Five-minute study · Day 199 · Jeremiah 17
Jeremiah 17:9
A word worth stopping on: deceitful עָקֹב aqov
'The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?' The word for 'deceitful' is aqov. It comes from the same root as the name Jacob, Ya'aqov, the heel-grabber, the supplanter, the man who tricked his brother and his father before God broke him at the Jabbok. Jeremiah uses the patriarch's name as an adjective. Your heart is 'Jacob' above all things. It grabs, it supplants, it schemes. The prophet chose a word that carries an entire biography inside it.
Word study: deceitful
- Hebrew
- עָקֹב
- Pronounced
- aqov
- Strong's
- H6121
- Definition
- Deceitful, insidious, tracked by footprints. From the root aqav, 'to follow at the heel, to supplant, to deceive.' The same root behind the name Ya'aqov (Jacob), who was named for grasping his twin's heel at birth.
Aqov appears only three times in the Hebrew Bible: here in Jeremiah 17:9, in Jeremiah 17:6 (describing a cursed shrub), and in Job 37:4 (in a disputed reading). BDB defines it as 'insidious, deceitful,' derived from the root aqav, which means to follow at the heel, to assail insidiously, to overreach.
Lundbom's Anchor Bible commentary on Jeremiah 1-20 identifies the wordplay as deliberate. The root aqav is the same root that gives Jacob his name. Genesis 27:36 makes the connection explicit when Esau says: 'Is not he rightly named Jacob (Ya'aqov)? for he hath supplanted me (ya'aqveni) these two times.' Esau heard his brother's name as a verb: 'he Jacobs me.' Jeremiah uses the same root as an adjective for the human heart: your heart is 'Jacob,' crooked in the same way the patriarch was crooked before his transformation.
The word 'desperately wicked' (anush) adds a second layer. Anush means incurably sick, fatally ill, beyond human remedy. BDB defines it as 'sick, woeful, desperately wicked, incurable.' The combination is devastating: aqov (scheming like Jacob) and anush (incurably sick). The heart deceives and cannot heal itself.
Verse 10 provides the answer: 'I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.' The heart that cannot know itself is fully known by God. The verb 'search' (chaqar) means to explore, to examine thoroughly, like miners searching out ore in deep rock (Job 28:3). God goes deeper into the human heart than the heart goes into itself.
The literary context of Jeremiah 17:5-10 presents two contrasting figures: the person who trusts in human strength (vv. 5-6, described as a shrub in the desert, also called aqov) and the person who trusts in the LORD (vv. 7-8, described as a tree by water). Between these two figures, verse 9 diagnoses the organ that chooses between them. The heart that selects which path to follow is the least reliable instrument in the process.
Historical context · Late seventh to early sixth century BC, Kingdom of Judah
A Prophet Who Knew the Human Heart From the Inside
Jeremiah prophesied during the final decades of the Kingdom of Judah, from approximately 626 BC to the fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC. He watched his nation slide toward destruction while insisting that the disaster was avoidable if the people would turn from idolatry. They did not turn. The temple was burned. The city was razed. The population was deported.
Jeremiah's ministry was characterized by intense personal suffering. He was forbidden to marry (16:2). He was put in stocks (20:2). He was thrown into a cistern and left to sink in mud (38:6). His own family plotted against him (12:6). The people of his hometown, Anathoth, threatened to kill him if he continued prophesying (11:21). He is often called the 'weeping prophet' because of his laments (9:1: 'Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears').
The diagnosis of the human heart in 17:9 comes from a man who had watched an entire nation deceive itself. Judah's leaders convinced themselves that the temple's presence in Jerusalem guaranteed the city's safety (7:4: 'The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, The temple of the LORD, are these'). The prophets told the people what they wanted to hear (14:13-14). The priests ran the temple system while the people practiced idolatry in their homes and on the high places.
Lundbom notes that the aqov/Ya'aqov wordplay would have carried national resonance. Jacob was the ancestor whose name was changed to Israel after wrestling with God at the Jabbok (Genesis 32:28). The nation that bore the new name, Israel, was behaving like the old name, Jacob: grasping, scheming, deceiving. Jeremiah was telling the nation: you are living up to your patriarch's birth name, the one God changed. You have reverted.
The pairing of aqov with anush (incurable) led Jeremiah to the only possible conclusion: the heart cannot fix itself. The remedy had to come from outside. Jeremiah 31:33 provides it: 'I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts.' The same prophet who diagnosed the disease announced the cure. God would perform surgery on the organ that no human physician could reach.
For reflection
Aqov carries Jacob's biography inside it: the heel-grabber, the schemer, the man who tricked his way through life until God wrestled him to the ground and gave him a new name. Jeremiah says your heart is aqov. It grabs, it schemes, it tells you stories about yourself that serve your interests. What story has your heart been telling you lately that you suspect is not entirely honest? Name it. Then read verse 10: God searches the heart you cannot search yourself.
The heart that cannot know itself is fully known by God. The verb chaqar means to explore like a miner digging through rock.
Sources: BDB; Lundbom, 'Jeremiah 1-20' (Anchor Bible); Genesis 27:36; Genesis 32:28