12 Therefore, seeing that we are surrounded with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also cast away everything that presses down and the sin that so easily entangles. Let us run with patience the race that is set before us;

² looking to Jesus - the Author and Finisher of our faith - Who, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross and despised the shame and is set at the right hand of the throne of God.

³ Therefore, consider Him Who endured such hostility from sinners, so that you will not be wearied and faint in your minds.

⁴ In striving against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of bloodshed.

⁵ And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to children, “My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are rebuked by Him.

⁶ For whom the Lord loves, he chastens. And He scourges every son that He receives.”

⁷ If you endure chastening, God offered Himself to you as to sons. For what son is it whom the Father does not chasten?

⁸ Therefore, if you are without correction - of which all are partakers - then you are bastards, and not sons.

⁹ Moreover, we have had the fathers of our bodies who corrected us, and we gave them reverence. Should we not be in all the more subjection to the Father of Spirits, in order that we might live?

¹⁰ For indeed they chastened us for a few days, as it pleased them. But He chastened us for our profit, so that we might be partakers of His holiness.

¹¹ Now, no chastising seems joyous at the time, but grievous. Yet afterward, it brings the quiet fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it.

¹² Therefore, lift up your hands which hang down, and your weak knees,

¹³ and make straight paths for your feet, so that which is halting is not turned out of the way. But rather, let it be healed.

¹⁴ Pursue peace and holiness with all, without which no one shall see the Lord.

¹⁵ Watch carefully, so no one falls away from the grace of God. Let no root of bitterness spring up and trouble you, lest many be defiled by it.

¹⁶ Let there be no fornicator or profane person (such as Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal).

¹⁷ For you also know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected. For he found no place for repentance, though he sought that blessing with tears.

¹⁸ For you have not come to the mountain that can be touched - nor to burning fire, nor to blackness and darkness and tempest,

¹⁹ nor to the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words - from which those who heard it excused themselves so that the word would not be spoken to them anymore.

²⁰ For they were not able to abide that which was commanded: “Yea, if a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned or thrust through with an arrow”.

²¹ And so terrible was the sight which appeared, that Moses said, “I fear and quake”.

²² But you have come to the Mount Zion, and to the city of the living God (the celestial Jerusalem), and to the company of innumerable angels,

²³ and to the assembly and congregation of the first born (which are written in Heaven), and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the just and perfected,

²⁴ and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Testament, and to the blood of sprinkling which speaks better things than that of Abel.

²⁵ See that you do not despise Him Who speaks. For if those did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more so shall we not escape if we turn away from Him Who speaks from Heaven.

²⁶ His voice shook the earth then. And now He has declared, saying, “Yet once more will I shake, not the earth only, but also Heaven.”

²⁷ And this, “Yet once more” signifies the removing of those things which are shaken (as in things which are made) so that the things which are not shaken may remain.

²⁸ Therefore, seeing we receive a Kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace by which we may pleasingly serve God with reverence and godly fear.

²⁹ For our God is a consuming fire.