5. and you have forgotten the exhortation which reasons with you as with children,“My son, don’t take lightly the chastening of the Lord,nor faint when you are reproved by him;
6. For whom the Lord loves, he chastens,and scourges every son whom he receives.”
7. It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with children, for what son is there whom his father doesn’t discipline?
8. But if you are without discipline, of which all have been made partakers, then are you illegitimate, and not children.
9. Furthermore, we had the fathers of our flesh to chasten us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live?
10. For they indeed, for a few days, punished us as seemed good to them; but he for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness.
11. All chastening seems for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been exercised thereby.
12. Therefore lift up the hands that hang down and the feeble knees,
13. and make straight paths for your feet, so what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed.
14. Follow after peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no man will see the Lord,
15. looking carefully lest there be any man who falls short of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and many be defiled by it;
16. lest there be any sexually immoral person, or profane person, like Esau, who sold his birthright for one meal.
17. For you know that even when he afterward desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for a change of mind though he sought it diligently with tears.
18. For you have not come to a mountain that might be touched, and that burned with fire, and to blackness, darkness, storm,
19. the sound of a shofar, and the voice of words; which those who heard it begged that not one more word should be spoken to them,