Romans 9:9

For this is a word of promise [this is the saying or promise that brought Isaac into being, and made him a child of promise and not of natural birth-- Genesis 18:10], According to this season [Godet translates, "Next year at the moment when this same time (this same epoch) will return"] will I come [to fulfill my promise], and Sarah shall have a son. [This fixing of the definite time (an exact year from the date of the promise) when the child of promise should be born, is extremely significant. Ishmael was alive when this promise was given. But what Jew would have justified him in urging a claim as against the promised Isaac? Later, in the days of Daniel, a time limit was set for Christ, the greater Son of promise, by which it is made sure that he would begin his ministry in A. D. 26. If Ishmael had no reason or right to complain that he and his offspring (though he was established as a son) were stood aside for Isaac and his offspring, what right had Isaac in his turn to complain if God set a date when he and his offspring (though established son as was Ishmael) should in like manner be stood aside for the greater Son of promise, the Christ and his offspring? God fixed the dates in each case, and the dates in Daniel 9:24-25 are equally explicit with Genesis 17:21. The Christ, "the anointed one, the prince," was to appear at the end of sixty-nine weeks of years, or in A. D. 26, and at the full end of the seventy weeks, or eight years later, in A. D. 34, the time "decreed upon thy [Daniel's] people" came to an end. The Holy Spirit that year emphasized the rejection of fleshly Israel and the acceptance of the children of promise (believers in Christ, his spiritual offspring) by withdrawing from the Jews and appearing upon the household of Cornelius, the firstfruits of the Gentiles (Acts 10). God gave Ishmael only one year's warning, and no especial call to repent, or opportunity to save himself in any way. But through Daniel, Israel had five hundred years of warning, and was invited of Christ and of all his apostles (even being invariably invited first, by Paul the apostle to the Gentiles) to become joint children of promise with the Gentiles; a joint relationship wherein they were bound by every circumstance to obtain and hold the pre-eminence. Surely, then, the word of God had not failed as to them, but they had failed as to it.]