But you [Christians] have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. [Note: These terms describe people who have entered a spiritual relationship with God as part of the church]. [You have come] to a praise gathering of innumerable angels [Note: Christians are here pictured as assembled in worship of God, along with angels],

Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the custom to some; but beseeching: and by so much the more, inasmuch as ye see the day drawing near.

They were stoned [to death], they were sawn in two, they were lured with tempting offers [to renounce their faith], they were put to death by the sword; they went about wrapped in the skins of sheep and goats, utterly destitute, oppressed, cruelly treated

Partly, indeed, because, both with reproaches and tribulations, ye were being made a spectacle, but, partly, because, into fellowship with them who were so involved, ye were brought; -