and above the chest were the winged creatures of the Divine Presence overshadowing the lid on which the blood was sprinkled??f which I cannot now speak in detail.

but only the high priest could enter the inner part, and he but once a year, and never without taking some victim's blood, to offer on his own behalf and for the sins committed through ignorance by the people.

taking with him no blood of goats and calves, but his own, and secured our permanent deliverance.

For if sprinkling ceremonially defiled persons with the blood of bulls and goats and with the ashes of a heifer purifies them physically,

how much more surely will the blood of the Christ, who with the eternal Spirit made himself an unblemished offering to God, purify our consciences from the old wrongdoing for the worship of the everliving God?

So even the old agreement could not be ratified without the use of blood.

For when Moses had told all the regulations of the Law to all the people, he took calves' and goats' blood, along with water, crimson wool, and a bunch of hyssop, and sprinkled the roll of the Law and all the people,

saying, "This blood ratifies the agreement which God has commanded me to make with you."

The tent too and all the appliances used in the priestly service he sprinkled with blood in the same way.

In fact, under the Law, almost everything is purified with blood, and unless blood is poured out nothing is forgiven.

Nor does he go in to offer himself over and over again, like the high priest who enters the sanctuary year after year, taking with him blood that is not his own,

for bulls' and goats' blood is powerless to remove sin.

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

How much worse a punishment do you think will anyone deserve who tramples the Son of God underfoot, and treats as worthless the blood of the agreement by which he has been purified, and outrages God's spirit of mercy?

Faith led Noah, when he was warned by God of things no one then saw, in obedience to the warning to build an ark in which to save his family, and by such faith he condemned the world, and came to possess that uprightness which faith produces.

For he was looking forward to that city with the sure foundations, designed and built by God.

Faith made him institute the Passover and splash the blood upon the door-posts, to keep the angel that destroyed the firstborn from touching them.

to Jesus the negotiator of a new agreement, and to sprinkled blood that speaks more powerfully than even Abel's.

For the bodies of the animals whose blood is taken into the sanctuary by the high priest are burned outside the camp.

And so Jesus too, in order to purify the people by his blood, suffered death outside the city gate.

May God, the giver of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus who through the blood by which he ratified the everlasting agreement has become the great shepherd of the sheep,