JBL 123/3 (2004) 531–535

CRITICAL NOTE

wn[dy ym awh `naw lkm blh bq[ (JEREMIAH 17:9)

What does Jeremiah mean when he asserts that the heart is “crooked” (bq[)?1
Many commentators take the prophet to be bemoaning the heart’s deceitfulness.
According to William McKane, for example, Jer 17:9 expounds “the incurable sickness
of perversity and deceit with which it [the heart] is afflicted.”2 The verse thus attests a
popular biblical motif, the universality of sin.3 This approach to Jer 17:9, which I shall

I thank Dr. Richard Steiner, Professor John Collins, and Aaron Koller for their comments on
earlier drafts of this note.
1 The LXX renders the first word of the verse as baqei'a, “deep.” This may be an interpreta-

tion of bq[. Alternatively, the LXX’s Vorlage may have contained qm[, “deep,” rather than bq[.
Bernhard Duhm assumes the latter and cites Ps 64:7 (blh qm[) as evidence that qm[ is original in
Jer 17:9 (Das Buch Jeremia [KHC 11; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1901], 146). Further support for a
Vorlage with qm[ may come from the Peshitta, which translates >ashiyn, “strong.” This rendering is
elucidated by Ugaritic, which employs two homonymous roots >mq, one meaning “deep” and the
other “strong.” See John Huehnergard, Ugaritic Vocabulary in Syllabic Transcription (HSS 32;
Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987), 160. Biblical Hebrew attests the latter in Job 39:21 and perhaps in
Jer 47:5. According to Jonas C. Greenfield, the Peshitta sees the root qm[, “strong,” in the phrase
hrs wqym[h (Isa 31:6), which it translates as d<a>shenton marduta<, “for you have been strongly
rebellious” (“Ugaritic Lexicographical Notes,” JCS 21 [1967]: 89). It is therefore possible that the
Peshitta here, too, witnesses a Vorlage with qm[. However, the evidence from the Peshitta is under-
mined by Michael Weitzman’s observation on the Peshitta’s translation technique: “Vague guesses
often involve the use of a ‘drudge word’. The commonest root so used is >shn” (The Syriac Version
of the Old Testament [University of Cambridge Oriental Publications 56; Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999], 41). Two scrolls from Qumran evidence qm[. In the fragmentary 4QJera,
the first word of Jer 17:9 ends with a b. See Emanuel Tov, Qumran Cave 4, X: The Prophets (DJD
15; Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 163. 4Q418 frag. 8 line 12 , evidently quoting from Jer 17:9, reads:
[lk]m blh bwq[. See John Strugnell and Daniel J. Harrington, eds., Qumran Cave 4, XXIV: Sapien-
tal Texts, Part 2 (DJD 34; Oxford: Clarendon, 1999), 232. The MT is also bolstered by Sir 36:25 (MS
B), which speaks of the bwq[ bl. Tg. Neb. (lykn, “deceitful”) and Vulg. (pravum) also witness bq[.
2 William McKane, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Jeremiah (2 vols.; ICC; Edin-

burgh: T & T Clark, 1986), 1:398.

3 See, e.g., Gen 6:5; 8:21; 1 Kgs 8:46; Ps 143:2; Prov 20:9; Qoh 7:20. Jeremiah 17:9, on the

above interpretation, strengthens the claim of universal sin in two ways. First, wickedness is charac-
teristic not merely of people’s deeds (as in, e.g., 1 Kgs 8:46; Ps 143:2), or of the imagination (rxy) of
their heart (as in Gen 6:5; 8:21), but of the heart itself. Second, the heart is not merely evil, but the
most evil thing. Jean Calvin is sensitive to the latter point: “God is not content merely to say that
there is some perversity in man, but that when one searches high and low, one will find such rebel-
lion only in the human heart” (Sermons on Jeremiah [trans. Blair Reynolds; Texts and Studies in
Religion 46; Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1990], 179).
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532 Journal of Biblical Literature

