Bible Strands
Jeremiah 18:12
But they will reply, ‘It is hopeless. We will follow our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart.’”
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — God delivers this message through Jeremiah to the men of Judah and residents of Jerusalem immediately after warning them of coming disaster and commanding repentance. The verse records their anticipated defiant response to that prophetic warning.
The words — The text highlights נוֹאָשׁ (no'ash), literally “despairing,” and שְׁרִיר֥וּת (sherirut), literally “stubbornness.” These terms frame their rejection of correction as a deliberate choice rooted in hardened resolve.
The thread — This pattern of defiant refusal appears in Jeremiah 2:25, Jeremiah 7:24, and Deuteronomy 29:19. Each passage documents Israel’s repeated rejection of divine warning in favor of following their own inclinations.
Why it lands — The verse demands recognition that spiritual decline culminates in the conscious abandonment of corrective instruction. It requires the reader to examine whether personal resistance to correction has hardened into self-directed defiance.
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 they said, There is no hope: but we will walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 2:25 You should have kept your feet from going bare and your throat from being thirsty. But you said, ‘It is hopeless! For I love foreign gods, and I must go after them.’
- Deuteronomy 29:19 because when such a person hears the words of this oath, he invokes a blessing on himself, saying, ‘I will have peace, even though I walk in the stubbornness of my own heart.’ This will bring disaster on the watered land as well as the dry.
- Jeremiah 7:24 Yet they did not listen or incline their ear, but they followed the stubborn inclinations of their own evil hearts. They went backward and not forward.
- Jeremiah 16:12 And you have done more evil than your fathers. See how each of you follows the stubbornness of his evil heart instead of obeying Me.
- Isaiah 57:10 You are wearied by your many journeys, but you did not say, “There is no hope!” You found renewal of your strength; therefore you did not grow weak.
- Genesis 8:21 When the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, He said in His heart, “Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from his youth. And never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done.
- Jeremiah 3:17 At that time they will call Jerusalem The Throne of the LORD, and all the nations will be gathered in Jerusalem to honor the name of the LORD. They will no longer follow the stubbornness of their evil hearts.
- Mark 7:21 For from within the hearts of men come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery,
- Luke 1:51 He has performed mighty deeds with His arm; He has scattered those who are proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
- Genesis 6:5 Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great upon the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was altogether evil all the time.