The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
The heart is deceitful - from a root х `aaqab (H6117)], 'supplanting,' 'tripping up insidiously by the heel,' from which Jacob (Hosea 12:3) took his name. In speaking of the Jews' deceit of heart, he appropriately uses a term alluding to their forefather, whose deceit, but not whose faith, they followed. His 'supplanting' was in order to obtain Yahweh's blessing. They supplant Yahweh for "trust in man" (Jeremiah 17:5), and then think to deceive God, as if it could escape His notice, that it is in man, not in Him, they trust.
Desperately wicked - х wª'aanush (H605)] dangerously sick, 'incurable' (Horsley). (Micah 1:9.) Trust in one's own heart is as foolish as in our fellow-man (Jer. 17:50; Proverbs 28:26).