A Prescribed Place of Worship

12 “These ^(A)are the statutes and judgments which you shall be careful to observe in the land which the Lord God of your fathers is giving you to possess, ^(B)all^[a] the days that you live on the earth. ^2 (C)You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations which you shall dispossess served their gods, ^(D)on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree. ³ And ^(E)you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and burn their ^[b]wooden images with fire; you shall cut down the carved images of their gods and destroy their names from that place. ⁴ You shall not ^(F)worship the Lord your God with such things.

⁵ “But you shall seek the ^(G)place where the Lord your God chooses, out of all your tribes, to put His name for His ^(H)dwelling^[c] place; and there you shall go. ^6 (I)There you shall take your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the heave offerings of your hand, your vowed offerings, your freewill offerings, and the ^(J)firstborn of your herds and flocks. ⁷ And ^(K)there you shall eat before the Lord your God, and ^(L)you shall rejoice in ^[d]all to which you have put your hand, you and your households, in which the Lord your God has blessed you.

⁸ “You shall not at all do as we are doing here today—^(M)every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes— ⁹ for as yet you have not come to the ^(N)rest^[e] and the inheritance which the Lord your God is giving you. ¹⁰ But when you cross over the Jordan and dwell in the land which the Lord your God is giving you to inherit, and He gives you ^(O)rest from all your enemies round about, so that you dwell in safety, ¹¹ then there will be the place where the Lord your God chooses to make His name abide. There you shall bring all that I command you: your burnt offerings, your sacrifices, your tithes, the heave offerings of your hand, and all your choice offerings which you vow to the Lord.

Israel Restored to the Land

^21 (A)“I will set My glory among the nations; all the nations shall see My judgment which I have executed, and ^(B)My hand which I have laid on them. ^22 (C)So the house of Israel shall know that I am the Lord their God from that day forward. ^23 (D)The Gentiles shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity; because they were unfaithful to Me, therefore ^(E)I hid My face from them. I ^(F)gave them into the hand of their enemies, and they all fell by the sword. ^24 (G)According to their uncleanness and according to their transgressions I have dealt with them, and hidden My face from them.” ’

²⁵ “Therefore thus says the Lord God: ^(H)‘Now I will bring back the captives of Jacob, and have mercy on the ^(I)whole house of Israel; and I will be jealous for My holy name— ^26 (J)after they have borne their shame, and all their unfaithfulness in which they were unfaithful to Me, when they ^(K)dwelt safely in their own land and no one made them afraid. ^27 (L)When I have brought them back from the peoples and gathered them out of their enemies’ lands, and I ^(M)am hallowed in them in the sight of many nations, ^28 (N)then they shall know that I am the Lord their God, who sent them into captivity among the nations, but also brought them back to their land, and left none of them ^[a]captive any longer. ^29 (O)And I will not hide My face from them anymore; for I shall have ^(P)poured out My Spirit on the house of Israel,’ says the Lord God.”

The New Priestly Service

8 Now this is the main point of the things we are saying: We have such a High Priest, ^(A)who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, ² a Minister of ^(B)the ^[a]sanctuary and of ^(C)the true tabernacle which the Lord erected, and not man.

³ For ^(D)every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices. Therefore ^(E)it is necessary that this One also have something to offer. ⁴ For if He were on earth, He would not be a priest, since there are priests who offer the gifts according to the law; ⁵ who serve ^(F)the copy and ^(G)shadow of the heavenly things, as Moses was divinely instructed when he was about to make the tabernacle. For He said, ^(H)“See that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.” ⁶ But now ^(I)He has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a ^(J)better covenant, which was established on better promises.

A New Covenant^(K)

⁷ For if that ^(L)first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. ⁸ Because finding fault with them, He says: ^(M)“Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— 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; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord. ¹⁰ For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the ^(N)Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and ^(O)I will be their God, and they shall be My people. ^11 (P)None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the ^(Q)Lord,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. ¹² For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, ^(R)and their sins ^[b]and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”

^13 (S)In that He says, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.