The Difficulty of Knowing the Heart of Man
Jeremiah 17:9
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?


"Who can know it?" The heart is deep, and, like Ezekiel's vision, presents so many chambers of imagery, one within another, that it requires time to get a considerable acquaintance with it, and we shall never know it thoroughly. It is now more than twenty-eight years since the Lord began to open mine to my own view; and from that time to this almost every day has discovered to me something which, till then, was unobserved; and the farther I go the more I seem convinced that I have entered but a little way. A person that travels in some parts of Derbyshire may easily be satisfied that the country is cavernous; but how long, how deep, how numerous, the caverns may be, which are hidden from us by the surface of the ground, and what is contained in them, are questions which cannot be fully answered. Thus I judge of my heart, that it is very deep and dark and full of envy; but as to particulars, I know not one of a thousand.

(John Newton.)



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

WEB: The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt: who can know it?




The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart
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