8
“It Is a Superior Ministry That Jesus Has Received”
1 Now here is the main point of what we’re saying: Such as has been described is what we do in fact have as our high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majestic One in the heavens,
2 a minister who carries out his sacred duties where? In the heavenly sanctuary, that is, the original tabernacle, which was set up not by human hands, but by the Lord.
3 When any high priest, you see, is appointed, it is for the purpose of presenting sacrifices and offerings to God. That being the case, it follows that this high priest, too, must by definition have something to offer.
4 Given these things, if Jesus were now here on the earth, he wouldn’t be a priest at all, since there are already priests here who are presenting the offerings prescribed by Torah,
5 who carry out their duties in a sanctuary patterned after the heavenly sanctuary as a sketch and foreshadow, as indicated in the divine instruction that Moses received when he was about to build the tabernacle: “Be careful to make everything according to the pattern shown to ˢyou on the mountain.”+
6 As things now stand, however, it is a superior ministry that Jesus has received, inasmuch as it is a superior and more effective covenant, too, of which he is the intermediary, a covenant which has been enacted on promises that are themselves superior.
7 If that first covenant, you see, had been faultless, there would have been no need for a second one.
8 Finding fault with his people, you see, God says,
“Listen! There is coming a time, says the LORD,
when I will establish with the people of the northern kingdom of Israel
and with those of the southern kingdom of Judah
a new covenant.
9 It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors
at the time when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of the land of Egypt,
because they, for their part,
stopped abiding by the terms of my covenant,
as a result of which I, for mine,
stopped paying attention to them, says the LORD.
10 For this is the kind of covenant that I will cut with the nation of Israel
after that time, says the LORD:
I will put my laws in their minds
and write them on their hearts,
and I will be their God and they will be my people.
11 And there will be no need at all for people to teach their neighbors
and their countrymen with the words, ‘Know the LORD,’
because they will all know me,
from the least important of them to the most important.
12 For I will be merciful regarding their wicked deeds,
and their sins I will remember no more.”+
13 By referring to this second covenant as “new,” God has rendered the first one old and worn out. Anything that is wearing out and growing old, moreover, isn’t far from disappearing altogether.