Hear what the LORD says:
    Arise, plead your case before the mountains,
        and let the hills hear your voice.
    Hear, you mountains, the indictment of the LORD,
        and you enduring foundations of the earth,
    for the LORD has an indictment against his people,
        and he will contend with Israel.
    
    
    “O my people, what have I done to you?
        How have I wearied you? Answer me!
    For I brought you up from the land of Egypt
        and redeemed you from the house of slavery,
    and I sent before you Moses,
        Aaron, and Miriam.
    O my people, remember what Balak king of Moab devised,
        and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him,
    and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal,
        that you may know the righteous acts of the LORD.”
    
    
        “With what shall I come before the LORD,
        and bow myself before God on high?
    Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
        with calves a year old?
    Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams,
        with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
    Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
        the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
    He has told you, O man, what is good;
        and what does the LORD require of you
    but to do justice, and to love kindness,
        and to walk humbly with your God?
    
    
        The voice of the LORD cries to the city—
        and it is sound wisdom to fear your name:
    “Hear of the rod and of him who appointed it!
        Can I forget any longer the treasures of wickedness in the house of the wicked,
        and the scant measure that is accursed?
    Shall I acquit the man with wicked scales
        and with a bag of deceitful weights?
    Your rich men are full of violence;
        your inhabitants speak lies,
        and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth.
    Therefore I strike you with a grievous blow,
        making you desolate because of your sins.
    You shall eat, but not be satisfied,
        and there shall be hunger within you;
    you shall put away, but not preserve,
        and what you preserve I will give to the sword.
    You shall sow, but not reap;
        you shall tread olives, but not anoint yourselves with oil;
        you shall tread grapes, but not drink wine.
    For you have kept the statutes of Omri,
        and all the works of the house of Ahab;
        and you have walked in their counsels,
    that I may make you a desolation, and your inhabitants a hissing;
        so you shall bear the scorn of my people.”
    
    
        Woe is me! For I have become
        as when the summer fruit has been gathered,
        as when the grapes have been gleaned:
    there is no cluster to eat,
        no first-ripe fig that my soul desires.
    The godly has perished from the earth,
        and there is no one upright among mankind;
    they all lie in wait for blood,
        and each hunts the other with a net.
    Their hands are on what is evil, to do it well;
        the prince and the judge ask for a bribe,
    and the great man utters the evil desire of his soul;
        thus they weave it together.
    The best of them is like a brier,
        the most upright of them a thorn hedge.
    The day of your watchmen, of your punishment, has come;
        now their confusion is at hand.
    Put no trust in a neighbor;
        have no confidence in a friend;
    guard the doors of your mouth
        from her who lies in your arms;
    for the son treats the father with contempt,
        the daughter rises up against her mother,
    the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
        a man’s enemies are the men of his own house.
    But as for me, I will look to the LORD;
        I will wait for the God of my salvation;
        my God will hear me.
    
    
    Rejoice not over me, O my enemy;
        when I fall, I shall rise;
    when I sit in darkness,
        the LORD will be a light to me.
    I will bear the indignation of the LORD
        because I have sinned against him,
    until he pleads my cause
        and executes judgment for me.
    He will bring me out to the light;
        I shall look upon his vindication.
    Then my enemy will see,
        and shame will cover her who said to me,
        “Where is the LORD your God?”
    My eyes will look upon her;
        now she will be trampled down
        like the mire of the streets.
    
    
    A day for the building of your walls!
        In that day the boundary shall be far extended.
    In that day they will come to you,
        from Assyria and the cities of Egypt,
    and from Egypt to the River,
        from sea to sea and from mountain to mountain.
    But the earth will be desolate
        because of its inhabitants,
        for the fruit of their deeds.
    
    
    Shepherd your people with your staff,
        the flock of your inheritance,
    who dwell alone in a forest
        in the midst of a garden land;
    let them graze in Bashan and Gilead
        as in the days of old.
    As in the days when you came out of the land of Egypt,
        I will show them marvelous things.
    The nations shall see and be ashamed of all their might;
    they shall lay their hands on their mouths;
        their ears shall be deaf;
    they shall lick the dust like a serpent,
        like the crawling things of the earth;
    they shall come trembling out of their strongholds;
        they shall turn in dread to the LORD our God,
        and they shall be in fear of you.
    
    
        Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity
        and passing over transgression
        for the remnant of his inheritance?
    He does not retain his anger forever,
        because he delights in steadfast love.
    He will again have compassion on us;
        he will tread our iniquities underfoot.
    You will cast all our sins
        into the depths of the sea.
    You will show faithfulness to Jacob
        and steadfast love to Abraham,
    as you have sworn to our fathers
        from the days of old. (ESV)

I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit—that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.

  But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. For this is what the promise said: “About this time next year I will return, and Sarah shall have a son.” And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad—in order that God’s purpose of election might continue, not because of works but because of him who calls—she was told, “The older will serve the younger.” As it is written, “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.”

  What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

  You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory—even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? As indeed he says in Hosea,

    “Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’
        and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’”
    “And in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’
        there they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’”
    
    
      And Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: “Though the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, only a remnant of them will be saved, for the Lord will carry out his sentence upon the earth fully and without delay.” And as Isaiah predicted,

    “If the Lord of hosts had not left us offspring,
        we would have been like Sodom
        and become like Gomorrah.”
    
    
      What shall we say, then? That Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, a righteousness that is by faith; but that Israel who pursued a law that would lead to righteousness did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written,

    “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense;
        and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” (ESV)