¹ Let us beware, then: since the promise never lapses, none of you must think that he has come too late for the promise of entering his place of rest.

² We received the gospel exactly as they did; but hearing the message did them no good because they did not share the faith of those who did listen.

³ We, however, who have faith, are entering a place of rest, as in the text: And then in my anger I swore that they would never enter my place of rest. Now God's work was all finished at the beginning of the world;

⁴ as one text says, referring to the seventh day: And God rested on the seventh day after all the work he had been doing.

⁵ And, again, the passage above says: They will never reach my place of rest.

⁶ It remains the case, then, that there would be some people who would reach it, and since those who first heard the good news were prevented from entering by their refusal to believe,

⁷ God fixed another day, a Today, when he said through David in the text already quoted: If only you would listen to him today; do not harden your hearts.

⁸ If Joshua had led them into this place of rest, God would not later have spoken of another day.

⁹ There must still be, therefore, a seventh-day rest reserved for God's people,

¹⁰ since to enter the place of rest is to rest after your work, as God did after his.

¹¹ Let us, then, press forward to enter this place of rest, or some of you might copy this example of refusal to believe and be lost.

¹² The word of God is something alive and active: it cuts more incisively than any two-edged sword: it can seek out the place where soul is divided from spirit, or joints from marrow; it can pass judgement on secret emotions and thoughts.

¹³ No created thing is hidden from him; everything is uncovered and stretched fully open to the eyes of the one to whom we must give account of ourselves.

¹⁴ Since in Jesus, the Son of God, we have the supreme high priest who has gone through to the highest heaven, we must hold firm to our profession of faith.

¹⁵ For the high priest we have is not incapable of feeling our weaknesses with us, but has been put to the test in exactly the same way as ourselves, apart from sin.

¹⁶ Let us, then, have no fear in approaching the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace when we are in need of help.

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The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) is a Catholic translation of the Bible published in 1985. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has become the most widely used Roman Catholic Bible outside of the United States. It has the imprimatur of Cardinal George Basil Hume.

Like its predecessor, the Jerusalem Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) version is translated "directly from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic." The 1973 French translation, the Bible de Jerusalem, is followed only "where the text admits to more than one interpretation." Introductions and notes, with some modifications, are taken from the Bible de Jerusalem.

Source: The Very Reverend Dom (Joseph) Henry Wansbrough, OSB, MA (Oxon), STL (Fribourg), LSS (Rome), a monk of Ampleforth Abbey and a biblical scholar. He was General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. "New Jerusalem Bible, Regular Edition", pg. v.

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