The Covenant with Noah

9 God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.^{(A) 2} The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground and on all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered. ³ Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you, and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.^{(B) 4} Only, you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.^{(C) 5} For your own lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning: from every animal I will require it and from human beings, each one for the blood of another, I will require a reckoning for human life.^(D)

⁷ “And you, be fruitful and multiply, abound on the earth and have dominion over^[a] it.”^(F)

⁸ Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ⁹ “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you^{(G) 10} and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark.^{[b](H) 11} I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”^{(I) 12} God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations:^{(J) 13} I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.^{(K) 14} When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, ¹⁵ I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh, and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.^{(L) 16} When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”^{(M) 17} God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

⁷ In the days of his flesh, Jesus^[a] offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.^{(A) 8} Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered,^{(B) 9} and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him,^{(C) 10} having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.

Warning against Falling Away

¹¹ About this^[b] we have much to say that is hard to explain, since you have become sluggish in hearing. ¹² For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic elements of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food,^{(D) 13} for everyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is unskilled in the word of righteousness. ¹⁴ But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.^(E)

¹⁶ “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.^(A)

¹⁷ “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.^{(B) 18} Those who believe in him are not condemned, but those who do not believe are condemned already because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.^{(C) 19} And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.^{(D) 20} For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed.^{(E) 21} But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”^[a](F)