call the ontological, relies on the well-attested link between the root bq[ and the notion
of deceit.4 Moreover, deceitfulness is the sort of moral illness that `na, “mortally sick,”
the other adjective modifying bl in the verse, could figuratively describe.5
The ontological approach has difficulty explaining the transition to the question
wn[dy ym, “Who will know it?” since the talk to this point has been about the heart’s
wickedness, not its unknowability. It is not incoherent that the prophet should, in this
context, wonder who can know the heart—a deceitful heart of course eludes easy com-
prehension—but it is beside the point. What matters about the heart’s crookedness is
not that it impedes understanding but that it manifests human beings’ sinfulness. 6
Moreover, the context of the verse seems both to highlight the heart’s unknowability
and implicitly to preclude the notion of universal sinfulness. That God, in Jer 17:10,
answers the question posed in Jer 17:9, argues, against the ontological approach, for the
centrality of the question. That God must examine the heart suggests, further, that the
heart may turn out bad or good, that wickedness is not assumed. 7 This inference
becomes still more compelling if the interpretive context is widened to include Jer
17:5–8,8 since these verses clearly entertain the possibility of a praiseworthy person.

4 See, e.g., M. Malul, “>Aµqeµb ‘Heel’ and >Aµqab ‘To Supplant’ and the Concept of Succession

in the Jacob-Esau Narratives,” VT 46 (1996): 211–12.

5 It is noteworthy, however, that nowhere in the Bible does the root `na carry a moral conno-

tation. Evil deeds often give rise to `na pains, e.g., Jer 30:12; 30:15, but nowhere are evil deeds
themselves `na. In other instances of biblical heart-sickness, the heart is never sinful but rather
aggrieved (1 Sam 1:8), pained (Isa 1:5), sorrowful (Jer 8:18; Lam 1:22), or dejected (Prov 13:12).
6 One plausible response is to render the question a rhetorical flourish that reinforces the

preceding statement. “‘Who can know it?’ is not so much a reference to unexplored depths (to the
unknowability of the heart), as it is to its immeasurable capacity for wickedness and the deep-
seated disease which grips it” (McKane, Jeremiah, 1:398). William L. Holladay similarly identifies a
rhetorical function for wn[dy ym: “[The heart of his people] is a bl which needs washing . . . , a bl on
whose tablet the sin of Judah is deeply incised: who could grasp such a situation?” (Jeremiah 1: A
Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah [2 vols.; Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress,
1986], 1:495). On Holladay’s reading, and probably also on McKane’s, the antecedent of the suf-
fixed pronoun in wn[dy is not the object, blh, but the proposition awh `naw lkm blh bq[. Conse-
quently, the verb must be understood not as kennen but as wissen.
7 None of the terms employed in Jer 17:10 to describe God’s judgments and the conse-

quences thereof necessarily carries the implication that evildoing is being punished. The verbs @jb
and rqj more often describe the probing of the righteous than of the wicked. In Ps 7:10 God tests
(@jb) the reins of both the good and the bad person. In Jer 11:20 and 20:12, God is asked to test
(@jb) the heart and reins of the righteous Jeremiah and reward him by coming to his aid. Again in
Jer 12:3 (ybl tnjbw); Pss 17:3 (ybl tnjb); 26:2 (ynnjb); 139:1 (yntrqj); 139:23 (ynnjb/ynrqj), the
speaker either invites God to test him or declares that he has been tested, with the implication,
respectively, that the speaker will prove or has proven righteous. The second half of 17:10 (ttl
wyll[m yrpk wkrdk `yal, “to repay every person according to his ways, and with the fruit of his
deeds”) recurs in Jer 32:19 with no suggestion that the evil person alone will experience such a fate.
The expression wyll[m yrp, alone, can be used in connection with evil deeds (Mic 7:13) or good
deeds (Isa 3:10).
8 In favor of treating Jer 17:5–8 together with Jer 17: 9–10, consider that the MT does not

section off Jer 17:8 from Jer 17:9. 4QJera, however, does insert a section break between the verses.
See Tov, Qumran Cave 4, X, 148, 163. Moreover, the shared vocabulary of the two sections (cf. bl
in Jer 17:5, 9–10 and yrp in Jer 17:8, 10) should probably be construed not as evidence that the
 Critical Note 533

