Jeremiah 17:9

The heart is deceitful above all things,.... This is the source of the idolatry and creature confidence of the Jews, sins which were the cause of their ruin; and though what is here said is

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

The words translated deceitful, and desperately wicked, are very variously translated, fraudulent, perverse, supplanting. He speaks to the Jews, that they might not lean too much to their own counsels, fancies, or understandings; but it is a proposition true concerning the hearts of all the sons and daughters of men; there is nothing so false and deceitful as the heart of man; deceitful in its apprehensions of things, in the hopes and promises which it nourisheth, in the assurances that it gives us, &c.; unsearchable by others, deceitful with reference to ourselves, and abominably wicked, so that neither can a man know his own heart, neither can any other know our hearts.

Jeremiah 17:9 The heart [is] deceitful above all [things], and desperately wicked: who can know it?Ver. 9. The heart of man is deceitful above all things.] The pravity and perversity of man’ s heart, full of harlotry and creature confidence, deceiving and being deceived, is here plainly and plentifully described; and oh that it were duly and deeply considered. "Deceitful" it is here said to be "above all things," no creature like it. Varium est, versutum, et versipelle; tortuosum est, anfractuosum et fallax, ideoque inscrutabile; It is full of turnings and windings, nooks and corners, wiles and sleights. It deceived David, as wise as he was, and tripped up his heels, as the word here used importeth; so it did Peter. Fitly doth the prophet here call our hearts "deceitful," in that word in the original, from whence Jacob had his name, because our fleshly hearts do the same things to the spirit in doing of good, which Jacob did to his brother - supplant it and catch it by the heel while it is running the Christian race. As Jehu offered sacrifice to Baal, killing his priests at the same time - and this he did in subtlety to circumvent them - and as Hushai went to Absalom’ s company to overthrow him, so deal our deceitful hearts with us, &c. Neither is it deceitful only, but deep (so the Septuagint here render it); those that are still digging in this dunghill do find it to be a very bottomless pit. Yea, it is Desperately wicked.] Desperately bent upon deadly mischief. So that he gave no evil counsel who said to his friend, Ita cave tibi, ut caveas teipsum; so see to thyself that thou beware of thine own heart. Another prayed not amiss, Lord, keep me from that naughty man - myself. Take heed of the devil and the world, said a certain martyr in a letter to his wife, but especially of thine own heart. “ Non longe scilicet hostes Quaerendi nobis, circumstant undique muros. ” We have a Trojan horse full of armed enemies in the citadel of our hearts. We have Jebusites enough within us to undo us, quos nec fugere possumus nec fugare. who we are not able to put to flight or rout. It was no ill character, therefore, of a good man that is given by Epictetus, a heathen, that he carefully watcheth himself as his own deadly enemy. Who can know it?] None but a man’ s self; nor not even a man’ s self, for nothing is more common than self deceit. How much was Bellarmine, that great scholar, mistaken, and how ill-read in his own heart, when, the priest coming to absolve him on his deathbed, he could not remember any particular sin to confess till he went back in his thoughts as far as his youth! Had he but thrust his hand into his own bosom, with Moses, he had brought it out leprous, white as snow.

(9) The heart is deceitful . . .—The sequence of ideas seems as follows: If the blessing and the curse are thus so plainly marked, how is it that man chooses the curse and not the blessing, the portion of the “heath in the desert” rather than that of the “tree planted by the waters”? And the answer is found in the inscrutable self-deceit of his nature blinding his perceptions of good and evil. Desperately wicked.—Rather, incurably diseased, as in Jeremiah 15:18; Jeremiah 30:12; Jeremiah 30:15; Isaiah 17:11, and elsewhere. Wickedness is, of course, implied, but it is regarded rather as a moral taint following on the deliberate choice, than as the choice itself.

Verse 9. The heart is deceitful] עקב הלב akob halleb, "the heart is supplanting - tortuous - full of windings - insidious;" lying ever at the catch; striving to avail itself of every favourable circumstance to gratify its propensities to pride, ambition, evil desire, and corruption of all kinds. And desperately wicked] ואנש הוא veanush hu, and is wretched, or feeble; distressed beyond all things, in consequence of the wickedness that is in it. I am quite of Mr. Parkhurst's opinion, that this word is here badly translated as אנש anash is never used in Scripture to denote wickedness of any kind. My old MS. Bible translates thus: - Schrewid is the herte of a man: and unserchable: who schal knowen it? Who can know it?] It even hides itself from itself; so that its owner does not know it. A corrupt heart is the worst enemy the fallen creature can have; it is full of evil devices, - of deceit, of folly, and abomination, and its owner knows not what is in him till it boils over, and is often past remedy before the evil is perceived. Therefore trust not in man, whose purposes are continually changing, and who is actuated only by motives of self-interest.

9–13. See introd. summary to section. This sub-section is made up of three isolated pieces, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13; the metres also varying.

9. The heart is deceitful — The connexion is this: Man trusts in his fellowman in obedience to the natural impulses of his heart, and because he thinks him trustworthy; but “the heart is deceitful.”