Romans 9

¹ I say the truth in Christ, I do not deceive, my conscience co-witnessing for me in the Holy Spirit, ² because great pain is to me and unceasing woe to my heart. ³ For I wish that I myself be accursed from Christ in behalf of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh, ⁴ who are Israelites, whose [are] the sonship and the glory and the covenants and the lawgiving and the service and the promises, ⁵ whose [are] the fathers, and from whom [is] the Christ according to the flesh, who is God, over all, blessed to eternity, Amen. ⁶ By no means has the word of God failed, for they are not all from Israel who are of Israel. ⁷ Neither because they are seed of Abraham [are] they all [his] children, rather: In Isaac shall your seed be called. ⁸ That is, not the children of the flesh are the children of God, but the children of the promise are reckoned as seed. ⁹ For the word of the promise is this: According to the opportune-time¹ I will come and [a] child will be to Sarah. ¹⁰ And not only [this], but Rebecca also having conceived by one, [namely] Isaac our father— ¹¹ for [the child] being not yet born nor having done any good or worthless [thing], in order that the purpose of God according to selection stand, ¹² not by works but by the [one] calling—It was said to her that: The greater² will be slave to the lesser³, ¹³ just as it is written: Jacob I have agape-loved, but Esau I have hated. ¹⁴ What therefore will we say? [Is there] injustice with God?⁴ May it not be! ¹⁵ For to Moses he says: I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. ¹⁶ [it is] therefore not of the [one] wishing, nor the [one] running, but of God being merciful. ¹⁷ For the scripture says to Pharaoh that: Unto this [thing] itself have I raised you up, in order that I reveal in you my power, and in order that my name be proclaimed in all the land. ¹⁸ Therefore on whom he wishes he is merciful, but whom he wishes he hardens. ¹⁹ You will say to me therefore: Why does he blame? For who has resisted his intention? ²⁰ O man, rather who are you [who] contradicts God? Shall the [thing] formed say to the [one] having formed [it]: Why have you made me thus?⁴ ²¹ Or doesn't the potter of the clay have authority to make on the one hand [a] vessel for honor, or on the other [a vessel] for dishonor? ²² But [what] if God, wishing to reveal [his] wrath and make known his power, has endured, in much long-suffering, vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, ²³ and in order that he make known the wealth of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory, ²⁴ us whom he also called, not only from [the] Jews, but from the nations? ²⁵ As it also says in Hosea:

I will call [them] my people [who were] not my people
And her agape-beloved [who was] not my agape-beloved.
²⁶ And it will be in the place where it was said to them,
You [are] not my people.
Here they will be called sons of [the] zoe-living⁵ God.
²⁷ And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel:
Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea,
The remainder will be saved.
²⁸ For [he is] completing [this] word and shortening it in justice,
Because [a] shortened word will the Lord do upon the land.

²⁹ And just as Isaiah foretold:

Unless the Lord sabaoth left to us [a] seed
We would have become as Sodom
and would have been made like Gomorrah.

³⁰ What therefore will we say? That the nations who [were] not pursuing justness have attained justness, indeed the justness from faith. ³¹ But Israel, pursuing [the] law of justness, to [this] law has not attained. ³² Why? Because not from belief but from works; they dashed against the stone of dashing, just as it is written:

Behold I place in Zion [a] stone of dashing
and [a] rock of stumbling.
And the [one] believing upon him will not be shamed.

¹KAIROS (καιρoς ) `opportune time', `proper time', `season'

²or "elder"

³or "younger"

⁴Grammar indicates "no" answer expected or expresses uncertainty

⁵from ZOE "ZOH-ay" (ζωη)—Life 'collectively', interdependent, interconnected. Although it means 'life' in the conventional sense (for example: Matt.9:18, Matt.27:63, Luke.2:36, Acts.25:24, Rom.7:2, 2Cor.1:8, 1Thes.4:17, 1Tim.5:10, Rev.19:20), Jesus uses ZOE exclusively of 'life eternal' (with the possible exceptions of Luke.15:13, Luke.16:25). The other N.T. writers use ZOE in both senses—temporal and eternal, generally clear from the context. The Father is the 'zoe-living God' (see Matt.16:16). The Septuagint (LXX) in Gen.2:7 has "...[God] breathed into his nostrils the breath of zoe-life, and the man became a zoe-living psyche-life" (and see 1Cor.15:45); and Gen.3:20 (LXX) "And Adam called his wife's name ZOE, because she was the mother of all zoe-living." Contrast PSYCHE (ψυχη): an individual manifestation of life/consciousness. See John.12:25 where both ZOE and PSYCHE occur. Greek also has the word BIOS (βιoς ) for 'life' in the sense of biological processes.