In stark contrast to the ontological position, the approach that I shall call the epis-
temological makes wn[dy ym its exegetical cynosure: the verse speaks not of the heart’s
perversity but of its unfathomability. Naphtali H. Tur-Sinai is the most forceful advocate
of this position. Translating bq[ in v. 9 as “closely kept,” he makes the prophet say, at the
concrete level, that the heart is an interior organ invisible to the eye and, at the figura-
tive level, that the mind is difficult to understand. Tur-Sinai repoints `nUa; in the MT to
`nOa> and thus emerges with the following reading of the verse: “The heart is more closely
kept than anything, and humanity—what human being can know it?”9 Jeremiah 17:10
then follows naturally: while the heart indeed surpasses people’s understanding, God
can examine it. The sense of the verses, on the epistemological approach, is basically
equivalent to that of the request in Solomon’s dedicatory prayer: “render to each accord-
ing to his ways, as You know his heart to be—for You alone know the heart of all men” (1
Kgs 8:39 JPS).10 Although Tur-Sinai’s translation creatively identifies a basis in physical
fact for the metaphorical claim that the heart is unknowable, it rests on an idiosyncratic
interpretation of bq[ for which he provides only dubious evidence.11 But the same
result can be reached by assuming that the prophet sees the heart’s crookedness as a
metaphor for its serpentine complexity.12
An overlooked and hitherto imperfectly understood element of Jer 17:9 provides
strong evidence for the epistemological understanding of the verse. The prepositional
phrase lkm is analyzed by all commentators into @m, “than,” and lk, “everything.” This
approach is, however, doubly problematic. First, outside of lkm lwdg, “wealthier than
them all” (Dan 11:2 JPS), lk governed by comparative @m occurs only in the construct
state.13 As William L. Holladay observes, “the expression here, general in the extreme, is

verses constitute a single pericope but as an explanation for the juxtaposition of two distinct peri-
copes.
9 Naphtali H. Tur-Sinai, hml` yl`m (Tel Aviv: Yavneh, 1947), 43. Tur-Sinai’s repointing of

`nUa; to `Ona> is supported by the LXX and the Peshitta. Note also the suggestive appearance of `wna,
“man,” immediately before the quotation from the first half of Jer 17:9 in 4Q418 frag. 8 line 12.
However, Tur-Sinai’s vocalization of `na in 17:9 does not have room for the pronoun awh that
immediately follows. On his approach, the verse should read: yn[dy ym `naw, “and humanity, who
(among human beings) will know (the heart)?”
10 See also James M. Lindenberger, The Aramaic Proverbs of Ahiqar (JHNES; Baltimore:

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), l:163 (“No one knows what is in the heart of another”).
11 Tur-Sinai cites Pss 19:12; 119:33; 119:112, but acknowledges that he reads these verses

gwhnh !`wrypk al`, “not as they are usually understood.”

12 Yair Hoffman, who cites Isa 40:4, understands the metaphor in this fashion: awh blh

!dah ta lybwy @kyhl t[dl @yaw rja rbd lkm rtwy ltltp, “the heart is more convoluted than any
other thing, and one cannot know where it will lead a person” (whymry [2 vols.; lar`yl arqm;
Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2001], 1:398).
13 Daniel 11:2 is, moreover, itself a dubious parallel, since “the quality of Hebrew in this

