having become so much better than the angels, as he has inherited a more excellent name than they have.

For to which of the angels did he say at any time, "You are my Son. Today have I become your father?" and again, "I will be to him a Father, and he will be to me a Son?"

You have loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows."

And, "You, Lord, have laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the works of Your hands.

As a cloak, you will roll them up, and like a garment they will be changed. But you remain the same, and your years will have no end."

FOR this reason we ought to attend more diligently to the things which have been heard, lest by any means we let them flow by us.

how shall we escape who have neglected so great a salvation? which began to be spoken by the Lord, and was affirmed to us by those who heard,

You made him for a little while inferior to angels; Yet you have crowned him with glory and honor, And you have put him in charge of the works of your hands!

You have put all things in subjection under his feet." For in that he subjected all things to him, he left nothing that is not subject to him. But now we do not see all things subjected to him, yet.

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.

because both the one who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified all have the same Father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers

Since then the children have shared in flesh and blood, he also himself in like manner partook of the same, that through death he might bring to nothing him who had the power of death, 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,

Wherefore I was provoked against that generation, and said, They are always deluded in heart, and they have not known 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 partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm to 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 fear therefore, lest perhaps anyone of you should seem to have come short of a promise of entering into his rest.

For indeed we have had good news preached to us, even as they also did, but the word they heard did not profit them, because they were not united by faith with those who heard.

For we who have believed do enter into that rest, even as he has said, "As I swore in my wrath, they will not enter into my rest;" although the works were finished from the foundation 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 afterward of another day.

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.

There is no creature that is hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and laid open before the eyes of him with whom we have to do.

Since then we have in Jesus, the Son of God, a great high priest who has gone up into heaven, let us keep firm hold of our religion.

For we do not have a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but one who has been in all points tempted like we are, yet 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 be made a high priest, but it was he who said to him, "You are my Son. Today I have become your father."

About him we have many words to say, and hard to interpret, seeing you have become dull of hearing.

For when by reason of the time you ought to be teachers, you again need to have someone teach you the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of God. You have come to need milk, and not solid food.

But solid food is for those who are full grown, who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern 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 not possible to renew again unto repentance those who have been once illuminated, and have tasted the celestial gift, and have been made partakers of the Holy Ghost,

and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come,

and yet have fallen away: for they crucify again to themselves the Son of God, and expose him to public infamy.

But, my loved ones, though we say this, we are certain that you have better things in you, things which go with salvation;

For God is not unjust, to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have demonstrated in his name, having ministered assistance to the saints, and still ministering.

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

that ye be not sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience have been inheritors of the promises.

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;

that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have a strong encouragement, who have fled for refuge to take hold of the hope set before us.

This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and entering into that which is within 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 to have the patriarch Abraham give him a tenth of the spoil.

They indeed of the sons of Levi who receive the priest's office have a commandment to take tithes of the people according to the Law, that is, of their brothers, though these have come out of the body of Abraham,

Now if there was perfection through the Levitical priesthood (for under it the people have received the law), what further need was there for another priest to arise after the order of Melchizedek, and not be called after the order of Aaron?

On the one hand, we have the abolition of a previous regulation as being both inefficient and useless

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 have been made priests without an oath), but he with an oath by him that says of him, "The Lord swore and will not change his mind, 'You are a priest forever.'"

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

Many, indeed, have been made priests, because they are hindered from continuing 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 as high priests who have weakness, but the word of the oath which came after the Law appoints a Son forever who has been perfected.

Now in the things which we are saying, the main point is this. We have such a high priest, who sat down on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens,

For every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices. Therefore it is necessary that this high priest also have something to 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 no place would 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 they will not have to teach their townsmen and their brothers to know the Lord, For they will all know me, From the lowest to the highest.

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,

since they have to do only with food and drink and various washings??aterial regulations in force only until the time for the new order.

But Christ having come as a high priest of the good things that have come, through the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is to say, not of this creation,

For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify to the cleanness of the flesh:

For this reason he is the mediator of a New Covenant, since a death has occurred for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant, that those who 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;

or else he must have suffered often since the foundation of the world. But now once at the end of the ages, he has been revealed 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.

Or else would not they 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,

That is why the Christ, when he was coming into the world, said, "You have not wished sacrifice or offering, but you have provided a body for me.

"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, 'Behold, I have come (in the scroll of the book it is written of me) to do your will, O God.'"

At first he says, "You never wished or cared for sacrifices or offerings, or burnt-offerings or sacrifices for sin"??ll of which the Law prescribes??9 and then he adds, "See, I have come to do your will!" He is taking away the old to put the new in its place.

then he has said, "Behold, I have come to do your will." He takes away the first, that he may establish the second,

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, we have a cheerful confidence, brothers, to enter into the Holiest by the blood of Jesus,

and since in him we have a great priest set over the house of God,

let us continue to come near with sincere hearts in the full assurance that faith provides, because our hearts have been sprinkled clean from a guilty conscience, and our bodies have been washed with 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 willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains 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?