Hebrews 9 — Greek text and reception
Each card preserves the Greek reading and its textual and reception notes. This source provides a Greek study edition; Hebrew counterparts and Hebrew–Greek classifications are not supplied.
Chapter 9
The sanctuary and its service
Verse 9:1
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
Now the first covenant had regulations for worship and an earthly sanctuary.
Textual & Reception Notes
First covenant supplies the antecedent of the Greek feminine the first. Earthly renders kosmikos, belonging to this world, without a moral judgment on the sanctuary.
Text [G]: NA28 reads μὲν οὖν [καὶ] ἡ πρώτη in brackets (SBLGNT omits); the rendering above follows SBLGNT, and NA28 would read "Now even the first covenant had".
Verse 9:2
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
For a tent was prepared, the first, in which were the lampstand, the table, and the presentation of the loaves; it is called the Holy Place.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 9:3
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
And behind the second curtain was a tent called the Holy of Holies,
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 9:4
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
having a golden incense altar and the ark of the covenant, covered on every side with gold. In it were a golden jar containing the manna, Aaron’s rod that had sprouted, and the tablets of the covenant.
Textual & Reception Notes
Incense altar is the chosen sense of thumiatērion; censer is an alternative. Having is retained without adding a precise spatial arrangement or harmonizing the inventory with Exodus. Specialist review of the equipment term remains open.
Verse 9:5
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
Above it were cherubim of glory overshadowing the propitiatory cover. We cannot now speak of these things in detail.
Textual & Reception Notes
Propitiatory cover renders hilastērion, the ark object beneath the cherubim. Atonement cover and mercy seat are familiar equivalents; the term alone does not settle a theory of atonement.
Verse 9:6
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
With these things so arranged, the priests enter the first tent continually, carrying out the acts of worship.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 9:7
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
But into the second only the high priest enters, once in the year, not without blood, which he offers for himself and for the people’s sins of ignorance.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 9:8
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
By this the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the holy places has not yet been disclosed while the first tent still has its standing.
Textual & Reception Notes
The first tent may refer to the outer compartment and, within the argument, the former arrangement. Still has its standing keeps the image without deciding whether physical existence or cultic status is primary.
Verse 9:9
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
This is a figure for the present time, according to which both gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the worshiper with respect to conscience.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 9:10
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
They concern only foods, drinks, and various washings: regulations for the flesh, imposed until a time of setting things right.
Textual & Reception Notes
Christ enters through His own blood
Verse 9:11
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
But Christ came as high priest of the good things that have come to be, through the greater and more perfect tent, not made by hands—that is, not of this creation—
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G, A]: The accessed reading is good things that have come to be, genomenōn, not the alternative mellontōn, things to come.
Verse 9:12
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
and entered the holy places once for all, not through the blood of goats and calves but through His own blood, having obtained eternal redemption.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 9:13
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify for the cleanness of the flesh,
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 9:14
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
how much more will the blood of Christ, who through an eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God, cleanse our conscience from dead works to serve the living God!
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G, A]: Our conscience is the accessed reading, rather than your. Eternal Spirit is understood here as divine; the Greek lacks an article, and the precise referent warrants further review.
Covenant, death, and cleansing
Verse 9:15
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
And for this reason He is mediator of a new covenant, so that, a death having occurred for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, those who have been called might receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 9:16
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
For where there is a testament, the death of the one who made it must be established.
Textual & Reception Notes
Diathēkē is covenant elsewhere in this argument and testament here and in 9:17, where the death of its maker and its legal force are discussed. A covenant-ratification interpretation also exists; the English makes the selected testamentary sense visible rather than concealing the shift.
Verse 9:17
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
For a testament is confirmed upon death, since it never has force while the one who made it lives.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 9:18
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
Therefore even the first covenant was not inaugurated without blood.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 9:19
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
For when Moses had spoken every commandment according to the law to all the people, he took the blood of the calves, with water, scarlet wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people,
Textual & Reception Notes
Text [G, A]: Calves appears without an added and goats in this verse. The inventory, including water, wool, hyssop, and the book, translates Hebrews as accessed rather than revising it to another narrative.
Text [G]: NA28 reads τῶν μόσχων [καὶ τῶν τράγων] in brackets (SBLGNT omits); the rendering above follows SBLGNT, and NA28 would read "the blood of the calves and the goats".
Verse 9:20
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.”
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 9:21
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
And he likewise sprinkled the tent and all the vessels of ministry with the blood.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 9:22
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
And according to the law almost everything is cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood no forgiveness takes place.
Textual & Reception Notes
The once-for-all offering
Verse 9:23
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
Therefore it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.
Textual & Reception Notes
Better sacrifices is plural in the Greek. It is retained alongside the explicit once-for-all language of 9:25–28, without changing the number to resolve the rhetoric.
Verse 9:24
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
For Christ did not enter holy places made by hands, counterparts of the true ones, but heaven itself, now to appear before the face of God on our behalf.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 9:25
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
Nor did He enter to offer Himself many times, as the high priest enters the holy places year by year with another’s blood,
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 9:26
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
for then He would have had to suffer many times since the foundation of the world. But now, once at the consummation of the ages, He has been manifested to set aside sin through His sacrifice.
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 9:27
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
And just as it is appointed for human beings to die once, and after this judgment,
Textual & Reception Notes
Verse 9:28
Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)
so also Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, apart from sin, to those eagerly awaiting Him, for salvation.
Textual & Reception Notes
Apart from sin preserves chōris hamartias; in this context it distinguishes the second appearance from the sin-bearing offering just mentioned, without implying prior personal sin.