chapter (Dan 11:2–12:4) is exceptionally poor” (John J. Collins, Daniel [Hermeneia; Minneapolis:
Fortress, 1993], 377). Tur-Sinai finds another instance of the absolute lk governed by comparative
@m in the Aramaic of Ahiqar. The text, which is fragmentary at this point, reads [ ]m @y`l qyqr.
(Lindenberger, Aramaic Proverbs, line 105b). Tur-Sinai fills the gap with alk n, so that the line
reads: “the tongue is softer than anything” (Tur-Sinai, hml` yl`m, 41). Lindenberger, however,
supplies ^l to yield: “the king’s tongue is gentle” (Lindenberger, Aramaic Proverbs, 91). In light of
the context, which speaks of the king generally (lines 100–108) and, in particular, of the (apparent)
534 Journal of Biblical Literature

striking.”14 Given Jeremiah’s predilection for open-ended expressions involving lk, the
absence of precedent might, by itself, be too flimsy a basis on which to justify a reanaly-
sis of lkm.15 Structural considerations, however, furnish a second reason. Of Jer 17:9
Holladay observes that “it is hard to know its structure. Is it prose? If it is poetry, is it a
tricolon?”16 Among those who treat the verse as poetry, some see a bicolon that divides
the first two clauses (lkm blh bq[ and awh `naw) from the third (wn[dy ym); others a
bicolon that sets off the first clause against the last two; and still others a tricolon divided
according to the clausal boundaries.17 Thus the reigning understanding of the verse has
yielded no consensus with regard to its structure.
It is possible, however, both to avoid the poorly attested absolute lkm and to dis-
cern a parallelistic structure in Jer 17:9 by reading lk not as the noun lk, “everything,”
but as the infinitive construct of the Qal form of the root lwk, “to measure, to mete.” The
Qal is attested once elsewhere in Biblical Hebrew: $rah rp[ `l`b lkw, “and meted
earth’s dust with a measure” (Isa 40:12 JPS). It also occurs once in the Gezer Calendar
(10th cent. B.C.E.) and twice (possibly thrice) in the Mets\ad H\ashavyahu letter (late 7th
cent. B . C . E .). 18 The proposed construal of lk in Jer 17:9 requires no consonantal
changes in the MT, since the regular infinitive, lWk, can be represented defectively as
lku.19 The vocalization of the MT may also be retained if one assumes either that here, as
elsewhere, the infinitive construct of the II-weak takes oµ rather than uµ,20 or that, as else-
where, the II-weak form has been contaminated by the corresponding geminate root,
here llk.21
On this approach, Jer 17:9 employs the verb lwk in the figurative sense of “to com-
prehend.” Such a figurative usage is attested in Biblical Hebrew for other words within
the same semantic field, for example, @kt (Piel), “to measure,” which parallels lwk in Isa
40:12. In the very next verse, @kt occurs in a figurative sense: “Who has plumbed (@kt)
the mind of the Lord (hwhy jwr), what man could tell Him (wn[ydwy) His plan” (Isa 40:13
JPS). Here, as in Jer 17:9, a form of the verb [dy parallels the verb of measurement. The
phrase bl @kt, basically synonymous with the phrase bl lwk identified here, occurs twice

gentleness of the king’s words (line 100), Lindenberger’s reconstruction is to be preferred. For
examples of the comparative lkm in the construct, see, e.g., Gen 37:3; Exod 18:11; Deut 7:7.
14 Holladay, Jeremiah, 1:495.
15 See, e.g., Jer 2:12, 34; 3:7; 6:6, 13 (twice); 8:10 (twice); 13:19; 14:22; 15:10.
16 Holladay, Jeremiah, 1:494.
17 W. T. W. Cloete, Versification and Syntax in Jeremiah 2–25: Syntactical Constraints in

Hebrew Colometry (SBLDS 117; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 184.

