Jeremiah 17:9

We’ve heard the verse before. Most likely we’ve heard sermons about it, too. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; Who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9, NKJV) Most of the time, at least in my experience, this verse has been used to defend the inherently evil nature of mankind. But what if everything we’ve thought and heard about this verse has come through a pre-biased lens . . . and what if that lens itself was deceptive? Let me explain and you can see what you think.

In the Hebrew, this verse is composed of four main words: leb, ‘aqob, anash, yada.

Here’s the verse broken down in the Hebrew using Strong’s Concordance.

leb

Translated above as “The heart”

• Inner man
• heart (508x), mind (12x), midst (11x), understanding (10x)

Note: The Hebrew culture believed this not only included the emotional heart but also the mind and thoughts. (See this link for further study)

‘aqob

Translated above as “is deceitful”

• deceitful, sly, insidious
• slippery
• foot-tracked
• steep, hilly
• crooked (1x), deceitful (1x), polluted (1x)

Note: ‘aqob only occurs 3 times in the Old Testament. It is only translated as deceitful in Jeremiah 17:9. Here are the other instances it’s used:

• Isaiah 40:4: “and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain”
• Hosea 6:8: “Gilead is a city of them that work iniquity, and is polluted with blood.”

It’s interesting that the term “deceitful” wouldn’t really work in either of the other 2 verses.

‘anash

Translated above as “desperately wicked”

• to be frail, feeble, or (figuratively) melancholy:—desperate(-ly wicked), incurable, sick, woeful.
• to be weak, sick, frail
  • desperate, incurable, desperately wicked, woeful, very sick (pass participle) (metaph.)
• incurable (5x), desperate (1x), desperately wicked (1x), woeful (1x), sick.

Note: ‘anash is only used 9 times in the Old Testament. The only time the translation even comes close in meaning to “desperately wicked” is in Jeremiah 17:9.

 yada’

Translated above as “who can know it?”

• To know (intimately), understand, perceive, to be acquainted with

A Deeper Look

How many times has someone in a romantic comedy called their heart “incurable” or “lovesick”? I’m not saying the Bible is using the verse in a romantic way, or even a positive way; but I do think “desperately wicked” has a different connotation in English than it was meant to have in Hebrew.

‘anash means sick, frail, and desperate/incurable. Man’s heart is not a strong thing. I think “prone to failure” or “prone to weakness” would be better translations. And ‘aqob means twisted, not straight.

To define the human race as inherently evil based on this one verse is going a bit far, wouldn’t you say?

Without presuppositions, I’d consider Jer. 17:9 translated this way:

“The inner person is tricky, hard to understand, changing all the time. It’s weak, prone to failure. Who can know his own self?”

To me, this is a much more powerful and nuanced way to understand this verse. Most of human experience is not black and white, clear-cut. It’s sticky and tricky and messy (which is kind of what this verse is saying, isn’t it?). So much of the Old Testament is full of shadow, of questions and clouds. David’s sin with Bathsheba brought forth the wisest man in history (besides Jesus), Solomon. Judah’s sin against and with his daughter-in-law Tamar brought forth Perez, the ancestor of Jesus. Humans are messy (but God can redeem anything).

I’m not saying that the heart is not a tricky thing. I’m saying mankind is not inherently evil. Let’s explore this further…

The Nature of Man

There are two ways to view humankind: basically good, or basically evil. “Original Sin” or “Original Blessing.”

I grew up in the church and never heard of an alternative Christian perspective to Original Sin that was Biblically based before my mid-twenties. I grew up hearing the analogy that there are two dogs inside us (the sin nature and the Spirit of God), and whichever one we feed gets stronger and stronger. (Interestingly enough, the Two Wolves legend is most likely of Native American origin. For them, it was a battle of light and hope vs. darkness and despair. The Biblical basis for this analogy is Romans 7:22-23: “For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.” I believe these two verses are taken out of context, for Paul was speaking of how he used to think, not how he thinks now . . . but that’s another article for another day.

Back to the dog analogy. According to Christian thought, these two natures wage war inside each one of us until we are finally relieved of this war when we die and enter Paradise.

I was brought up with the belief that Adam’s sin condemned the whole world – not based on anything the individual did or didn’t do, but just because he or she was born into mankind. They had “bad genes,” in a spiritual sense, because they were born of Adam’s line. But if we chose to align ourselves with Jesus and His sacrifice on the Cross for us, then… well, then it would be a life-long struggle between those two natures, which would be finished at death, where the evil nature would finally be put to rest as our physical body entered the grave.

I can barely stomach the thought of this being true anymore. In fact, it’s difficult for me to actually write it out. But most of the Christians I know would find no problem believing in the scenario presented above.

Why did I never reconsider this assumption that Adam’s sin was stronger than Christ’s death and resurrection? For Adam’s sin could affect the entire world, no matter the situation, race, religion, or belief, and regardless of the conscious choice of the individual – but Christ could only save those who believed (and believed the right way, at that), and then showed the fruit of a changed life, the proof of true belief.

And even still, according to this traditional Christian thought, Christ’s victory cannot fully defeat Adam’s sin on its own, even for the believer – not without the help of Death. For only then would we truly be free of our sinful nature. Oh my. What a picture this presents, doesn’t it? Have you ever thought of it this way before?

Before any of mankind’s struggles, we were originally blessed as children of a loving Father. That is our original inheritance, our birthright. We lost sight of this through the deception of sin, as well as the belief that the Father turned His face away from us. We believed God turned away from us, because we were so dirty and, blinded by our own shame and guilt, we were the ones who turned away from Him. He searched for Adam and Eve even after they ate the fruit. He even had relationship with them after they left the garden, for He spoke with Cain as a seemingly regular occurrence. He sent them out of the Garden of Eden, yes, but that was so that they would not eat of the Tree of Life; and when you keep reading the story you find that God went with them.

We have this perspective of God as one who needs to have His needs and demands met. But what we see in the life of Christ is one who comes as a servant, so ready to bring hope, to forgive, to change lives (for sin is destructive to His children and He hates seeing His children in its bondage). His anger and passion is against sin itself, not His children – His very passion against sin is for the sake of His children!

There’s so much more I could say about this, but this is enough for now. Here are two different video teachings where you can go deeper into the concept of Original Blessing:

Don’t be afraid to search for the truth. Yes, one’s heart may be deceived… and perhaps your heart is already so attached to your previous beliefs that it now finds it difficult to even consider that our current version of mainstream, evangelical, fundamental Christianity may have been fundamentally wrong. It’s happened before, and Martin Luther spoke up; why do we think we, the current church, now know everything? We mustn’t be afraid to continue growing. It’s time to enlarge our borders, to change sizes, to go from child to adolescent. Don’t let your heart fear. The truth isn’t intimidated by scrutiny.

In Part 2, we’ll dig deeper into who we are, rather than who we are not. I hope you’ll join me again next time.

(To be continued next month)