Letter to the Hebrews 9

¹ The first covenant also had its laws governing worship, and its sanctuary, a sanctuary on this earth.

² There was a tent which comprised two compartments: the first, in which the lamp stand, the table and the presentation loaves were kept, was called the Holy Place;

³ then beyond the second veil, an innermost part which was called the Holy of Holies

⁴ to which belonged the gold altar of incense, and the ark of the covenant, plated all over with gold. In this were kept the gold jar containing the manna, Aaron’s branch that grew the buds, and the stone tablets of the covenant.

⁵ On top of it was the throne of mercy, and outspread over it were the glorious cherubs. This is not the time to go into greater detail about this.

⁶ Under these provisions, priests are constantly going into the outer tent to carry out their acts of worship,

⁷ but the second tent is entered only once a year, and then only by the high priest who must go in by himself and take the blood to offer for his own faults and the people’s.

⁸ By this, the Holy Spirit is showing that no one has the right to go into the sanctuary as long as the outer tent remains standing;

⁹ it is a symbol for this present time. None of the gifts and sacrifices offered under these regulations can possibly bring any worshipper to perfection in his inner self;

¹⁰ they are rules about the outward life, connected with foods and drinks and washing at various times, intended to be in force only until it should be time to reform them.

¹¹ But now Christ has come, as the high priest of all the blessings which were to come. He has passed through the greater, the more perfect tent, which is better than the one made by men’s hands because it is not of this created order;

¹² and he has entered the sanctuary once and for all, taking with him not the blood of goats and bull calves, but his own blood, having won an eternal redemption for us.

¹³ The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer are sprinkled on those who have incurred defilement and they restore the holiness of their outward lives;

¹⁴ how much more effectively the blood of Christ, who offered himself as the perfect sacrifice to God through the eternal Spirit, can purify our inner self from dead actions so that we do our service to the living God.

¹⁵ He brings a new covenant, as the mediator, only so that the people who were called to an eternal inheritance may actually receive what was promised: his death took place to cancel the sins that infringed the earlier covenant.

¹⁶ Now wherever a will is in question, the death of the testator must be established;

¹⁷ indeed, it only becomes valid with that death, since it is not meant to have any effect while the testator is still alive.

¹⁸ That explains why even the earlier covenant needed is something to be killed in order to take effect,

¹⁹ and why, after Moses had announced all the commandments of the Law to the people, he took the calves’ blood, the goats’ blood and some water, and with these he sprinkled the book itself and all the people, using scarlet wool and hyssop;

²⁰ saying as he did so: This is the blood of the covenant that God has laid down for you.[*a]

²¹ After that, he sprinkled the tent and all the liturgical vessels with blood in the same way.

²² In fact, according to the Law almost everything has to be purified[*b] with blood; and if there is no shedding of blood, there is no remission.

²³ Obviously, only the copies of heavenly things can be purified in this way, and the heavenly things themselves have to be purified by a higher sort of sacrifice than this.

²⁴ It is not as though Christ had entered a man-made sanctuary which was only modelled on the real one; but it was heaven itself, so that he could appear in the actual presence of God on our behalf.

²⁵ And he does not have to offer himself again and again, like the high priest going into the sanctuary year after year with the blood that is not his own,

²⁶ or else he would have had to suffer over and over again since the world began. Instead of that, he has made his appearance once and for all, now at the end of the last age, to do away with sin by sacrificing himself.

²⁷ Since men only die once, and after that comes judgement,

²⁸ so Christ, too, offers himself only once to take the faults of many on himself,[*c] and when he appears a second time, it will not be to deal with sin but to reward with salvation those who are waiting for him.