18 See KAI 1:34 (no. 182), 36 (no. 200). Derived forms from lk in the Bible and Qumran are

collected by Alexander Rofé, “A Neglected Meaning of the Verb lwk and the Text of 1QS
VI:11–13,” in Sha‘arei Talmon: Studies in the Bible, Qumran, and the Ancient Near East Presented
to Shemaryahu Talmon (ed. Michael Fishbane and Emanuel Tov; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns,
1992), 315–21.
19 For instances of II-weak infinitive constructs spelled defectively, see, e.g., Gen 19:33 (!wq)

and 19:35 (!q); Job 1:7 (fw`) and 2:2 (f`).

20 See Joüon-Muraoka §80k. See, e.g., Josh 2:16 (b`); Ps 38:17 (fwmb). The choice of oµ may

have been dictated here by the desire to pun on lk, “everything.” For another instance in which lit-
erary considerations may underlie the use of oµ in the infinitive construct, see Isa 30:2, where zw[
assonates with the neighboring zw[m.
21 See Joüon-Muraoka §80o. See, e.g., Ezek 6:9 (wfqnw); 10:17 (wmwry).
 Critical Note 535

in the Bible: “All the ways (^rd) of a man seem right (r`y) to him, but the Lord probes
the mind (hwhy twbl @ktw)” (Prov 21:2 JPS); “He who fathoms hearts (twbl @kt) will dis-
cern [the truth], He who watches over your life will know it ([dy), and He will pay each
man as he deserves” (Prov 24:12 JPS).22 Other words of measurement that are grouped
with lwk in Isa 40:12 take on figurative meanings in Prov 4:26 (slp); Job 6:2 (lq`,
!ynzam); 31:6 (lq`, !ynzam).
The phrase lkm blh bq[ thus means: the heart is too serpentine to comprehend.
The proposed reading finds an exact syntactic parallel in aw`nm ynw[ lwdg, “my punishment
is too great to bear” (Gen 4:13 JPS).23 A near syntactic and semantic parallel is hp` yqm[
[wm`m, “speech too obscure to comprehend” (Isa 33:19 JPS).
The reinterpreted verse divides neatly into two parallel cola:

The heart is too serpentine to comprehend. lkm blh bq[

And it is sick (?); who will know it? wn[dy ym awh `naw
The parallel structure, by aligning bq[ with `na, provides a starting point (which shall
not be pursued here) for interpreting the contextual meaning of the latter word. This
structure also makes readily discernible the wordplay in wn[dy ym. When the reader hears
/mi/ in the second colon, she is led by the parallelism to anticipate the preposition @m and
is therefore surprised by the interrogative pronoun ym.
The understanding advanced here supports the epistemological approach to the
verse in two ways. First, and most obviously, the verb that it identifies points to the
heart’s unknowability rather than to its wickedness. More subtly, though proponents of
the ontological approach do not directly say so, their understanding of the verse seems
driven in part by the sense of pained desperation that both the absolute lkm and the
unbalanced meter evoke. By eliminating the absolute lkm and identifying a parallelistic
structure, the proposed interpretation undermines the literary sensibilities that inform
the ontological approach.
Tzvi Novick
michael.novick@yale.edu
73 Pearl Street
New Haven, CT 06511

22 Though @kt, in these two verses, occurs in the Qal and not, as in Isa 40:12–13, in the Piel, a

comparison of Isa 40:13 with Prov 16:2 indicates that the two forms are semantically equivalent.
23 The construction is composed of three elements in order: an adjective; a noun modified by

the adjective; and a clause in which the preposition @m governs an infinitive construct, and in which
the infinitive construct takes the noun as its implied object. The construction conveys that the
action represented by the infinitive construct cannot be performed upon the object represented by
the noun. The sense is nicely illustrated by two other closely related constructions. In Hab 1:13,
the phrase [r twarm !yny[ rwhf is followed by the phrase lkwt al lm[ la fybhw. The clause hyh yk
wdjy tb`m br !`wkr in Gen 36:7 is synonymous with the clause wdjy tb`l wlky alw br !`wkr hyh yk
in Gen 13:6.