Bible Strands
2 Chronicles 36:13
He also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God. But Zedekiah stiffened his neck and hardened his heart against turning to the LORD, the God of Israel.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The narrator records King Zedekiah’s final defiance during the Babylonian campaign, immediately after his refusal to humble himself before Jeremiah’s warning.
The words — The Hebrew מָרָד (marad) literally means "he rebelled," and וַיִּקֶשׁ (vayyiqesh) translates to "he made stiff," directly describing Zedekiah’s physical posture of insubordination.
The thread — The text explicitly links this rebellion to a sworn oath before God and pairs the stiffened neck motif with 2 Chronicles 30:8 and Jeremiah 52:2 as repeated markers of covenant failure.
Why it lands — The passage states that breaking divine oaths and hardening oneself against prophetic correction results in irreversible judgment, requiring readers to identify their own unyielding resistance to God’s commands.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
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.
Cross-references
- 2 Chronicles 30:8 Now do not stiffen your necks as your fathers did. Submit to the LORD and come to His sanctuary, which He has consecrated forever. Serve the LORD your God, so that His fierce anger will turn away from you.
- Jeremiah 52:2 And Zedekiah did evil in the sight of the LORD, just as Jehoiakim had done.
- Ezekiel 17:11 Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying,
- Exodus 8:15 When Pharaoh saw that there was relief, however, he hardened his heart and would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the LORD had said.
- Exodus 8:32 But Pharaoh hardened his heart this time as well, and he would not let the people go.
- Exodus 9:17 Still, you lord it over My people and do not allow them to go.
- Joshua 9:15 And Joshua made a treaty of peace with them to let them live, and the leaders of the congregation swore an oath to them.
- Joshua 9:19 All the leaders answered, “We have sworn an oath to them by the LORD, the God of Israel, and now we cannot touch them.
- 2 Samuel 21:2 At this, David summoned the Gibeonites and spoke to them. (Now the Gibeonites were not Israelites, but a remnant of the Amorites. The Israelites had taken an oath concerning them, but in his zeal for Israel and Judah, Saul had sought to kill them.)
- 2 Kings 17:4 But the king of Assyria discovered that Hoshea had conspired to send envoys to King So of Egypt, and that he had not paid tribute to the king of Assyria as in previous years. Therefore the king of Assyria arrested Hoshea and put him in prison.