Saints Translation

By Vincent Melli

Hebrews — Greek text and reception

PastorFatherly formation

Hebrews 12 — Greek text and reception

Saints Translation: Hebrews 1–13 [V2]

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 12

Run with endurance, looking to Jesus

Verse 12:1

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Therefore we too, having so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, must lay aside every weight and the sin that readily entangles us, and run with endurance the contest set before us,

Textual & Reception Notes

Witnesses connects with the preceding testimony concerning faith; the text is not expanded to define what the departed observe. Readily entangles renders euperistatos; the exact image is debated.

Verse 12:2

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

looking away to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before Him He endured a cross, despising its shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Textual & Reception Notes

Pioneer renders archēgos, also leader or originator, as in 2:10. For the joy takes anti in relation to the joy to be obtained; instead of the joy is another proposed construal.

Verse 12:3

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

For consider the One who has endured such opposition from sinners against themselves, so that you may not grow weary, fainting in your souls.

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G, A]: Against themselves preserves the plural reflexive heautous, adopted with WH in the accessed running text. Other compared editions have Himself or Him. The difficult plural is retained rather than silently normalized; its attachment requires specialist review.

Text [G]: NA28 reads εἰς ἑαυτόν (SBLGNT εἰς ἑαυτούς); the rendering above follows SBLGNT, and NA28 would read "against Himself".

Verse 12:4

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

You have not yet resisted to the point of blood in your struggle against sin,

Textual & Reception Notes

The Father’s discipline

Verse 12:5

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

and you have forgotten the encouragement that addresses you as sons: “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, nor faint when reproved by Him.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 12:6

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

For the Lord disciplines the one He loves, and scourges every son He receives.”

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 12:7

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Endure for discipline. God deals with you as sons; for what son is there whom a father does not discipline?

Textual & Reception Notes

Endure is read as an imperative; you endure is also grammatically possible. Discipline renders paideia, encompassing formative training as well as correction.

Verse 12:8

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

But if you are without discipline, in which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 12:9

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh as disciplinarians and respected them. Shall we not much more submit to the Father of spirits and live?

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 12:10

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

For they disciplined us for a few days according to what seemed right to them, but He for our benefit, so that we may share in His holiness.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 12:11

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Now every discipline seems for the present to be a matter of sorrow, not joy, but afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those trained through it.

Textual & Reception Notes

Peace, holiness, and the birthright

Verse 12:12

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Therefore straighten the drooping hands and the weakened knees,

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 12:13

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

and make straight tracks for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather healed.

Textual & Reception Notes

Be dislocated is the chosen bodily sense of ektrapē; turn aside is an alternative that extends the path image.

Verse 12:14

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Pursue peace with everyone, and sanctification, without which no one will see the Lord.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 12:15

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Watch lest anyone fall short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness grow up and cause trouble, and through it many be defiled,

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 12:16

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

lest anyone be sexually immoral or profane like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 12:17

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

For you know that even afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, although he sought it with tears.

Textual & Reception Notes

It is left without a newly supplied noun: the feminine pronoun may refer to the blessing or repentance. Repentance renders metanoia, which also means a change of mind; the precise reversal Esau sought is not settled by adding an explanation inside the translation.

The heavenly gathering

Verse 12:18

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

For you have not approached what can be touched, and a blazing fire, and gloom and darkness and tempest,

Textual & Reception Notes

Text [G, A]: Mountain is not explicit at this point in the accessed text, though it appears in 12:20. What can be touched preserves the elliptical participle rather than importing the added noun.

Verse 12:19

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

and the sound of a trumpet and a voice of words, whose hearers begged that no further word be added to them.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 12:20

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

For they could not bear the command: “Even if an animal touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.”

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 12:21

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

And so fearful was the sight that Moses said, “I am terrified and trembling.”

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 12:22

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

But you have approached Mount Zion and the city of the living God, heavenly Jerusalem, and myriads of angels in festal gathering,

Textual & Reception Notes

Myriads preserves the ancient tens-of-thousands expression. In festal gathering takes panēgyris with the angels; association with the following assembly is another punctuation possibility.

Verse 12:23

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

and the assembly of firstborn ones enrolled in the heavens, and God the judge of all, and the spirits of righteous ones who have been perfected,

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 12:24

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

and Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and sprinkled blood that speaks better than Abel.

Textual & Reception Notes

The Greek comparison is with Abel, not an explicit Abel’s blood. The blood interpretation is natural in context but remains unexpanded in the translation.

The unshakable kingdom

Verse 12:25

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

See that you do not refuse the One who speaks. For if those who refused the One instructing them on earth did not escape, much less shall we, if we turn away from the One from the heavens.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 12:26

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

His voice shook the earth then, but now He has promised, saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heaven.”

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 12:27

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Now “yet once more” indicates the removal of the things shaken, as things that have been made, so that the things not shaken may remain.

Textual & Reception Notes

Verse 12:28

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

Therefore, since we are receiving an unshakable kingdom, let us have gratitude, through which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and awe,

Textual & Reception Notes

Let us have gratitude takes echōmen charin idiomatically. Let us have grace is a more literal alternative, especially given the following through which.

Verse 12:29

Greek–English: Literal-Smooth (Saints Priority)

for indeed our God is a consuming fire.

Textual & Reception Notes