The Call of Abram

12 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.^{(A) 2} I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.^{(B) 3} I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”^[a](C)

⁷ “It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples.^{(A) 8} It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath that he swore to your ancestors that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.^{(B) 9} Know, therefore, that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who maintains covenant loyalty with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations,^{(C) 10} and who repays in their own person those who reject him. He does not delay but repays in their own person those who reject him. ¹¹ Therefore, observe diligently the commandment—the statutes and the ordinances—that I am commanding you today.

¹¹ “Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes that I am commanding you today. ¹² When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them ¹³ and when your herds and flocks have multiplied and your silver and gold is multiplied and all that you have is multiplied, ¹⁴ then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery,^{(A) 15} who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid wasteland with poisonous^[a] snakes and scorpions. He made water flow for you from flint rock.^{(B) 16} He fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you and in the end to do you good.^{(C) 17} Do not say to yourself, ‘My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.’ ¹⁸ But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today.^{(D) 19} If you do forget the Lord your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish.^{(E) 20} Like the nations that the Lord is destroying before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.

God’s Election of Israel

9 I am speaking the truth in Christ—I am not lying; my conscience confirms it by the Holy Spirit^(A)— ² I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. ³ For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own brothers and sisters, my own flesh and blood.^{(B) 4} They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises;^{(C) 5} to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever.^[a] Amen.^(D)

⁶ It is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all those descended from Israel are Israelites,^{(E) 7} and not all of Abraham’s children are his descendants, but “it is through Isaac that descendants shall be named for you.”^{(F) 8} 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 descendants.