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¹ I say the truth in Christ, I do not lie, my conscience bearing witness with me in the Holy Spirit,² that I have great sorrow and unceasing pain in my heart.³ For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brothers' sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh: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;⁵ whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.

⁶ But [it is] not as though the word of God has come to nothing. For they are not all Israel, that are of Israel:⁷ neither, because they are Abraham's seed, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall your seed be called.⁸ That is, it is not the children of the flesh that are children of God; but the children of the promise are reckoned for a seed.⁹ For this is a word of promise, According to this season I will come, and Sarah shall have a son.¹⁰ And not only so; but Rebecca also having conceived by one, [even] by our father Isaac-¹¹ for [the children] not being yet born, neither having done anything good or bad, that the purpose of God according to election might stand,¹² not of works, but of him that calls, it was said to her, The elder will serve as a slave to the younger.¹³ According to as it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.

¹⁴ What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.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.¹⁶ So then it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that has mercy.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.¹⁸ So then he has mercy on whom he wants, and he hardens whom he wants.¹⁹ You will say then to me, Why then does he still find fault? For who withstands his will?²⁰ On the contrary, O man, who are you that reply against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why did you make me thus?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?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:²³ and that he might make known the riches of his glory on vessels of mercy, which he prepared in advance to glory,²⁴ [even] us, whom he also called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles?

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.²⁶ And it shall be, [that] in the place where it was said to them, You are not my people, There they shall be called sons of the living God.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 shall be saved:²⁸ for the Lord will execute [his] word on the earth, finishing it and cutting it short.²⁹ And, as Isaiah has said before, Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, We had become as Sodom, and had been made like Gomorrah.

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:³¹ but Israel, following after a law of righteousness, did not arrive at [that] law.³² Why? Because [they sought it] not by faith, but as it were by works. They stumbled at the stone of stumbling;³³ even as it is written, Look, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense: And he that believes on him shall not be put to shame.