Priest and Mediator of a better covenant

1Now the main point of the things we are saying is this: We do have such a High Priest, who sat down ⁹⁵at the right of the Majesty's throne in the heavens,

2Minister of the Holy Places, that is, of the true Tabernacle which the Lord set up, not man.

3Every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices (it follows that it is necessary for this One also to have something He might offer)

4—if He were on earth He would not be a priest, there already being priests who offer the gifts according to the Law; ⁹⁶

5who serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things ⁹⁷(that is why Moses was warned by God when he was ready to assemble the Tabernacle: “See to it,” He says, “that you make everything according to the pattern shown to you on the mountain”)—

6but now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, just as He is Mediator of a better covenant, which was enacted as law on the basis of better promises. ⁹⁸

A new covenant

7Now if there had been nothing wrong with that first covenant, no place would have been sought for a second one;

8but finding fault with them ⁹⁹He says: “Listen! Days are coming,” says the Lord, “when I will establish a new covenant
with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah ¹⁰⁰

9—not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of the land of Egypt, ¹⁰¹because they did not abide by my covenant and so I disregarded them,” says the Lord.

10“Now this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” says the Lord, ¹⁰²“I will put my laws into their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God and they will be my people.

11Further, not one of them will teach his neighbor and not one his brother saying, ‘Get to know the Lord!’ because they all will know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them.

12For I will be merciful to their wrongdoings; I will not at all remember their sins and their lawless deeds.” ¹⁰³

13By saying ‘new’ He has made the first one ‘old’; and what is obsolete and aging is near the end.