Hebrews 3
1 Wherefore, holy brothers, partakers of the heavenly call, consider the messenger and chief priest of our confession, Jesus, 2 he being trustworthy to the [one] appointing him, as also [was] Moses in his house. 3 For this [one] was deemed worthy of greater glory beside Moses by so much greater honor the [one] having built it has than the house. 4 For every house is built by someone, but the [one] having built everything is God. 5 And Moses on the one hand [was] trustworthy in his whole house as [a] servant for [a] witness of what will be spoken, 6 but on the other hand Christ [was trustworthy] upon his house, whose house we are, if we hold firm the confidence and the boast of hope until completion1, steadfast. 7 Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says,Today if you hear his voice,
8 Be not hardening your hearts as in the rebellion,
According to the day of the test in the wilderness,
9 During which your fathers put me to the test,
10 And they saw my works forty years.
Therefore he was angry with this generation
And said, They are always gone astray in heart.
But they have not known my paths,
11 As I swore in my wrath
[No way] will they enter my rest.
12 Be looking, brothers, lest there be in any [of you a] wicked2 heart of unbelief in having stood off from the zoe-living3 God, 13 but be calling upon each other each day, while it is called Today, in order that there not be hardened any among you by the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we are become partakers of Christ, if indeed we hold fast the beginning of confidence until completion4 steadfast, 15 In which it is said:
Today if you hear his voice,
Be not hardening your hearts as in the rebellion.
16 For who having heard rebelled, but not all those having gone out of Egypt through Moses? 17 With whom was he angry forty years? [Was it] not with the sinners, whose corpses fell in the wilderness? 18 But to whom did he swear "not to enter into his rest" if not the disobedient? 19 And we see that they were unable to enter because of disbelief.
1or "perfection"
2PONEROS (πoνηρoς ) here. The Greek word KAKOS (κακoς ) is always translated `evil', PONEROS is usually translated as `wicked' although occasionally as `bad'; it can also mean 'diseased', 'sickly' and is thus translated where appropriate. Like KAKOS, PONEROS also means `evil', but the harm that evil does is more in view, where KAKOS is more `evil as evil'.
3from ZOE "ZOH-ay" (ζωη)—Life 'collectively', interdependent, interconnected. Although it means 'life' in the conventional sense (for example: Matt.9:18, Matt.27:63, Luke.2:36, Acts.25:24, Rom.7:2, 2Cor.1:8, 1Thes.4:17, 1Tim.5:10, Rev.19:20), Jesus uses ZOE exclusively of 'life eternal' (with the possible exceptions of Luke.15:13, Luke.16:25). The other N.T. writers use ZOE in both senses—temporal and eternal, generally clear from the context. The Father is the 'zoe-living God' (see Matt.16:16). The Septuagint (LXX) in Gen.2:7 has "...[God] breathed into his nostrils the breath of zoe-life, and the man became a zoe-living psyche-life" (and see 1Cor.15:45); and Gen.3:20 (LXX) "And Adam called his wife's name ZOE, because she was the mother of all zoe-living." Contrast PSYCHE (ψυχη): an individual manifestation of life/consciousness. See John.12:25 where both ZOE and PSYCHE occur. Greek also has the word BIOS (βιoς ) for 'life' in the sense of biological processes.
4or "perfection"