 8:32). The same verb does the condemning and the rescuing. → first discussed at Rom 1:24