1I speak the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience bearing witness together with me in the Holy Spirit, 2that I have great and heavy sorrow (heart-sorrow/grief that brings a person down, vexing/distressing pain) and unremitting (no interval, incessant) anguish (consuming grief, pain, distress) in my heart. 3For I could wish that I myself to be accursed (laid up/pledged to destruction, anathema) away from the Christ for my brothers, my kinsmen (relatives, countrymen), according to flesh, 4Who are Israelites, whose is the sonship, and the glory, and the covenants, and the law-giving, and the sacred service, and the promises, 5Whose are the patriarchs, and out of whom is the Christ, according to flesh, who being over all, God blessed forever (into the ages/eons). Amen.

6However it is not as though the word of God has failed (faded away, withered away, fallen away), for not all who are of Israel are those Israel. 7Nor because they are seed of Abraham are they all children, but “In Isaac will a seed be called to you.” 8That is, the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God; but the children of the promise are reckoned for seed. 9For the word of promise is this; At the time will I come and there will be to Sarah a son. 10And not only this, but also Rebecca, having conceived by one, Isaac our father, 11For they being not yet born, nor having done anything inherently good or bad (worthless, base), that the purpose of God, according to election might remain, not of works (accomplishments), but of the One calling, 12it was said to her, “The greater will serve the lesser.” 13As it has been written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.

14What then will we say? Surely there is not injustice with God? May it never be! 15For he says to Moses, I will show mercy to whom I might show mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I might have compassion. 16So then it is not of him who is willing, nor of him who is running, but on whom God is showing mercy. 17For the Scripture says to Pharoah, “For this very thing I have raised you up (raised up wholly out from), so that I might show in you My power, and so that My name should be declared in all the earth.” 18So then to whom He wants, He shows mercy, and to whom He wants, He hardens (dried out, obstinately stubborn).

19You say to me then, Why does He still censure (find fault, rejected because condemned)? For who is resisting His plan (purpose, will, counsel, pre-set resolution)? 20Rather, O man, who are you who are answering against (contradict in reply) God? Will the thing formed (a thing formed, fashioned, molded) say to Him that has formed it, Why have You made me like this? 21Or has not the potter authority over the clay, out of the same lump to make one vessel of honor and another to dishonor? 22What if God wanting to show forth the wrath and to make known His power, bore in much forbearance (long-suffering) the vessels of wrath having been fitted together (prepared, properly adjusted) for destruction (cut off, perdition not annihilation, loss of well-being not being); 23And that He might make known the riches of His glory upon the vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand in advance (predestined) for glory, 24us, whom He has also called, not only from out of the Jews, but also from out of the ethnicities?

25As also he says in Hosea, “I will call that which is not My people My people, and her who is not having been loved (not Beloved), having been loved (Beloved).

26And it will happen 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.

27And Isaiah cried out aloud concerning Israel, Though the number of the sons of Israel will be as the sand of the sea, the remnant will be saved. 28For the Lord will perform (do, make) upon the earth His word, finishing (completing, fulfilling) it and cutting it short (bring to swift accomplishment).

29And as Isaiah said before, “Except the Lord of Hosts (Sabaoth) had left us a seed, like Sodom we would have become and like Gomorrah we would have been made like.”

30What then will we say? That those ethnicities not earnestly chasing after justice (righteousness), have attained (laid hold of, seized, aggressively take tight hold of) justice (righteousness), and that is justice (righteousness) out of faith. 31But Israel earnestly chasing after a law of justice (righteousness), at that law they did not arrive (precede, arrive ahead of time). 32Why? Because it was not out of faith, but as out of works. They stumbled over (at) the stone of stumbling,

33As it has been written, “Behold I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense (means of entrapment, a trigger of a trap for someone to be caught by their own devices, scandali in Latin) and the one believing on Him will not be put to shame.”