What Does Deuteronomy 9:13 Mean in the King James?

Furthermore the LORD spake unto me, saying, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people:

Deuteronomy 9:13 · KJV

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

The verse gives resistance a body: the people are hard at the neck, the place from which a person turns.

THE MEANING

The LORD sees you where resistance hardens into a posture that will not turn. The verse names that hardness plainly; it is not hidden from him.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

The belief that your resistance goes unseen dissolves in the LORD’s words: “I have seen this people.”

THE ROOT

קְשֵׁה־עֹרֶף

qesheh-ʿoref

GROWS FROM

קשה

q-sh-h

To be hard or severe; by extension, stubborn.

“stiffnecked” in this verse is qesheh-ʿoref. The phrase joins hardness to the nape of the neck, giving resistance a bodily shape at the place a person turns. The same root can name hardness and stubbornness, gathering physical rigidity and settled refusal into one image.

ALSO GROWS

qashah: To be hard or severe.

קָשָׁה

This verb shows that the neck’s stiffness belongs to a wider language of hardness.

qeshi: Stubbornness.

קְשִׁי

Deuteronomy 9:27 uses this noun for the people’s stubbornness, showing the same hardness named as refusal.

THE PATTERN

Hardness becomes visible as refusal to yield, and Scripture names that resistance directly.

And the LORD said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people:

Exodus 32:9 · KJVThe LORD again names the people’s stiffness as something he sees.

Now be ye not stiffnecked, as your fathers were, but yield yourselves unto the LORD, and enter into his sanctuary, which he hath sanctified for ever: and serve the LORD your God, that the fierceness of his wrath may turn away from you.

2 Chronicles 30:8 · KJVThe verse sets the stiff neck against yielding, making the posture of resistance explicit.

Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.

Acts 7:51 · KJVThe image extends from the neck to the heart and ears, naming hardness as resistance.

THE THREAD

Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked.

Deuteronomy 10:16 · KJV

This verse uses the same “hard of neck” phrase and places it beside a covering at the heart. The pairing presents the resistance as something that can be removed, rather than an unchangeable name.

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