What Does Jeremiah 5:23 Mean?
But this people has a stiff-shouldered heart that rebels. They have turned aside and gone away.
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 this people hath a revolting and a rebellious heart; they are revolted and gone.THE KEY
The Hebrew links a stubborn heart with a life turning away: the departure begins within before it becomes a path.
THE MEANING
Your heart and your direction are one movement here: a settled refusal within becomes a turning away that keeps going. The verse names the inward resistance and outward departure together, as one unfolding motion.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that departure begins only with an outward break. Here, the heart is already turned before the verse says the people have gone.
THE ROOT
סוֹרֵר
sorer
GROWS FROM
סרר
To be stubborn or refractory.
“stiff-shouldered” in this verse is sorer. סוֹרֵר (sorer, stubborn) and סָרוּ (saru, they turned aside) are different roots, but their sounds echo across the verse. That echo links resistance inside the heart with departure in the life, a connection the English wording obscures.
ALSO GROWS
sorer: Stubborn, refractory.
סוֹרֵר
This is the word describing the heart’s resistance.
sorerah: Stubborn or backsliding; used of a heifer.
סוֹרְרָה
Hosea uses the same root to picture resistance as a refusal of direction.
סָרוּ
saru
GROWS FROM
סור
To turn aside or depart.
“turned aside” in this verse is saru. The verb translated “revolted” carries the motion of turning aside. The next words say they have gone, so the verse shows a turn becoming a continuing direction.
ALSO GROWS
sur: Turn aside, depart.
סוּר
It makes the departure in this verse a concrete change of direction.
hesir: Remove, take away.
הֵסִיר
This causative form carries the related sense of turning or taking something away.
מוֹרֶה
moreh
GROWS FROM
מרה
To rebel or resist authority.
The verse pairs the stubbornness of סורר with active defiance in מורה. Together they describe a heart that both resists and rebels before the turning away is named.
ALSO GROWS
meri: Rebellion, defiance.
מְרִי
This noun makes the defiant quality in the heart explicit.
meritem: You rebelled.
מְרִיתֶם
This verb form shows the root describing rebellion as an action.
THE PATTERN
A resistant heart becomes a departing path: inward refusal is already moving outward.
For Israel turns aside stiff-shouldered, like a heifer. Now the LORD will shepherd them like a lamb in a wide place.Watch, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of not leaning your full weight, in stepping away from the living God.THE THREAD
If a man has a son who turns aside and is rebellious, who does not hear and respond to the voice of his father or to the voice of his mother, and when they straighten him, he does not hear and respond to them.The Hebrew pair סוֹרֵר וּמוֹרֶה (sorer u-moreh, stubborn and rebellious) appears here in the same order as Jeremiah’s description of the heart. Jeremiah then echoes the sound of סוֹרֵר (sorer, stubborn) in סָרוּ (saru, they turned aside), tying inward resistance to outward departure.
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