Riverside(i)
32 And what shall I say further? Time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, and of David and Samuel and the prophets;
33 who through faith struggled against kingdoms and subdued them, did deeds of righteousness, obtained promised blessings, shut the mouths of lions,
34 quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness grew strong, became mighty in war, turned back armies of foreigners.
35 Women received back their dead by a resurrection. Others were tortured, refusing to pay for liberation, in order to gain a better resurrection.
36 Still others had experience of mockings and floggings, yes, of chains and prisons.
37 They were stoned, afflicted, sawn in two, murdered with the sword. They went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, destitute, distressed, maltreated.
38 The world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in caves and in holes in the earth.
39 All these won God's approval by their faith. Yet they did not obtain the fulfillment of the promise.
40 In reference to us God had something better in view, that they without us should not reach perfection.
12 1 THEREFORE, surrounded as we are by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily besets us, and let us run with patience the race that lies before us,
2 looking to Jesus the beginner and finisher of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured a cross, thinking little of the shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.