Zechariah 7:12

Yea, they made their hearts [as] an adamant stone,.... The word here used is translated a "diamond" in Jeremiah 17:1 and it is said to be harder than a flint, Ezekiel 3:9.

Yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law, and the words which the LORD of hosts hath sent in his spirit by the former prophets: therefore came a great wrath from the LORD of hosts.

They made their hearts as an adamant: though the heart of itself is far from taking impressions, and receiving kindly the law of God, yet these desperate sinners think it is too pliable, they study how to harden it, and this was the fault of many of them. An adamant; the hardest of stones. Lest they should hear the law; which was peremptorily required of them, and they as peremptorily resolved against it. The law of God by Moses, of whom they boasted, whilst they despised his law. The words, counsels and commands, which the Lord of hosts, their God, spake; nay, though they knew he spake they would not hear. In his spirit; by his Holy Spirit, in clear evidences, piercing convictions, powerful operation, and dreadful threatenings; yet they opposed and resisted. and sinned against his Spirit. By the former prophets: all of them acted by the same Spirit, pressing them to the same duties, and foretelling the same miseries, and promising the same blessings, but all would not prevail. Therefore, for this great obstinacy, came a great wrath, which consumed the whole land, and burned against them seventy years together in Babylon. From the Lord of hosts; in all which the hand of the Lord was most evidently seen, dealing to them according to their ways. Such were your fathers, such their ways, such their sufferings, all which is well known to you who start such queries, and meanwhile run away from the great commands of the law.

Zechariah 7:12 Yea, they made their hearts [as] an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law, and the words which the LORD of hosts hath sent in his spirit by the former prophets: therefore came a great wrath from the LORD of hosts.Ver. 12. Yea, they made their hearts as an adamant] That hardest of stones, harder than the flint, Ezekiel 3:9, than the nether millstone, Job 41:24. Pliny saith of it, Durities eius est inenarrabilis, et simul ignium victrix natura et nunquam incalescens. The hardness of this stone is unspeakable: the fire cannot burn it, nor so much as heat it through; the hammer cannot break it; and therefore the Greeks call it an adamant, from its untameableness. Hircino tamen rumpitur sanguine, saith the same author. Howbeit this hardest stone, soaked for a while in goat’ s blood, may be dissolved and broken in pieces. So may the hardest heart by the blood of Christ (the true scape goat) applied by faith. "They shall look upon him whom they have pierced, and shall mourn" (οψονταικοψονται, Revelation 1:7). He shall look again upon them, and they shall melt much more. A stroke from guilt broke Judas’ s heart into despair; but a look from Christ broke Peter’ s heart into tears. Now till the heart be thus graciously mollified instructions glide off it, as rain falling upon a rock: afflictions, God’ s hammers, do not but beat upon an adamant, qui respuit scalptra et malleos, quin at ipsos disrampit, which will sooner break them than be broken by them. "Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye," Acts 7:51. How their fathers did appears by this text and Nehemiah 9:29. They had not only sinews of iron, a natural hereditary hardness (whereby all men are born averse from, yea, adverse to, the motions of the Spirit: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh"), but also brows of brass, Isaiah 48:4, a habitual, voluntary, adventitious, wilful hardness; refusing to be reformed, hating to be healed: such a desperate hardness, as neither ministry, nor misery, nor miracle, nor mercy could possibly mollify. By the former prophets] Heb. the hand of the former prophets, that is, by their mouth and ministry ( Manus enim, est οργανονοργανων. Arist.), but to as little purpose, through their singular obstinace, as when Bede preached to a heap of stones. Therefore came a great wrath from the Lord of hosts] Which argues that they were great sinners before the Lord, as Genesis 13:13; for he doth not use to kill flies upon men’ s brows with beetles.

(12) Adamant stone means a very hard stone; “diamond” is the modern form of the word. “Adamant,” adhámas, meaning in Greek unconquerable, was originally applied to “steel” (Hesiod). LXX. explain the metaphor, “made the heart disobedient.”

Verse 12. Made their hearts as an adamant stone] שמיר shamir may mean the granite. This is the hardest stone with which the common people could be acquainted. Perhaps the corundum, of which emery is a species, may be intended. Bochart thinks it means a stone used in polishing others. The same name, in Hebrew, applies to different stones.

12. an adamant] perhaps diamond, “so called from its cutting and perforating (the original meaning of the word being a sharp point, or thorn), as the point of a stylus was made of diamonds, Jeremiah 17:1.” Gesen. “The stone, whatever it be, was hard enough to cut ineffaceable characters (Jeremiah 17:1): it was harder than flint (Ezekiel 3:9). It would cut rocks; it could not be graven itself, or receive the characters of God.” Pusey. in his spirit] Rather, by His Spirit, as R. V. The preposition is the same as in the next clause, by the hand of His prophets. The Holy Ghost was the Divine Agent, the prophets were the human instruments. Comp. Nehemiah 9:30.

Harder than adamant - The stone, whatever it be, was hard enough to cut ineffaceable characters : it was harder than flint . It would cut rocks; it could not be graven itself, or receive the characters of God.

The true requirements of Jehovah, 7-14.The vague answer, in 4-6, though it leaves, for the time being, the question unsolved, opens the way for a discourse, in which the prophet goes to the root of