What Does Jeremiah 17:23 Mean?
But they did not hear and respond, nor bend their ear; they stiffened their neck, so as not to hear and respond, nor take the straightening.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
But they obeyed not, neither inclined their ear, but made their neck stiff, that they might not hear, nor receive instruction.THE KEY
The refusal is not an absence of sound: the neck hardens against the corrective instruction that hearing would let in.
THE MEANING
When you turn from instruction, the refusal takes a bodily shape: the ear does not incline and the neck braces. The verse treats hearing as response, so the blockage is not lack of information but resistance to correction.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that you can truly hear while remaining closed to response: hearing that refuses instruction is the very refusal it describes.
THE ROOT
שָׁמְעוּ
shame'u
GROWS FROM
שמע
sh-m-ʿ
To hear, listen, and heed.
“did not hear and respond” in this verse is shame'u. The same root frames both the opening refusal and the later refusal to hear. In this verse, hearing is not just receiving sound; it includes the response the instruction calls for.
ALSO GROWS
shema: Hear; listen and respond.
שְׁמַע
This familiar form makes the root’s movement from hearing toward response clear.
shemuah: A report or something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
A report is received through hearing; here the people close themselves even to what instruction would communicate.
וַיַּקְשׁוּ
vayyaqshu
GROWS FROM
קשה
q-sh-h
To be hard or to make hard; to be severe.
“stiffened their neck” in this verse is vayyaqshu. The verb makes resistance active: they harden the neck rather than merely fail to hear. The same root describes the stiff-necked posture elsewhere, revealing refusal as a hardened stance against what could redirect it.
ALSO GROWS
qasheh: Hard or severe.
קָשֶׁה
The adjective gives the hardness in the verse a wider reach than bodily stiffness alone.
qesheh-oreph: Stiff-necked; stubborn.
קְשֵׁה־עֹרֶף
This phrase carries the same root into the recurring image of a neck set against correction.
מוּסָר
musar
GROWS FROM
יסר
y-s-r
To discipline, correct, or chastise.
“take the straightening” in this verse is musar. Musar is corrective instruction, not detached information. The stiffened neck resists the very input that could correct or redirect it.
ALSO GROWS
yasar: To discipline or correct.
יָסַר
The verb shows the corrective action carried by the instruction they refuse.
musar: Instruction, discipline, or correction.
מוּסָר
This noun names what they refuse to receive: teaching that addresses and corrects their course.
THE PATTERN
Refusing to hear becomes visible as a hardening that blocks correction.
And the LORD said to Moses, I have seen this people, and look, it is a stiff-necked people.But they refused to bend the ear, and turned a shoulder aside, and made their ears heavy so they would not hear and respond.Therefore, as the Set-Apart Breath says, Today, if you will hear and respond to his voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the embittering, in the day of the testing in the wilderness,THE THREAD
And the LORD said to Moses, I have seen this people, and look, it is a stiff-necked people.The Hebrew word behind “stiffnecked” shares the root קשה (q-sh-h, to be hard) with Jeremiah’s “made their neck stiff.” Exodus names the posture; Jeremiah shows its mechanism: refusing to hear and hardening against correction.
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