eir nation.

9:1. I speak the truth in Christ: I lie not, my conscience bearing me
witness in the Holy Ghost:

9:2. That I have great sadness and continual sorrow in my heart.

9:3. For I wished myself to be an anathema from Christ, for my brethren:
who are my kinsmen according to the flesh:

Anathema... A curse. The apostle's concern and love for his countrymen
the Jews was so great, that he was willing to suffer even an anathema,
or curse, for their sake; or any evil that could come upon him, without
his offending God.

9:4. Who are Israelites: to whom belongeth the adoption as of children
and the glory and the testament and the giving of the law and the
service of God and the promises:

9:5. Whose are the fathers and of whom is Christ, according to the
flesh, who is over all things, God blessed for ever. Amen.

9:6. Not as though the word of God hath miscarried. For all are not
Israelites that are of Israel.

All are not Israelites, etc... Not all, who are the carnal seed of
Israel, are true Israelites in God's account: who, as by his free grace,
he heretofore preferred Isaac before Ismael, and Jacob before Esau, so
he could, and did by the like free grace, election and mercy, raise up
spiritual children by faith to Abraham and Israel, from among the
Gentiles, and prefer them before the carnal Jews.

9:7. Neither are all they that are the seed of Abraham, children: but in
Isaac shall thy seed be called.

9:8. That is to say, not they that are the children of the flesh are the
children of God: but they that are the children of the promise are
accounted for the seed.

9:9. For this is the word of promise: According to this time will I
come. And Sara shall have a son.

9:10. And not only she. But when Rebecca also had conceived at once of
Isaac our father.

9:11. For when the children were not yet born, nor had done any good or
evil (that the purpose of God according to election might stand):

Not yet born, etc... By this example of these twins, and the preference
of the younger to the elder, the drift of the apostle is, to shew that
God, in his election, mercy and grace, is not tied to any particular
nation, as the Jews imagined; nor to any prerogative of birth, or any
forgoing merits. For as, antecedently to his grace, he sees no merits in
any, but finds all involved in sin, in the common mass of condemnation;
and all children of wrath: there is no one whom he might not justly
leave in that mass; so