Are We Really Sick? (2)

“The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?”  Jeremiah 17:9  NASB

Desperately sick– It’s the adjective that is bothersome. ʾānaš is the word in the Hebrew text.  It means, quite simply, “sick.”  It’s used once in Job, five times in Jeremiah, once in Isaiah, and once in Micah.  You can see immediately that this is a Jeremiah word.  In the Hebrew text, no adjective appears.  The text just reads, veʾānaš, “and sick.”  So where does the amplification come from?  Mccomiskey provides the following:

(ʾānaš) I, desperate, incurable, desperately wicked, woeful, very sick. (RSV similar except that it translates as “disaster” in Jer 17:16.)

The basic meaning of the word is “to be sick” (II Sam 12:15) but most frequently it is used to describe a wound or pain which is incurable as attested by the contexts of Jer 15:18; 30:12. It is used metaphorically in Isa 17:11; Jer 17:16. In Jer 17:9 it describes the desperate spiritual state of the heart in terms of illness.^[1]

It seems as if we must add “desperately” or “incurably” to the translation.  And so we get the following versions (with my commentary):

The human mind is the most deceitful of all things. It is incurable. No one can understand how deceitful it is.  (God’s Word translation, 1995).  Do you notice that this translation moves the entire assertion into the cognitive realm? It’s the mind that’s the problem, and it cannot be fixed.  I suppose we can disregard Paul’s instructions about thinking on pure and holy things, or any other mental efforts to get aligned with God.  Here we have a translation that expresses the Fall is a noetic event.

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it?  (NIV)  If the heart is beyond cure, then the only real answer is a transplant.  That certainly fits the evangelical notion of salvation, but I wonder what it implies about the Torah.  Do you suppose God gave all those instructions to people who were actually unable to follow them?

The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse—who can understand it?  (NRSV)  Now we read “perverse” rather than “desperately sick.”  But are the two equivalent?  When you read “perverse,” do you think, “Oh, yes, that’s the same as terribly ill?”  Or do you feel something else, like morally corrupt, depraved, unnatural, or degenerate? What does the NRSV suggest about your inner being?  That you’re really a pervert in disguise?

Crooked [is] the heart above all things, And it [is] incurable — who doth know it?  (YLT)  This version doesn’t bother with the basic meaning of ʾānaš at all.  It goes right to the metaphor.  You and I have inherited a fatal, incurable disease, namely, being born.  It is interesting that Young’s Literal starts with “Crooked” for ʿāqōb.  That seems to overlook all the connections to “what comes behind,” and removes any possibility that we can find references to Genesis stories in this word.

The heart is deceitful above all things, And ^[a]desperately wicked; Who can know it? (NKJV) with a footnote that suggests “incurably sick” for “desperately wicked.”  At least the footnote clarifies that “wicked” could be read “sick.” That’s a relief (if you read the footnote) because otherwise I would conclude that I am hopelessly wicked, a hint at Isaiah’s, “For all of us have become like one who is unclean, “And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment;” (Isaiah 64:6).  But notice Isaiah says we have become this way, not that we are inherently this way.

It appears that virtually all English translations have followed Mccomiskey’s view that the word must have an amplifying adjective.  But there’s just one small problem.  When you read Mccomiskey’s definition, did you notice that it was (ʾānaš) I, that is, one of two roots for this Hebrew spelling.  In other words, there is another consonant construction that is exactly the same as ʾānaš but with different vowel pointing.  It is ʾnš, and appears in the text as ʾĕnôš, a word for “man.”  The following explanation is important:

The verbal root of ʾĕnôš is uncertain. If it is a derivation of ʾānaš “to be weak, sick,” the basic emphasis would be on man’s weakness or mortality, a connotation permitted by some contexts, particularly those that emphasize man’s insignificance (e.g., Ps 8:4 [H 5]; Job 7:17). The word may be derived from a different root ʾns unattested in Hebrew but found in Arabic and Ugaritic. It has the connotation of friendliness or sociality in Arabic and the similar concept of companionability in Ugaritic. If derived from this root the basic emphasis of ʾĕnôš would be on man as a social being.^[2]

Suppose that these two words are connected (as they certainly are in their consonant form).  Couldn’t that imply that the verse in Jeremiah is about human weakness rather than moral depravity?  And with the Arabic background, could we conclude that the word ʾānaš might be about the social environment that influences us?  Can’t we read Jeremiah’s statement as a description of our insignificance instead of a condemnation of our constitution?  You decide.  But what you decide will make a very big difference.

Topical Index: ʾānaš, sick, ʾĕnôš, man, Jeremiah 17:9, Isaiah 64:6

^[1]Mccomiskey, T. E. (1999). 136 אנש ׁ. In R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament  (electronic ed.) (58–59). Chicago: Moody Press.

^[2]Ibid.