Bible Strands
Jeremiah 5:23
But these people have stubborn and rebellious hearts. They have turned aside and gone away.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The LORD speaks through Jeremiah to the people of Judah, contrasting His sovereign control over the sea with their refusal to fear Him. This declaration follows a rhetorical appeal to creation and immediately precedes a warning about their ingratitude for seasonal rains.
The words — The text highlights סוֹרֵר (so.Rer) as "stubborn" and סָ֖רוּ (Sa.ru) as "they have turned aside," describing a fixed disposition that results in departure from the covenant path. These terms literally denote a heart that resists correction and physically or spiritually abandons its course.
The thread — This motif of a hardened, straying heart appears in Jeremiah 6:28, which describes bronze and iron rebels, and Psalm 95:10, where God calls them a people whose hearts go astray. Deuteronomy 21:18 also uses the stubborn and rebellious descriptor for a son who refuses parental authority.
Why it lands — The passage demands a clear-eyed acknowledgment of human rebellion against divine provision and warning. It requires the reader to confront the reality that spiritual decline begins with a heart that refuses to fear God.
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
But this people hath a revolting and a rebellious heart; they are revolted and gone.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 6:28 All are hardened rebels, walking around as slanderers. They are bronze and iron; all of them are corrupt.
- Deuteronomy 21:18 If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and does not listen to them when disciplined,
- Psalms 95:10 For forty years I was angry with that generation, and I said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they have not known My ways.”
- Hosea 11:7 My people are bent on turning from Me. Though they call to the Most High, He will by no means exalt them.
- Hebrews 3:12 See to it, brothers, that none of you has a wicked heart of unbelief that turns away from the living God.
- Isaiah 1:5 Why do you want more beatings? Why do you keep rebelling? Your head has a massive wound, and your whole heart is afflicted.
- Isaiah 31:6 Return to the One against whom you have so blatantly rebelled, O children of Israel.
- Jeremiah 5:5 I will go to the powerful and speak to them. Surely they know the way of the LORD, the justice of their God.” But they too, with one accord, had broken the yoke and torn off the chains.
- Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
- Hosea 4:8 They feed on the sins of My people and set their hearts on iniquity.