Jeremiah 17:9
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
Study Note
Study Note
The declaration 'the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?' is the Hebrew Bible's most unambiguous statement of the depth and opacity of human moral corruption. The Hebrew 'aqov' (deceitful, literally 'heeled,' related to Jacob's name) and 'anush' (incurably sick, translated 'desperately wicked') create a portrait of the heart as both self-deceived and beyond human remedy. The question 'who can know it?' is answered in verse 10 by God alone — the divine search of heart and mind that the human subject cannot perform on itself. Romans 7:15's 'I do not understand my own actions' and 1 Corinthians 4:4's 'I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified' both reflect Pauline anthropology shaped by this Jeremianic diagnosis of the heart's self-opacity.
Other Translations
The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt: who can know it?
Crooked <FI>is<Fi> the heart above all things, And it <FI>is<Fi> incurable--who doth know it?
The heart is a twisted thing, not to be searched out by man: who is able to have knowledge of it?
Cross References
And ye have done worse than your fathers; for, behold, ye walk every one after the imagination of his evil …
This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun, that there is one event unto all: …
For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders,
Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness:
For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; …
For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies:
Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the living …
What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be …
How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water?
But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.