1. So I ask, God has not rejected his people, has he? Absolutely not! For I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, from the tribe of Benjamin.
2. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew! Do you not know what the scripture says about Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel?
3. “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars; I alone am left and they are seeking my life!”
4. But what was the divine response to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand people who have not bent the knee to Baal.”
5. So in the same way at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace.
6. And if it is by grace, it is no longer by works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace.
7. What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was diligently seeking, but the elect obtained it. The rest were hardened,
8. as it is written,“God gave them a spirit of stupor,eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, to this very day.”
9. And David says,“Let their table become a snare and trap,a stumbling block and a retribution for them;