9:1 I say the truth in Christ, I do not lie, my conscience bearing witness with me in the Holy Spirit,
9:2 that I have great sorrow and unceasing pain in my heart.
9:3 For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brothers' sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh:
9:4 who are Israelites; whose is the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service [of God], and the promises;
9:5 whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ as concerning the flesh. May God, who is over all, be blessed forever. Amen.
9:6 But [it is] not as though the word of God has come to nothing. For they are not all Israel, who are of Israel:
9:7 neither, because they are Abraham's seed, are they all children: but, In Isaac will your seed be called.
9:8 That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God; but the children of the promise are reckoned for a seed.
9:9 For this is a word of promise, According to this season I will come, and Sarah will have a son.
9:10 And not only so; but Rebecca also having conceived by one, [even] by our father Isaac--
9:11 for [the children] not being yet born, neither having participated in anything good or bad, that the purpose of God according to election might stay,
9:12 not of works, but of him who calls, it was said to her, The elder will serve as a slave to the younger.
9:13 According to as it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.
9:14 What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.
9:15 For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.
9:16 So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy.
9:17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, For this very purpose I raised you up, that I might show in you my power, and that my name might be published abroad in all the earth.
9:18 So then he has mercy on whom he wants, and he hardens whom he wants.
9:19 You will say then to me, Why then does he still find fault? For who withstands his will?
9:20 On the contrary, O man, who are you that reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, Why did you make me thus?
9:21 Or has not the potter a right over the clay, from the same lump to make one part a vessel to honor, and another to shame?
9:22 What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:
9:23 and that he might make known the riches of his glory on vessels of mercy, which he prepared in advance to glory,
9:24 [even] us, whom he also called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles?
9:25 As he says also in Hosea, I will call that my people, which was not my people; And her beloved, that was not beloved.
9:26 And it will be, [that] in the place where it was said to them, You+ are not my people, There they will be called sons of the living God.
9:27 And Isaiah cries concerning Israel, If the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, it is the remnant that will be saved:
9:28 for the Lord will execute [his] word on the earth, finishing it and cutting it short.
9:29 And, as Isaiah has said before, Except Yahweh of hosts had left us a seed, We had become as Sodom, and had been made like Gomorrah.
9:30 What shall we say then? That the Gentiles, who did not follow after righteousness, attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith:
9:31 but Israel, following after a law of righteousness, did not arrive at [that] law.
9:32 Why? Because [they sought it] not by faith, but as it were by works. They stumbled at the stone of stumbling;
9:33 even as it is written, Look, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense: And he who believes on him will not be put to shame.