The back of the neck or back supplies a bodily image whose action and setting the passage must explain. Deuteronomy calls the people to circumcise their hearts and stop stiffening their necks, beside teaching about the Lord's justice and care for vulnerable people.
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Full entry for עֹרֶף (H6203) · Open the biblical lexicon
The back of the neck or back supplies a bodily image whose action and setting the passage must explain. Deuteronomy calls the people to circumcise their hearts and stop stiffening their necks, beside teaching about the Lord's justice and care for vulnerable people.
The BSB source-word alignment has 33 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include . . . (9), their necks (6), their backs (3), retreat (2), your necks (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Genesis 49:8. Its strongest book concentrations include Jeremiah (7), Exodus (5), Deuteronomy (4), 2 Chronicles (3).
The back of the neck or back supplies a bodily image whose action and setting the passage must explain. Deuteronomy calls the people to circumcise their hearts and stop stiffening their necks, beside teaching about the Lord's justice and care for vulnerable people. Jeremiah says the people turned their backs rather than their faces to God and refused repeated teaching.
Job uses neck-grasping language within his anguished account of being shattered. The noun therefore cannot make every physical stiffness a moral fault or every distressed question refusal of God. Read the named conduct and the speaking voice. The calf account explicitly supplies disobedience before the stiff-necked description, while Nehemiah's confession also remembers God's forgiveness and compassion.
A teacher should name the rebellion the text names without branding every questioner stubborn or pretending to know the spiritual cause of someone's pain.
Stiffened-neck charges, backs turned from teaching, communal confession and Job's neck-grasping lament provide different actions and voices. The noun's bodily image needs the passage's stated conduct and evaluation.
Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and stiffen your necks no more.
The call to stop stiffening necks accompanies heart language and teaching about impartial justice and care for widows, orphans and foreigners, keeping the addressed response concrete.
They have turned their backs to Me and not their faces. Though I taught them again and again, they would not listen or respond to discipline.
Turning backs rather than faces is explicitly joined to refusing repeated teaching, with the following verses naming abominations; posture is interpreted through stated conduct.
I was at ease, but He shattered me; He seized me by the neck and crushed me. He has set me up as His target;
Job describes being seized by the neck and shattered within his anguished speech, requiring the lamenter's voice to remain distinct from a narrator's diagnosis of suffering.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Hebrew word. the nape or back of the neck (as declining ); hence, the back generally (whether literal or figurative)
the nape or back of the neck (as declining); hence, the back generally (whether literal or figurative) BDB: back of neck Usage: back ((stiff-) neck((-ed).
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
עֹרֶף is built from this root:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
The neck image does not establish its own charge. Deuteronomy calls for a changed response to God and immediately describes His impartial justice and care for vulnerable people. Exodus identifies the calf and sacrificed worship before calling the people stiff-necked. Jeremiah explicitly joins turned backs to refused instruction and named abominations. Those charges should be taught honestly rather than softened into a vague personality trait.
Yet Job's description of being seized by the neck belongs to his lament, and Nehemiah's confession holds the fathers' refusal beside God's forgiveness and continuing compassion. A teacher must preserve both named conduct and literary voice. Do not condemn a question, a physical limitation or an anguished prayer simply because another passage uses this bodily image for rebellion; neither can the noun grant a leader knowledge of hidden motives or freedom from accountable questions.
Deut.10.16
The licensed Hebrew noun names the nape or back of the neck and can describe the back more generally. Stiffened-neck and turned-back expressions require their actual modifiers and actions; the noun alone does not mean rebellion or diagnose a person's bodily condition.
Acts 7:51-53 uses stiff-necked and uncircumcised-heart language within Stephen's specific charge about resistance, persecution and failure to keep received law. This Greek address is not the Hebrew noun. Its actual hearers and stated conduct must remain visible rather than assigning collective guilt to every Jewish person or labeling every contemporary question resistance to the Spirit.