MODERN LITERAL VERSION

12:1 Therefore, since we also have so-great a cloud of witnesses encompassing us, let us place away from ourselves every interference and the {F} easily restricting sin and run with endurance the contest laying before us.
12:2 Looking away from things, look toward Jesus, the author and perfecter of the faith, who endured the cross in exchange-for the joy that laid before him, despising shame and has sat down by the right hand of the throne of God.
12:3 For* study him who has endured such dispute by sinners to himself, that* you* might not be weary, fainting in your* souls.
12:4 You* have not yet withstood as far as blood, in your struggle against sin.
12:5 And you* have forgotten the encouragement which reasons with you* as with sons, ‘My son, do not regard-lightly the disciplining of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him;
12:6 For* whom the Lord loves*, he disciplines and scourges every son, whom he is accepting.' {Prov. 3:11-12, Job 5:17}
12:7 *For disciplining you* endure; God is dealing with you* as with sons; for* what is the son whom his father does not discipline?
12:8 But if you* are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, consequently, you* are illegitimate and not sons.
12:9 Thereafter, we have indeed had the fathers of our flesh as a corrector of us and we revered them. Will we not much rather be made subject to the Father of spirits and live?
12:10 For* they indeed disciplined us *for a few days according to what did seem right to them, but he does it upon what is advantageous for us, *that* we may receive of his holiness.
12:11 Now indeed all disciplining does not seem to be a thing of joy for the present*, but of sorrow; yet later it gives peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been exercised because of it.
12:12 Hence straighten your drooping hands and the paralyzed knees;
12:13 and make* straight tracks for your* feet, that* what is lame may not be turned aside, but rather should be healed.

12:14 Pursue peace with all men and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord:
12:15 exercising the oversight of yourselves lest there is anyone who falls-short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing upward might trouble you* and the many might be defiled through this;
12:16 lest there is any fornicator or profane person, like Esau, who gave away his birthright in exchange-for one dinner.
12:17 For* you* know thereafter that even wishing to inherit the bounty, he was rejected*; for* he found no chance for repentance although he sought it with tears.

12:18 For* you* have not come to a mountain which has been touched and burned with fire and to blackness and to darkness and to whirlwind,
12:19 and to the noise of a trumpet and to the voice of words; which voice those who heard renounced, asking the word not to be added to them.
12:20 For* they were not able to carry out what was ordered, ‘Even if a beast might touch the mountain, it will be stoned.' {Ex. 19:12-13, 16, Deut. 4:11}
12:21 And so fearful was the manifestation, that Moses said, ‘I am fearful and trembling. {Deut. 9:19}
12:22 But you* have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, to the heavenly Jerusalem and to tens of thousands of messengers,
12:23 to the festal-gathering and to the {F} congregation* of the firstborn ones registered in the heavens and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of perfected righteous men,
12:24 and to Jesus the intermediary of a {F} new covenant* and to the blood of sprinkling which speaks better than that of Abel.
12:25 Beware that you* do not renounce him who speaks. For* if they did not escape when they renounced him who divinely-warned them upon the earth, much more we may not escape who are turning away from him who warns from the heavens;
12:26 whose voice then shook the earth. But now he has promised, saying, ‘Still once for all, I do not only shake the earth, but also the heaven.' {Hag. 2:6}
12:27 And the saying, 'still once for all,' indicates the transfer of those things which are shaken, as of things that have been made*, in order that those things which are not shaken may remain.
12:28 Hence, receiving an unshakable kingdom, let us have grace, through which we give-divine service in ways well pleasing to God with reverence and piety;
12:29 for* our God is a consuming fire.
{Footnotes: Heb 12:1 Or: popular sin; what stands around us well. Heb 12:22 Or: church/the one true church, Eph 4:1-6; discussed more in the Appendix. 12:24 SEE 7:22 footnote or Appendix.}