What Does Jeremiah 7:26 Mean in the King James?
Yet they hearkened not unto me, nor inclined their ear, but hardened their neck: they did worse than their fathers.
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’s sequence makes refusal physical: what will not answer through the ear tightens into the neck.
THE MEANING
When God’s word reaches you now, resistance can begin as not responding, continue as attention turned aside, and settle into a whole posture of hardness. The verse names a refusal that can deepen beyond the pattern handed down to you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that ignoring what addresses you is passive and leaves you untouched; the verse shows that refusal forms a posture and can intensify beyond what was passed down.
THE ROOT
וַיַּקְשׁוּ
wayyaqšû
GROWS FROM
קשה
q-š-h
To be hard or severe; in this form, to make stiff or harden.
“hardened” in this verse is wayyaqšû. The neck’s stiffness is more than posture: refusal takes the shape of hardness, a will that will not yield. The sequence shows this hardness as the endpoint of not hearing and not turning attention toward the word.
ALSO GROWS
qāšeh: Hard, difficult, or severe.
קָשֶׁה
This adjective shares the root’s sense of hardness, showing the quality that the stiffened neck embodies.
hiqšāh: To make hard or stiffen.
הִקְשָׁה
This causative form makes the action explicit: resistance is not only a state but a hardening.
שָׁמְעוּ
šāmeʿû
GROWS FROM
שמע
š-m-ʿ
To hear, listen, or heed; where response is implied, to hear and respond.
The verse’s “hearkened not” is not merely a failure to register sound; it is a refusal to receive and respond. That makes the closed ear the first movement in the hardening that follows.
ALSO GROWS
shema: Hear and respond.
שְׁמַע
This familiar form carries the responsive hearing withheld in the verse.
shemuʿah: Report, tidings; what is heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
This branch names what reaches the ear, while the verse shows that hearing alone does not guarantee a response.
הִטּוּ
hiṭṭû
GROWS FROM
נטה
n-ṭ-h
To stretch out, extend, or turn aside.
“inclined” in this verse is hiṭṭû. The verb pictures attention as something turned or extended, so not inclining the ear is an active withholding of orientation. The movement from not responding to not turning toward the word intensifies the refusal before the neck hardens.
ALSO GROWS
nāṭāh: Stretch out, extend, or turn aside.
נָטָה
This root form preserves the physical movement inside “inclined their ear.”
neṭiyyāh: Extension or inclination.
נְטִיָּה
This noun carries the same idea of turning or extending, making attention feel like a direction the ear can take.
THE PATTERN
Refusal to receive correction turns into embodied resistance that grows harder with repetition.
He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness:THE THREAD
But they obeyed not, neither inclined their ear, but made their neck stiff, that they might not hear, nor receive instruction.The same Hebrew sequence, hearing, inclining the ear, and stiffening the neck, appears again, exposing refusal as a progression from withheld attention to bodily resistance. This verse makes the endpoint plain: the stiffened posture keeps instruction from being received.
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