^12:1 Therefore, since we also have so-great a cloud {Or: dense crowd} of witnesses encompassing us, let us run through endurance the contest laying before us, after we placed away from ourselves every interference, and the easily standing around sin. {i.e., the popular sin; something that crowds around you, tripping you up.} ^12:2 Looking away toward Jesus, the author and completer of the faith, who endured the cross, and the despised shame, in exchange-for the joy laying before him, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. ^12:3 For^*, study^° the one who has endured such contradiction by sinners to himself, in-order-that you^° might not be weary, being faint in your^° souls. ^12:4 You^° have not yet stood up insofar-as sacrificing blood toward your struggling against sin. ^12:5 And you^° have forgotten the encouragement which reasons with you^° as with sons, ‘My son, do not regard-lightly the disciplining of the Lord, nor be faint when you are reproved by him. ^12:6 For^* whom the Lord loves^*, he disciplines, and scourges every son whom he is accepting.’ {Prov. 3:11-12, Job 5:17} ^12:7 It is ^*for disciplining that you^° endure; God himself is dealing with you^° as with sons. For^* what is the son whom his father is not disciplining? ^12:8 But if you^° are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, consequently^*, you^° are illegitimate and not sons. ^12:9 Thereafter, we indeed were having the fathers of our flesh as correctors of us, and we revered them. Will we not much rather be made subject to the Father of spirits and we will live? ^12:10 For^* they indeed were disciplining us ^*for a few days according-to what did seem right to them, but he does it upon what is advantageous for us, ^*that^* we may receive of his holiness. ^12:11 Now indeed all disciplining does not seem to be a thing of joy ^*for the present^*, but of sorrow; but later it gives peaceful fruit of righteousness to the ones who have been exercised because of it. ^12:12 Hence straighten^° the drooping hands and the paralyzed knees, ^12:13 and make^*° straightened tracks for your^° feet, in-order-that what is lame might not be turned aside, but rather should be healed.

      ^12:14 Pursue^° peace with all and the holiness without which no one will be seeing the Lord, ^12:15 exercising the oversight of yourselves lest there is anyone who comes-short, away from the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing upward, should trouble you^°, and many might be defiled through this; ^12:16 lest there is any fornicator or profane person, like Esau, who gave away his birthrights in exchange-for one dinner. {Gen 25:31} ^12:17 For^* you^° know thereafter that even wishing to inherit the bounty, he was rejected^*, for^* he found no chance of repentance although sought it out with tears.

      ^12:18 For^* you^° have not come to a mountain being touched and has been burned with fire and to blackness and to darkness and to whirlwind, ^12:19 and to the noise of a trumpet and to the voice of declarations, which voice the ones who heard renounced, asking the word not to be added to them. ^12:20 For^* they were not carrying out what is ordered, ‘Even if a beast might touch the mountain, it will be stoned.’ {Exo 19:12-13, 16, Deu 4:11} ^12:21 And so fearful was the manifestation, that Moses said, ‘I am fearful and trembling. {Deu 9:19} ^12:22 But you^° have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, to the heavenly Jerusalem, and to tens of thousands of messengers, ^12:23 to the festal-gathering and to the congregation^* of the firstborn ones, who have been registered in the heavens and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous who have been completed, ^12:24 and to Jesus the intermediary of a new covenant^*, and to the blood of sprinkling which is speaking better than that of Abel. ^12:25 Beware^° that you^° do not renounce the one speaking. For^* if those men did not flee {Or: escape}, who renounced the one who divinely-warned them upon the earth, much more we may not escape the ones turning away from the one who is from the heavens, ^12:26 whose voice then shook the earth. But now he has promised, saying, ‘Still once for all, I do not only shake the earth, but also the heaven.’ {Hag. 2:6} ^12:27 And the saying, ‘still once for all,’ indicates the transfer of the things which are shaken, as of things which have been made^*, in-order-that the things which are not shaken may remain. ^12:28 Hence, receiving an unshakable kingdom (let us have gratitude) through which we give-divine-service in ways well pleasing to God, with reverence and piety; ^12:29 for^* our God is also a consuming fire. {Deu 4:24}