Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)
Can we offer the excuse of ignorance on Israel’s behalf?
14-15 Now how can they call on one in whom they have never believed? How can they believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how can they hear unless someone proclaims him? And who will go to tell them unless he is sent? As the scripture puts it: ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the Gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things!’
16 Yet all who have heard have not responded to the Gospel. Isaiah asks, you remember, ‘Lord, who has believed our report?’
17 (Belief you see, can only come from hearing the message, and the message is the word of Christ.)
18 But when I ask myself: “Did they never hear?” I have to answer that they have heard, for ‘Their sound has gone out to all the earth, and their word to the ends of the world’.
19 Then I say to myself: “Did Israel not know?” And my answer must be that they did. For Moses says: ‘I will provoke you to jealousy by those who are not a nation. I will anger you by a foolish nation’.
20 And Isaiah, more daring still, puts these words into the mouth of God: ‘I was found by those who did not seek me; I was made manifest to those who did not ask for me’.
21 And then, speaking of Israel: ‘All day long I have stretched out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people’.
The New Testament in Modern English by J.B Phillips copyright © 1960, 1972 J. B. Phillips. Administered by The Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England. Used by Permission.