What Does 2 Chronicles 36:13 Mean in the King James?
And he also rebelled against king Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God: but he stiffened his neck, and hardened his heart from turning unto the LORD God of Israel.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
Resistance becomes self-fortification: the neck stays hard and the heart is made firm against turning back toward the LORD.
THE MEANING
The verse names what resistance does in a person now: it makes the posture unyielding and braces the heart against turning toward the LORD. The blocked movement is a return, refused from within.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that rebellion is only outward; here resistance hardens the inner life against returning to the LORD.
THE ROOT
קָשָׁה
qāšâ
GROWS FROM
קשה
To be hard, difficult, or severe.
“stiffened” in this verse is qāšâ. The neck is described through the language of hardness: resistance has taken on a posture that will not yield. The same root can describe stubbornness, so the phrase carries more than physical stiffness.
ALSO GROWS
qasheh: Hard, difficult, or severe.
קָשֶׁה
It makes the neck’s stiffness legible as a state of resistance.
qeshi: Stubbornness or hardness.
קְשִׁי
This branch shows how hardness becomes an inward refusal to yield.
וַיְאַמֵּץ
vaye'ametz
GROWS FROM
אמץ
To make firm or strong; to strengthen.
“hardened” in this verse is vaye'ametz. The heart is not merely called hard; it is made firm. This root can also name strength and courage, showing firmness turned toward resistance: strength is being used to prevent return.
ALSO GROWS
ve'imtsu: Be strong and courageous.
וְאִמְצוּ
The same root can describe strength as courage, while here the heart’s firmness is directed against turning.
ammets: Strengthen.
אַמֵּץ
The root’s sense of strengthening reveals the force of the choice: the heart is actively braced against return.
מִשּׁוּב
mishuv
GROWS FROM
שׁוב
To turn back or return.
What the hardened heart resists is shuv: the movement of turning back. The verse presents return as a change of direction toward the LORD, not merely a change of feeling.
ALSO GROWS
shav: Turns or returns.
שָׁב
This ordinary form of the root makes clear that the blocked movement is a return.
heshiv: Bring back or restore.
הֵשִׁיב
The causative branch shows the root’s wider movement of returning something to its place.
THE PATTERN
Resistance becomes self-reinforcing when the heart and posture grow unyielding to turning back toward God.
Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked.Harden not your heart, as in the provocation, and as in the day of temptation in the wilderness:Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.THE THREAD
Therefore say thou unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Turn ye unto me, saith the LORD of hosts, and I will turn unto you, saith the LORD of hosts.Both instances of “turn” come from שׁוב (shuv), the root of the turning this verse says is refused. Zechariah shows that turning toward the LORD is met by his turning toward the reader.
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