HEART. This word has a particular emphasis in all languages. The Hebrews look upon the Heart as the source of wit, understanding, love, courage, grief, and pleasure. Hence are derived infinite many ways of speaking. To find his Heart, possess his Heart, incline his Heart, to bind his Heart towards the Lord. A good Heart, an evil Heart, a liberal Heart, a Heart which does an act of kindness freely, voluntarily, with generosity, &c. To harden one’s Heart, to lift up one’s Heart to God; to beseech him to change our stony Hearts into Hearts of flesh. To love with all one’s Heart: to have but one Heart and one Soul with any one. To turn the Hearts of the children to the fathers, and the Hearts of the fathers to the children; to cause them to be perfectly reconciled, and that they should be of the same mind.
Jerem. xii. 11. Hosea vii. 11.To want Heart, sometimes denotes to want understanding and prudence. Columba seducta non habens cor; a Dove without wit and cunning. O fools and slow Luke xxiv. 25. Matth. xiii. 15.of Heart; senseless men, without insight and understanding. The Heart of this people is stupified, so as to be destitute of understanding. Incrassatum est cor populi hujus … ne corde intelligant. Thou shalt speak unto all that are wise-hearted, whom I have filled with the spirit of wisdom: Exod. xxviii. 3. Ezek. xiii. 2.Cunctis sapientibus corde. The false Prophets speak from their Heart: Dices prophetantibus de corde suo, who give out their own imaginations for true prophecies. To lay any thing to Heart, or set one’s Heart on any thing; that is to say, to remember it, to apply one’s self to it, to have it at Heart. The righteous perisheth, and no one layeth it to Heart; no one concerns himself about it. To return to one’s Heart; redire ad cor, to recollect one’s self.
Ezek. xxvii. 4. Psal. xlvi. 2.Tender of Heart, that is to say, timorous. The Heart dilates with joy, contracts with sadness, breaks with sorrow, grows fat, and hardens in prosperity: it sometimes resists truth; God opens it, prepares and turns it as he pleases. To steal one’s Heart, is an expression in Gen. xxxi. 20. to do any thing without one’s knowledge. The Heart melts, under discouragement; the Heart forsakes one, under terror; the Heart is desolate, in amazement; the Heart is fluctuating, in doubt. To possess one’s Heart, to be master of its motions. To speak to any one’s Heart, to comfort him, to say pleasing and affecting things to Joel ii. 13.him.
By the Heart likewise the middle of any thing is meant; for example, Tyre is in the Heart of the sea, in the midst of the sea. We will not fear, though the Mountains be carried into the Heart of the sea. As Jonas was three days and three nights in the Whale’s belly; so shall the Son of Matth. xii. 40.man be three days and three nights in the Heart of the earth. And Moses, speaking to the Israelites, says, And the Mountain burnt with fire unto the Heart of heaven; Gen. xix. 24. Rom. x. 10.it rose as high as the clouds.
We should rent our Hearts, and not our Garments. To obtain righteousness, we must believe with the Heart: Corde creditur ad justitiam. God promises to give his Deut. xxix. 4. Heb. xiii. 9. Deut. xvii. 3. Ps. cxlvii. 4.people an understanding Heart, an Heart fearing God. The Heart should be established with Grace, and not with bodily nourishment.