Hebrews 3:6–4:16

⁶and Christ, as a Son over his house, whose house are we, if the boldness and the rejoicing of the hope unto the end we hold fast.

⁷Wherefore, (as the Holy Spirit saith, ‘To-day, if His voice ye may hear— ⁸ye may not harden your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of the temptation in the wilderness, ⁹in which tempt Me did your fathers, they did prove Me, and saw My works forty years; ¹⁰wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, Always do they go astray in heart, and these have not known My ways; ¹¹so I sware in My anger, If they shall enter into My rest—!’) ¹²See, brethren, lest there shall be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in the falling away from the living God, ¹³but exhort ye one another every day, while the To-day is called, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of the sin, ¹⁴for partakers we have become of the Christ, if the beginning of the confidence unto the end we may hold fast, ¹⁵in its being said, ‘To-day, if His voice ye may hear, ye may not harden your hearts, as in the provocation,’ ¹⁶for certain having heard did provoke, but not all who did come out of Egypt through Moses; ¹⁷but with whom was He grieved forty years? was it not with those who did sin, whose carcasses fell in the wilderness? ¹⁸and to whom did He swear that they shall not enter into His rest, except to those who did not believe?— ¹⁹and we see that they were not able to enter in because of unbelief.

Chapter 4

¹We may fear, then, lest a promise being left of entering into His rest, any one of you may seem to have come short, ²for we also are having good news proclaimed, even as they, but the word heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard, ³for we do enter into the rest—we who did believe, as He said, ‘So I sware in My anger, If they shall enter into My rest—;’ and yet the works were done from the foundation of the world, ⁴for He spake in a certain place concerning the seventh day thus: ‘And God did rest in the seventh day from all His works;’ ⁵and in this place again, ‘If they shall enter into My rest—;’ ⁶since then, it remaineth for certain to enter into it, and those who did first hear good news entered not in because of unbelief— ⁷again He doth limit a certain day, ‘To-day,’ (in David saying, after so long a time,) as it hath been said, ‘To-day, if His voice ye may hear, ye may not harden your hearts,’ ⁸for if Joshua had given them rest, He would not concerning another day have spoken after these things; ⁹there doth remain, then, a sabbatic rest to the people of God, ¹⁰for he who did enter into his rest, he also rested from his works, as God from His own.

¹¹May we be diligent, then, to enter into that rest, that no one in the same example of the unbelief may fall, ¹²for the reckoning of God is living, and working, and sharp above every two-edged sword, and piercing unto the dividing asunder both of soul and spirit, of joints also and marrow, and a discerner of thoughts and intents of the heart; ¹³and there is not a created thing not manifest before Him, but all things are naked and open to His eyes—with whom is our reckoning. ¹⁴Having, then, a great chief priest passed through the heavens—Jesus the Son of God—may we hold fast the profession, ¹⁵for we have not a chief priest unable to sympathise with our infirmities, but one tempted in all things in like manner—apart from sin; ¹⁶we may come near, then, with freedom, to the throne of the grace, that we may receive kindness, and find grace—for seasonable help.

Chapter 5