[Sidenote: Ver. 6.] =But it is not as though the word of God has been thrown out (ἐκπέπτωκε),= that "word" whose divine honour was dearer to him than even that of his people. =For not all who come from Israel constitute Israel;= [Sidenote: Ver. 7.] =nor, because they are seed of Abraham, are they all= his =children,= in the sense of family life and rights; =but "In Isaac shall a seed be called thee"= (Gen. xxi. 12); Isaac, and not any son of thy body begotten, is father of those whom thou shalt claim as thy covenant-race. [Sidenote: Ver. 8.] =That is to say, not the children of his (τῆς) flesh are the children of his (τοῦ) God; no, the children of the promise,= indicated and limited by its developed terms, =are reckoned as seed.= [Sidenote: Ver. 9.] =For of the promise this was the word= (Gen. xviii. 10, 14), ="According to this time I will come, and Sarah,= she and not _any_ spouse of thine; no Hagar, no Keturah, but Sarah, =shall have a son."= And the law of limitations did not stop there, but contracted yet again the stream of even physical filiation: [Sidenote: Ver. 10.] =Nor only so, but Rebecca too--being with child,= with twin children, =of one husband=--no problem of complex parentage, as with Abraham, occurring here--=even of Isaac our father,= just named as the selected heir--[Sidenote: Ver. 11.] =(for= it was =while they were not yet born, while they had not yet shewn any conduct (πραξάντων τι) good or bad, that the choice-wise purpose of God might remain,= sole and sovereign, [Sidenote: Ver. 12.] =not based on works, but= wholly =on the Caller)--it was said to her= (Gen. xxv. 23), ="The greater shall be bondman to the less." As it stands written,= in the prophet's message a millennium later, ="Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated,"[153]= I repudiated him as heir.
So the limit has run always along with the promise. Ishmael is Abraham's son, yet not his son. Esau is Isaac's son, yet not his son. And though we trace in Ishmael and in Esau, as they grow, characteristics which may seem to explain the limitation, this will not really do. For the chosen one in each case has his conspicuous unfavourable characteristics too. And the whole tone of the record (not to speak of this its apostolic interpretation) looks towards mystery, not explanation. Esau's "profanity" was the concurrent occasion, not the cause, of the choice of Jacob. The reason of the choice lay in the depths of God, that World "dark with excess of bright." All is well there, but not the less all is unknown.
So we are led up to the shut door of the sanctuary of God's Choice. Touch it; it is adamantine, and it is fast locked. No blind Destiny has turned the key, and lost it. No inaccessible Tyrant sits within, playing to himself both sides of a game of fate, and indifferent to the cry of the soul. The Key-Bearer, whose Name is engraved on the portal, is "He that liveth, and was dead, and is alive for evermore" (Rev. i. 18). And if you listen you will hear words within, like the soft deep voice of many waters, yet of an eternal Heart; "_I am that I am; I will that I will; trust Me_." But the door _is_ locked; and the Voice _is_ mystery.
Ah, what agonies have been felt in human souls, as men have looked at that gate, and pondered the unknown interior! The Eternal knows, with infinite kindness and sympathy, the pain unspeakable which can beset the creature when it wrestles with His Eternity, and tries to clasp it with both hands, and to say that "that is all!" We do not find in Scripture, surely, anything like an anathema for that awful sense of the unknown which can gather on the soul drawn--irresistibly as it sometimes seems to be--into the problems of the Choice of God, and oppressed as with "the weight of all the seas upon it," by the very questions stated presently here by the Apostle. The Lord knoweth, not only His will, but our heart, in these matters. And where He entirely declines to explain (surely because we are not yet of age to understand Him if He did) He yet shews us JESUS, and bids us meet the silence of the mystery with the silence of a personal trust in the personal Character revealed in Him.