Jeremiah 17:9 (LSB)

Passage

“The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can know it?

Nearby Context

Jeremiah 17:7 Blessed is the man who trusts in Yahweh And whose trust is Yahweh.

Jeremiah 17:8 And he will be like a tree planted by the water, That sends forth its roots by a stream And will not fear when the heat comes; But its leaves will be green, And it will not be anxious in a year of drought Nor refrain from yielding fruit.

Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can know it?

Jeremiah 17:10 I, Yahweh, search the heart; I test the inmost being, Even to give to each man according to his ways, According to the fruit of his deeds.

Jeremiah 17:11 As a partridge that hatches eggs which it has not laid, So is he who makes a fortune, but unjustly; In the midst of his days it will forsake him, And in the end he will be a wicked fool.”

Study Lenses

The verse centers on "heart", "deceitful", "than", "else", "desperately", and "sick". It is saying that the verse draws attention to "heart" and "deceitful", so its meaning should be read from those terms before moving to application.

The nearby context moves from verse 8's "And he will be like a tree..." into verse 10's "I Yahweh search the heart I test...", so "heart" and "deceitful" belong inside that flow. In Jeremiah context, the local focus is covenant, worship, and faithfulness.

A plain takeaway is to answer the verse's own emphasis on "heart" and "deceitful" with trust shaped by these words, not by a vague optimism outside the passage.