Are you not our God who drove out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel and who gave it for ever to the descendants of Abraham your friend?
for you are a holy people belonging to the Lord your God. The Lord has chosen you to be his own possession out of all the peoples on the face of the earth.
Now this is what the Lord says – the one who created you, Jacob, and the one who formed you, Israel – ‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are mine.
‘Have you not noticed what these people have said? They say, “The Lord has rejected the two families he had chosen.” My people are treated with contempt and no longer regarded as a nation among them.
And don’t presume to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father.” For I tell you that God is able to raise up children for Abraham from these stones.
Yet you are our Father, even though Abraham does not know us and Israel doesn’t recognise us. You, Lord, are our Father; your name is Our Redeemer from Ancient Times.
Yet the Lord had his heart set on your ancestors and loved them. He chose their descendants after them #– #he chose you out of all the peoples, as it is today.
Why, then, was the law given? It was added for the sake of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise was made would come. The law was put into effect through angels by means of a mediator.
For the Lord will have compassion on Jacob and will choose Israel again. He will settle them on their own land. The resident foreigner will join them and be united with the house of Jacob.
‘You are my witnesses’ – this is the Lord’s declaration – ‘and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. No god was formed before me, and there will be none after me.
‘I have loved you,’ says the Lord. Yet you ask, ‘How have you loved us? ’ ‘Wasn’t Esau Jacob’s brother? ’ This is the Lord’s declaration. ‘Even so, I loved Jacob,