and is more excellent than the angels, inasmuch as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than have they.

For to what angel did God ever say, "You are my Son, today I have become your Father"?

Thou have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness. Because of this, God, thy God, anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy companions.

And, you, Lord, in the beginning have laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of your hands:

They will be rolled up like a cloth, even like a robe, and they will be changed: but you are the same and your years will have no end.

For this reason we must pay the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, for fear we should drift away.

how shall, we, escape, if, so great a salvation as this, we have neglected, - which, indeed, having received, a beginning, of being spoken through the Lord, by them who heard, unto us was confirmed,

You made Him inferior to angels for a little while, yet you have crowned Him with glory and honor, you have set Him over the works of your hands,

You have put all things under His feet!" Now when He gave Him authority over everything, He did not leave a single thing that was not put under His authority. But as yet we do not see everything actually under His authority,

Because it was right for him, for whom and through whom all things have being, in guiding his sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation complete through pain.

Both Jesus who sanctifies and those who are sanctified [that is, spiritually transformed, made holy, and set apart for God’s purpose] are all from one Father; for this reason He is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters,

Since therefore the children have partaken of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might make him who has the power of death impotent, that is, the devil.

For this reason, holy brothers, marked out to have a part in heaven, give thought to Jesus the representative and high priest of our faith;

And it was right for this man to have more honour than Moses, even as the builder of a house has more honour than the house.

do not have a stubborn heart like you did when you provoked [God] during the time you tested [His patience] in the desert,

So I was indignant with that generation, and I said, 'Their hearts are always going astray, and they have never come to know my ways.'

but encourage one another every day, as long as we can still speak of Today, so that no one of you may have his heart hardened by the pleasantness of sin.

For we have become companions of the Christ, if only we keep in possession the primacy of the essence, steadfast until the end,

As it has been said [Psa. 95:7], "Today, if you hear His [i.e., God's] voice, do not have a stubborn heart like you did when you provoked [God]."

Let us be afraid therefore, lest, a promise being left behind to enter into his rest, any of you should seem to have come short.

For we have had the good news told to us as well as they, but the message heard did them no good, because they were not by faith made one with those who heeded it.

For we who have believed are being admitted to that rest, just as He has said: "As in my anger I took oath, they shall not be admitted to my rest," although God's works had been completed at the creation of the world.

So that as it is clear that some have to go in, and that the first hearers of the good news were not able to go in because they went against God's orders,

God again identified a certain day, [calling it] "Today," in David's [writings], a long time later (just as it was referred to above) [Psa. 95:7-8], "Today, if you hear His [i.e., God's] voice, do not have a stubborn heart."

For if Joshua had given them rest, he would not have spoken about another day after these things.

which shows that the people of God have a sabbath still to come.

Because of this, let us have a strong desire to come into that rest, and let no one go after the example of those who went against God's orders.

No creature of His can escape God's sight, but everything is bare and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we have to give account.

Since then we have in Jesus, the Son of God, a great High Priest who has gone right up to heaven itself, let us continue to keep a firm hold on our profession of faith in Him.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but who was tempted in all things in the same way, without sin.

Every high priest who is taken from among men is given his position to take care of the interests of men in those things which have to do with God, so that he may make offerings for sins.

He is able to have feeling for those who have no knowledge and for those who are wandering from the true way, because he himself is feeble;

So also Christ did not glorify himself to become a high priest, but it was he who said to him, Thou are my Son, today I have begotten thee.

About whom, much subject matter from us is also difficult to explain, since ye have become sluggish in hearing.

For also men who ought to be teachers because of the time, ye have need again for some man to teach you the rudiments of the beginning of the oracles of God, and have become men who have need of milk, and not of solid food.

But solid food belongs to full-grown men who on account of constant use have their faculties trained to distinguish good and evil.

of teaching about washings (ritual purifications), the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. [These are all important matters in which you should have been proficient long ago.]

And we will do so [i.e., go on to more advanced teaching] if God allows us to. For it is impossible to get people who have [completely] fallen away [from God] to repent again, because they [continue to] crucify for themselves God's Son all over again, and hold Him up to contempt.

For it is impossible for those who have once for all been enlightened and have experienced the gift from heaven, who have been made sharers of the Holy Spirit

and have experienced how good God's message is and the mighty powers of the age to come,

and then have fallen by the wayside -- it is impossible, I say, to keep on restoring them to their first repentance, since they continue to crucify the Son of God to their detriment and hold Him up to contempt.

But we are persuaded better things about you, beloved, and things that have salvation, even though we speak this way.

For God is not so unjust as to forget the work you have done and the love you have shown His name in the service you have rendered for your fellow-Christians, and still are doing.

But we desire every one of you to show the same diligence, in order to have your hope fully assured to the end:

but imitate the example of those who by faith and patience have obtain'd the inheritance that was promis'd to them.

For men make oath by something greater than themselves, and they accept an oath as settling finally any disagreement they may have.

So that when it was God's desire to make it specially clear to those who by his word were to have the heritage, that his purpose was fixed, he made it more certain with an oath;

So that by two immutable events, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have strong encouragement, having fled for refuge to seize the hope being openly displayed.

Which we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and that enters into the interior of the veil,

without father, without mother, without genealogy; his days have no beginning, and his life no end; but like the son of God, he was a perpetual priest.

