It was a comparison for the present time in which both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make him who performed the service perfect in regard to the conscience;

concerned only with foods and drinks, various washings, and fleshly ordinances imposed until the time when things were set right.

For the Law, having a shadow of the good things to come, and not the very image of those things, can never with these same sacrifices, which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect.

Even so we, when we were children, were enslaved under the elements of the world.

But now, knowing God, or rather being known by God, how is it that you turn again to the feeble and worthless principles, to which you desire again to be in bondage?

having blotted out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross;

Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to decrees;

without father, without mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like the Son of God, remains a priest continually.

For He testifies: You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

(for they have become priests without an oath, but He with an oath by Him who said to Him: The Lord has sworn and will not repent, You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek),

But He, because He continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood.

Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He lives forever to make intercession for them.

For the Law appoints as high priests men who have infirmity, but the word of the oath, which came after the Law, appoints the Son who has been perfected forever.

I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death.