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¹ Therefore let us also, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight, and the sin which does so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,² looking to Jesus the author and perfecter of [our] faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.³ For consider him that has endured such opposing of sinners against himself, that you do not wax weary, fainting in your souls.

⁴ You have not yet resisted to blood, striving against sin:⁵ and you have forgotten the exhortation which reasons with you as with sons, My son, do not regard lightly the chastening of the Lord, Nor faint when you are reproved of him;⁶ For whom the Lord loves he chastens, And scourges every son whom he receives.⁷ It is for chastening that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom [his] father does not chasten?⁸ But if you are without chastening, whereof all have been made partakers, then are you bastards, and not sons.⁹ Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we gave them reverence: and shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live?¹⁰ For they indeed for a few days chastened [us] as seemed good to them; but he for [our] profit, that [we] may be partakers of his holiness.¹¹ And all chastening seems for the present not to be joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yields peaceable fruit to those that have been exercised thereby, [even the fruit] of righteousness.¹² Therefore lift up the hands that hang down, and the palsied knees;¹³ and make straight paths for your feet, that that which is lame not be turned out of the way, but rather be healed.¹⁴ Follow after peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no man shall see the Lord:¹⁵ looking carefully lest [there be] any man that falls short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble [you], and thereby many be defiled;¹⁶ lest [there be] any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one mess of meat sold his own birthright.¹⁷ For you know that even when he afterward desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected; for he found no place for a change of mind [in his father,] though he sought it diligently with tears.

¹⁸ For you have not come to [a mount] that might be touched, and that burned with fire, and to blackness, and darkness, and tempest,¹⁹ and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which [voice] those that heard entreated that no word more should be spoken to them;²⁰ for they could not endure that which was enjoined, If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned;²¹ and so fearful was the appearance, [that] Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake:²² but you have come to mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to tens of thousands of angels in a festive gathering,²³ and to the church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect,²⁴ and to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better than [that of] Abel.²⁵ See that you do not refuse him that speaks. For if they did not escape when they refused him that warned [them] on earth, much more [shall] we [not escape] who turn away from him that [warns] from heaven:²⁶ whose voice then shook the earth: but now he has promised, saying, Yet once more I will make to tremble not the earth only, but also the heaven.²⁷ And this [word], Yet once more, signifies the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that have been made, that those things which are not shaken may remain.²⁸ Therefore, receiving a kingdom that can't be shaken, let us have grace, whereby we may offer service well-pleasing to God with reverence and awe:²⁹ for our God is a consuming fire.