to refuse: to set oneself against doing what is asked, commanded, or offered, and decline to do it
This verb names a deliberate "no." It is not mere inability or hesitation but a settled choice to hold back, whether from a command, a request, an offer, or even consolation. The same word covers the whole range, because in each case a person (or sometimes a thing pictured as a person) is set against a course of action and will not be moved to it.
The shades below differ only in what is being refused and in tone. When the object is God's word or a rightful command, the refusal carries the weight of defiance, and the prophets use the word again and again for a people who "refused to listen." When the object is a request, an offer, or a duty between people, the same word simply means to decline. And when the heart refuses comfort, or a body refuses food, or a wound refuses to heal, the word turns inward and figurative, naming a refusal that cannot be talked out of.
The form of the verb is emphatic by nature, so the refusal is rarely casual. Hebrew often pairs it with its opposite, the verb for being willing, so that to refuse is precisely to be unwilling, with the will firmly set.