through the prophets. (<) " They pulled away the shoulder" vayyitfnu khatheph soraretk, a Hebrew phrase which is found elsewhere only in that great confession in Neh. ix. 29, and means literally they offered a recusant, or unwilling, rebellious shoulder[1] instead of serving Jehovah " with joyfulness and gladness of heart " (Deut. xxviii. 47), and finding His yoke easy and His burden light, (c) " And stopped their ears" *T*2pn (hikhbidu), literally, " made it heavy" the word being the same as in that solemn passage, Isa. vi. 10, " Make the heart of the people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn again, and be healed."
It is one of the terrible moral consequences of men turning away from doing the will of God, that the more they hear, the duller their perceptions become, so that in the end, though having eyes, they see not. (d] The final stage of this process of rebellious self-hardening is expressed in the first line of the 1 2th verse: " And they made their hearts as an adamant stone" It is not quite certain what stone is meant by T OB (shamir), but it was harder than flint (Ezek. iii. 9). In Jer. xvii. I it is rendered "diamond."
"It was hard enough to cut ineffaceable characters; it would cut rocks, but could not be graven itself or receive the characters of God."[2]
Truly a fit figure to set forth the hardness and obduracy of the natural unregenerate heart. It is altogether hopeless, and nothing can be done to improve or soften it; the only hope for men in such condition being in this stony heart being altogether taken away by the power and grace of God, and in the creation within them of " an heart of flesh," responsive and impressionable to the Spirit and Word of God.
The enormity of the guilt of Israel is magnified by the fact
