Matthew 13:20

13:20 The ¹  seed sown on rocky ground ²  is the person who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy.

Ezekiel 11:19

11:19 I will give them one heart and I will put a new spirit within them; ³  I will remove the hearts of stone from their bodies ⁴  and I will give them tender hearts, ⁵ 

Ezekiel 36:26

36:26 I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone ⁶  from your body and give you a heart of flesh. ⁷ 

Amos 6:12

6:12 Can horses run on rocky cliffs?

Can one plow the sea with oxen? ⁸ 

Yet you have turned justice into a poisonous plant,

and the fruit of righteous actions into a bitter plant. ⁹ 

Zechariah 7:12

7:12 Indeed, they made their heart as hard as diamond, ¹⁰  so that they could not obey the Torah and the other words the Lord who rules over all had sent by his Spirit through the former prophets. Therefore, the Lord who rules over all had poured out great wrath.

[13:20]  ¹ tn Here δέ (de) has not been translated.

[13:20]  ² tn Grk “The one sown on rocky ground, this is the one.” The next two statements like this one have this same syntactical structure.

[11:19]  ³ tc The MT reads “you”; many Hebrew mss along with the LXX and other ancient versions read “within them.”

[11:19]  ⁴ tn Heb “their flesh.”

[11:19]  ⁵ tn Heb “heart of flesh.”

[36:26]  ⁶ sn That is, a heart which symbolizes a will that is stubborn and unresponsive (see 1 Sam 25:37). In Rabbinic literature a “stone” was associated with an evil inclination (b. Sukkah 52a).

[36:26]  ⁷ sn That is, a heart which symbolizes a will that is responsive and obedient to God.

[6:12]  ⁸ tc Heb “Does one plow with oxen?” This obviously does not fit the parallelism, for the preceding rhetorical question requires the answer, “Of course not!” An error of fusion has occurred in the Hebrew, with the word יָם (yam, “sea”) being accidentally added as a plural ending to the collective noun בָּקָר (baqar, “oxen”). A proper division of the consonants produces the above translation, which fits the parallelism and also anticipates the answer, “Of course not!”

[6:12]  ⁹ sn The botanical imagery, when juxtaposed with the preceding rhetorical questions, vividly depicts and emphasizes how the Israelites have perverted justice and violated the created order by their morally irrational behavior.

[7:12]  ¹⁰ tn The Hebrew term שָׁמִיר (shamir) means literally “hardness” and since it is said in Ezek 3:9 to be harder than flint, many scholars suggest that it refers to diamond. It is unlikely that diamond was known to ancient Israel, however, so probably a hard stone like emery or corundum is in view. The translation nevertheless uses “diamond” because in modern times it has become proverbial for its hardness. A number of English versions use “flint” here (e.g., NASB, NIV).