1. Therefore I say, God has not rejected his people, has he? May it never be! For I also am an Israelite, from the descendants of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.
2. God has not rejected his people, whom he foreknew! Or do you not know, in the passage about Elijah, what the scripture says—how he appeals to God against Israel?
3. “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have torn down your altars, and I alone am left, and they are seeking my life!”
4. But what does the divine response say to him? “I have left for myself seven thousand people who have not bent the knee to Baal.”
5. So in this way also at the present time, there is a remnant selected by grace.
6. But if by grace, it is no longer by works, for otherwise grace would no longer be grace.
7. What then? What Israel was searching for, this it did not obtain. But the elect obtained it, and the rest were hardened,
8. just as it is written, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that do not see and ears that do not hear, until this very day.”
9. And David says, “Let their table become a snare and a trap, and a cause for stumbling and a retribution to them;
10. let their eyes be darkened so that they do not see, and cause their backs to bend continually.”