Bible Strands
Psalms 81:12
So I gave them up to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — God speaks to Israel in a feast-song turned lament, the moment immediately after stating that they refused to listen (v. 11) and immediately before a conditional "if only" (v. 13).
The words — שְרִירוּת (sherirot), "stubbornness," is a hapax legomenon in the Hebrew Bible; its root sense is a set, rigid jaw, here applied to the heart's unyielding resolution.
The thread — The same mechanism appears in Jeremiah 7:24 (following the stubborn inclinations of their own evil hearts) and Romans 1:24 (God giving them over to the desires of their hearts); Isaiah 30:1 frames the parallel as carrying out a plan that is not God's.
Why it lands — The verse presents "giving over" not as an arbitrary penalty but as the removal of restraint, so that the consequence is precisely the thing the heart already chose; it asks the reader to recognize that unrepentant direction is its own destination.
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
So I gave them up unto their own hearts’ lust: and they walked in their own counsels.
Cross-references
- 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.
- Romans 1:24 Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity for the dishonoring of their bodies with one another.
- Isaiah 30:1 “Woe to the rebellious children,” declares the LORD, “to those who carry out a plan that is not Mine, who form an alliance, but against My will, heaping up sin upon sin.
- Acts 7:42 But God turned away from them and gave them over to the worship of the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: ‘Did you bring Me sacrifices and offerings forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?
- 2 Thessalonians 2:9 The coming of the lawless one will be accompanied by the working of Satan, with every kind of power, sign, and false wonder,
- Acts 14:16 In past generations, He let all nations go their own way.
- Romans 1:26 For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.
- Jeremiah 44:16 “As for the word you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we will not listen to you!
- Job 8:4 When your children sinned against Him, He gave them over to their rebellion.
- Genesis 6:3 So the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days shall be 120 years.”