So I gave them up to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices.
Parallel translations
- WEB So I let them go after the stubbornness of their hearts, that they might walk in their own counsels.
- KJV So I gave them up unto their own hearts’ lust: and they walked in their own counsels.
- NKJV So I gave them over to their own stubborn heart, To walk in their own counsels.
- NASB “So I gave them over to the stubbornness of their heart, To walk by their own plans.
- NLT So I let them follow their own stubborn desires, living according to their own ideas.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
So God gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own counsels. Persistent rejection of God leads to the judgment of being abandoned to one's own way.
Overview
When Israel refused to listen, God's judgment was to let them have what they wanted, surrendering them to their own devices. This is a sobering form of divine wrath, paralleled in Romans 1:24-28 where God 'gives over' the willfully rebellious. It shows that resisting grace is no small thing but invites severe consequence.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 11
- Jer 7:24Yet they did not listen or incline their ear, but they followed the stubborn inclinations of their own evil hearts. They went backward and not forward.
- Rom 1:24Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity for the dishonoring of their bodies with one another.
- Isa 30:1“Woe to the rebellious children,” declares the LORD, “to those who carry out a plan that is not Mine, who form an alliance, but against My will, heaping up sin upon sin.
- Acts 7:42But God turned away from them and gave them over to the worship of the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: ‘Did you bring Me sacrifices and offerings forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?
- 2 Th 2:9–11The coming of the lawless one will be accompanied by the working of Satan, with every kind of power, sign, and false wonder,
- Acts 14:16In past generations, He let all nations go their own way.
- Rom 1:26–27For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.
- Jer 44:16–17“As for the word you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we will not listen to you!
- Job 8:4When your children sinned against Him, He gave them over to their rebellion.
- Gen 6:3So the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days shall be 120 years.”
- Exod 11:9The LORD said to Moses, “Pharaoh will not listen to you, so that My wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.”
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Christ at the center
The Psalms are Christ's own prayer book and a gallery of his portraits — the suffering one of Psalm 22, the risen Lord of Psalm 16, the priest-king of Psalm 110, the Son to whom the nations are given.
How Psalms 81:12 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.