Bible Strands
Isaiah 48:4
For I knew that you are stubborn; your neck is iron and your forehead is bronze.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — YHWH speaks to Israel, explaining why He foretold events long before they happened (vv. 3–5): their stubbornness made it necessary to act so they could not credit their idols.
The words — גִּיד (gîd, "sinew") appears where the BSB simply says "neck is iron"; the original paints the neck as a sinew made of iron, a muscle that cannot bend.
The thread — The stiff-necked image runs from Exodus 32:9 through Zechariah 7:11 to Acts 7:51, becoming the standing charge against Israel across the canon.
Why it lands — The verse locates the cause of divine preemption not in God's secrecy but in the hearer's hardness; it asks the reader to examine what stubbornness in themselves has forced God to do.
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
Because I knew that thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass;
Cross-references
- Acts 7:51 You stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit, just as your fathers did.
- Exodus 32:9 The LORD also said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and they are indeed a stiff-necked people.
- Zechariah 7:11 But they refused to pay attention and turned a stubborn shoulder; they stopped up their ears from hearing.
- Proverbs 29:1 A man who remains stiff-necked after much reproof will suddenly be shattered beyond recovery.
- Ezekiel 3:4 Then He said to me, “Son of man, go now to the house of Israel and speak My words to them.
- Romans 2:5 But because of your hard and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
- Jeremiah 5:3 O LORD, do not Your eyes look for truth? You struck them, but they felt no pain. You finished them off, but they refused to accept discipline. They have made their faces harder than stone and refused to repent.
- Jeremiah 19:15 “This is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: ‘Behold, I am about to bring on this city and on all the villages around it every disaster I have pronounced against them, because they have stiffened their necks so as not to heed My words.’”
- Deuteronomy 31:27 For I know how rebellious and stiff-necked you are. If you are already rebelling against the LORD while I am still alive, how much more will you rebel after my death!
- Exodus 33:5 For the LORD had said to Moses, “Tell the Israelites, ‘You are a stiff-necked people. If I should go with you for a single moment, I would destroy you. Now take off your jewelry, and I will decide what to do with you.’”