for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

He said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.

Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors and has remembered his holy covenant,

And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.

You are the descendants of the prophets and of the covenant that God gave to your ancestors, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your descendants all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’

Then he gave him the covenant of circumcision. And so Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day, and Isaac did likewise to Jacob and Jacob to the twelve patriarchs.

They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises;

“And this is my covenant with them, when I take away their sins.”

In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

Ministers of the New Covenant

Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Surely we do not need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you, do we?

who has made us qualified to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, the same veil is still there; it is not unveiled since in Christ it is set aside.

My point is this: the law, which came four hundred thirty years later, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to nullify the promise.

Now this is an allegory: these women are two covenants. One woman, in fact, is Hagar, from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery.

remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

accordingly Jesus has also become the guarantor of a better covenant.

Mediator of a Better Covenant

Now the main point in what we are saying is this: we have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens,

But Jesus has now obtained a more excellent ministry, and to that degree he is the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on the basis of better promises.

For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no need to look for a second one.

God finds fault with them when he says: “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,

not like the covenant that I made with their ancestors on the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, for they did not continue in my covenant, and so I had no concern for them, says the Lord.

This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, 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 shall be my people.

In speaking of a new covenant, he has made the first one obsolete, and what is obsolete and growing old will soon disappear.

The Earthly and the Heavenly Sanctuaries

Now the first covenant had regulations for worship and an earthly sanctuary.

In it stood the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant overlaid on all sides with gold, in which there were a golden urn holding the manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tablets of the covenant;