Now see how great this man must have been that even the patriarch Abraham gave him a tenth of his spoils.

Now indeed those of the sons of Levi who receive the priesthood have commandment to collect tithes from the people according to the law, that is, of their brothers, although having come out of the loins of Abraham.

Now if perfection had been reached through the Levitical priesthood -- for on it as a basis even the law was enacted for the people-- what further need would there have been of appointing a different priest, with the rank of Melchizedek, instead of designating one with the rank of Aaron?

On the one hand we have here the abrogation of an earlier code because it was weak and ineffective--

for the law had never made anything perfect -- and so a better hope is brought to us, through which we have approach to God.

And by as much as [this was] not without an oath (for these on the one hand {have become priests} without an oath,

For, they, indeed, apart from oath-taking, have been made priests, but, he, with an oath-taking, through him that was saying unto him - The Lord sware, and will not regret, - Thou, art a priest, age-abidingly

By so much is it a better agreement which we have through Jesus.

And of course those who have become priests are more, because of being prevented to continue by death,

It was right for us to have such a high priest, one who is holy and without evil, doing no wrong, having no part with sinners, and made higher than the heavens:

one who has no need to offer sacrifices daily as those High Priests have, first for their own sins, and then for those of the People. For this he did once and for all, when he offered himself as the sacrifice.

For the law appoints men high priests who have weakness, but the word of the oath after the law, a Son who has been fully perfected into the age.

Now a summation about the things being spoken is, we have such a high priest who was seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens,

For every high priest is appointed in order to offer both gifts and sacrifices, whereupon it is necessary for this man also have something that he may offer.

If he had been on earth he would not have been a priest at all, because there are other priests who make the offerings ordered by the law;

For if that first covenant had been faultless, then would no place have been sought for a second.

not according to the alliance that I made with their fathers, when I took them by the hand, to lead them out of the land of Egypt; for they have not kept my alliance, wherefore I have rejected them, saith the Lord.

'For this is the agreement that I will make with the house of Israel, In those later days,' says the Lord; 'I will put my laws into their minds, And write them on their hearts, And they will have me for their God, And I will have them for my people.

And there will be no need for every man to be teaching his brother, or his neighbour, saying, This is the knowledge of the Lord: for they will all have knowledge of me, great and small.

For I will have mercy upon their wrong-doings, And their sins I will remember no more."

Even the first, indeed, therefore, used to have righteous appointments of divine service, even the holy ritual well arranged.

Now when these things have been so prepared, the priests are continually entering the outer tabernacle performing the divine worship,

but into the second [inner tabernacle, the Holy of Holies], only the high priest enters [and then only] once a year, and never without [bringing a sacrifice of] blood, which he offers [as a substitutionary atonement] for himself and for the sins of the people committed in ignorance.

which is a figure for the present time, in accordance with which are offered both gifts and sacrifices, which have no power as to the conscience to perfect the worshipper,

Because they are only rules of the flesh, of meats and drinks and washings, which have their place till the time comes when things will be put right.

But when Christ came as the High Priest of good things that have already taken place, He went by way of that greater and more perfect tent of worship, not made by human hands, that is, not belonging to this material creation,

For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling them that have been defiled, sanctify unto the cleanness of the flesh:

And for this cause he is the mediator of a new covenant, that a death having taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant, they that have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.

For Christ has not entered a holy place which human hands have made (a mere type of the reality!); he has entered heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.

And he did not have to make an offering of himself again and again, as the high priest goes into the holy place every year with blood which is not his;

else must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once at the end of the ages hath he been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

So Christ, once offered to have borne the sins of many, of the second time, without sin, shall be seen to them expecting him for salvation.

Else would they not have ceased to be offered? because the worshippers, having been once cleansed, would have had no more consciousness of sins.

They really only serve to remind the people annually of the sins they have committed,

Therefore, when Christ enters into the world, He says,

“Sacrifice and offering You have not desired,
But [instead] You have prepared a body for Me [to offer];

"Sacrifice and offering you did not wish, but a body you have prepared for me; in burnt-offerings and sin-offerings you never took delight.

Then I said, 'See, I have come, just as the Scripture writes about me in the book, O God, to do your will.'"

After saying [in the citation] above, “You have neither desired, nor have You taken delight in sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin” (which are offered according to the Law)

He afterward said, "See, I have come to do your will." He is taking away the first to let the second take its place.

By which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

And we have the testimony of the holy Spirit to this, for after saying,

then we have-- 'And their sins and their iniquities I will no longer remember.'

But when these have been remitted, there is no more any offering for sin.

Since then, my brothers, we have free access to the real sanctuary through the blood of Jesus,

and since in Him we have a Great Priest over the house of God,

let us draw near with a sincere heart in the assurance that faith brings, because we have had our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water.

Let us stedfastly maintain the hope which we have avow'd, since he is faithful that has promised:

and let us not forsake the fellowship that we have among ourselves, as the manner of some is: but let us exhort one another, and that so much the more, because ye see that the day draweth nigh.

For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more a sacrifice for sins,

don't you think then that he deserves a much greater punishment, who hath despised the son of God, and counted the blood of the covenant wherewith be was sanctified, to have been justly shed, thereby offering an indignity to the spirit of grace?