Biblion Bible Commentary
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Not All Israel
Romans 9:6-13
6 But it is not as though the word of God has come to nothing. For they are not all Israel that are of Israel. · WEB
The word of God has not failed because it never ran on descent, and two generations of patriarchs prove promise and call over flesh and works.
But it is not as though the word of God has come to nothing. For they are not all Israel that are of Israel.
The question under the whole section is stated by denial: has God's word failed? If the people of the promises stand largely outside the promise's fulfillment, has the promise collapsed — and with it, the ground of chapter 8's assurance? The answer's first move is a distinction Israel's own history draws: Israel was never simply coextensive with descended from Israel. The word did not fail; it never promised what it is accused of failing at.
The evidence is two generations of the founding family. First Abraham's sons: neither, because they are Abraham's offspring, are they all children. But, "your offspring will be accounted as from Isaac" Romans 9:7. Ishmael was as physically Abrahamic as Isaac — the line ran through the son of the promise, the child of the barren woman by the word Romans 9:9, not through flesh alone: it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as heirs — the counting verb again Romans 4:3.
Then the tighter case, chosen because it removes every variable: Rebekah also conceived by one, by our father Isaac Romans 9:10. Twins — same father, same mother, same conception, same womb. And the oracle came being not yet born, neither having done anything good or bad, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him who calls Romans 9:11: the elder will serve the younger.
The timing is the argument. Before birth, before deeds, the call sorted the twins — so the sorting cannot rest on works, which did not yet exist. The purpose clause states what the arrangement protects: God's freedom to call, the same freedom that justifies the ungodly Romans 4:5 and calls Gentiles who never sought him Romans 9:24.
And the seal is Malachi's retrospective over the two nations: Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated Romans 9:13 — the prophet's summary, centuries later, of Israel and Edom's histories, in Scripture's idiom of preference where hated marks the not-chosen rather than the despised Genesis 29:31. What the verses establish is the principle the next paragraph must defend: the line of promise has always run by God's call, not by human pedigree or performance — which is why present unbelieving Israel refutes nothing about the word of God.
held with reason What this mark means