to harden
qa.shah describes becoming or making oneself resistant, or making a burden, task, or condition difficult and severe.
The attested uses chiefly describe a person or people becoming resistant, especially by stiffening the neck, heart, or spirit in refusal to listen or return. Elsewhere the verb marks what is difficult or harsh—a yoke, a judicial case, a request, or labor in childbirth—and in a few clauses it describes severe anger, a hard hand, or a hardened and hungry condition.
Senses in use
-
Become resistant or refuse to yield · dominant
In 2 Kings 17:14, the Hiphil sequential imperfect occurs where the people do not hear and stiffen their neck like their fathers. The same neck-and-refusal pattern appears in Jeremiah 17:23 and Nehemiah 9:29, while Proverbs 28:14 places the active participle with hardening the heart and falling into distress.
-
Be or make difficult, harsh, or burdensome · common
In 1 Kings 12:4, the Hiphil perfect stands in the complaint that a father made the yoke harsh; 2 Chronicles 10:4 repeats the same clause. In Deuteronomy 1:17, the Qal imperfect concerns a case too hard to handle, and Genesis 35:16 places a Piel sequential imperfect in Rachel's hard labor during childbirth.
-
Show severity in a condition or disposition · occasional
In 1 Samuel 5:7, the Qal perfect is in the statement that God's hand has been hard against Ashdod and Dagon. Genesis 49:7 applies a Qal perfect to fierce anger and cruel wrath, while Isaiah 8:21 uses a Niphal participle for someone passing through hardened and hungry.
In the Anselm Project Bible: The APB commonly uses "harden" or "stiffened" where the clauses concern necks, hearts, or spirit, as in Psalm 95:8 and Jeremiah 19:15. In burden and difficulty contexts it uses "harsh," "hard," or "laboring hard," but these are translation renderings of whole clauses.