1I speak the truth in Messiah, I do not lie, my conscience bearing witness with me in the Holy Spirit, 2that I have great sorrow and unceasing pain in my heart. 3For I could wish that I myself were anathema from Messiah for my brothers’ sake, my kinsmen according to the flesh: 4who 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; 5whose are the fathers, and of whom is Messiah as concerning the flesh. God who is over all be blessed forever. Amen. 6But it is not as though the word of God has come to nothing. For they are not all Israel, who are of Israel: 7neither, because they are Abraham’s seed, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall your seed be called. 8That 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. 9For this is a word of promise, According to this season I will come, and Sarah shall have a son. 10And not only so; but Rebecca also having conceived by one, even by our father Isaac— 11for the children being not yet born, nor having done anything good or bad, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him who calls, 12it was said to her, The elder shall serve the younger. 13Even as it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. 14What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. 15For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. 16So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy. 17For 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 proclaimed in all the earth. 18So then he has mercy on whom he will, and whom he will he hardens. 19You will say then to me, Why does he still find fault? For who withstands his will? 20No but, O man, who are you who replies against God? Shall the thing formed say to him who formed it, Why did you make me like this? 21Or does the potter not have a right over the clay, from the same lump to make one part a vessel to honor, and another to dishonor? 22What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: 23and that he might make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory, 24even us, whom he also called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles? 25As he says also in Hosea, I will call that my people, which was not my people; And her beloved, who was not beloved. 26And 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. 27And Isaiah cries concerning Israel, If the number of the children of Israel is as the sand of the sea, it is the remnant that shall be saved: 28for Yehovah will execute his word upon the earth, finishing it and cutting it short. 29And, as Isaiah has said before, Unless Yehovah of hosts had left us a seed, We would have become as Sodom, and would have been made like Gomorrah. 30What shall we say then? That the Gentiles, who did not follow after righteousness, attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith: 31but Israel, following after the Torah of righteousness, did not arrive at that Torah. 32Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were by works. They stumbled at the stone of stumbling; 33even as it is written, Behold, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense: And the one believing in him shall not be put to shame.