Chapter 3

¹Therefore, my fellow-Christians, who have likewise heard the heavenly invitation, observe how faithful Jesus, the commissioner and high priest of our religion, ²has been to the God who appointed him, just as Moses was, in all the house of God. ³For Jesus is entitled to as much more honor than Moses as the builder of a house is than the house he builds. ⁴For every house has a builder, and the builder of the universe is God. ⁵Now the faithfulness of Moses in all the house of God was that of a servant, in faithfully repeating what he was told to say; ⁶but Christ’s faithfulness was that of a son set over the house of God. And we are that house, if we keep up our courage and our triumphant hope to the very end.

⁷Therefore, as the holy Spirit says, “If you hear his voice today,

⁸Do not harden your hearts as your forefathers provoked me by doing,

As in that time of trial in the desert,

⁹Where your forefathers put my doings to the proof for forty years,

Though they saw them all the time.

¹⁰That was why I was angry with that generation,

And I said, ‘Their minds are always wandering,

And they have never found my paths.’

¹¹But as I made oath in my anger,

They shall never be admitted to my Rest!”

¹²See to it, my brothers, that no one of you has a wicked, unbelieving heart, that turns away from the ever-living God, ¹³but encourage one another every day, as long as we can still speak of Today, so that no one of you may have his heart hardened by the pleasantness of sin. ¹⁴For we are true partners with Christ if we really keep the conviction that we had at first unshaken to the very end. ¹⁵So while we can still speak of Today, if you hear him speak, do not harden your hearts, as they provoked him by doing. ¹⁶For who was it that heard him speak and yet provoked him? Was it not all those who had escaped from Egypt under Moses’ leadership? ¹⁷And who was it with whom God was angry forty whole years? Was it not with those who had sinned, who dropped dead in the desert? ¹⁸And who was it to whom God made oath that they should not be admitted to his Rest, if it was not to those who had disobeyed him? ¹⁹So we see that it was their unbelief that kept them from being admitted to it.