What Does Jeremiah 17:23 Mean in the King James?
But they obeyed not, neither inclined their ear, but made their neck stiff, that they might not hear, nor receive instruction.
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 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.
“obeyed / hear” 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.
“made their neck stiff” 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.
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 unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people:But they refused to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears, that they should not hear.Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness:THE THREAD
And the LORD said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked 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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