hostile defiance: the crosswise stance of opposition that one party in a binding agreement takes toward the other, and that the other can take right back
This word appears only in Leviticus 26, the chapter that spells out what will follow if Israel keeps its agreement with God and what will follow if it does not. All seven times it sits inside one fixed expression, to "walk with" someone in it. Walking with someone is ordinarily a picture of company and agreement, so the phrase turns that picture inside out: the two keep travelling together, but crosswise, each set against the other.
The chapter puts the word on both sides of the relationship, and that is the point. The escalation runs in matched steps:
- Israel refuses to listen and walks this way with God (Leviticus 26:21)
- God announces that he will walk the same way with Israel (Leviticus 26:24)
- Israel keeps walking this way even so (Leviticus 26:27)
- God walks with them in the heat of it (Leviticus 26:28)
Because one word measures both sides, what God does is presented as the answering shape of what Israel did, not as a fresh grievance of his own.
What exactly the stance is has been argued over for a very long time. Most modern dictionaries read active hostility or defiance, tracing the word to a verb meaning "to meet" or "to confront" (קָרָה), so that the two parties meet each other as opponents. An older Jewish reading heard instead the ordinary word for something that merely happens (מִקְרֶה), and took the offence to be treating disaster as random bad luck rather than as God's discipline. English Bibles since the King James Version have mostly said "contrary", which keeps the crosswise picture without settling the argument.
The last two uses turn a corner. In the confession of Leviticus 26:40 the people name this walking, alongside their own treachery (מַעַל), as the thing they must finally own; in Leviticus 26:41 God says that even as he walks this way with them he is bringing them somewhere their pride can break. So the word describes a posture rather than a single act, which is what separates it from the noun for rebellion (מְרִי): rebellion is something you do, while this is the direction you face.
Nuances
Disputed
What קְרִי actually denotes. The noun occurs only seven times, all in Leviticus 26, always in the idiom הלך + עם + קרי, and it has no secure extra-biblical cognate, so its sense must be inferred from this single context together with its derivation. The dominant modern account derives it from קרה I, "to meet, encounter," yielding "opposition, hostility": the covenant partners meet one another as adversaries. A second line prefers a nuance of obstinacy or contrariness, a refusal to be brought into line rather than open belligerence. A third, classically rabbinic, line derives the sense by way of מִקְרֶה, "chance occurrence," so that Israel's offence lies in construing the covenant curses as random misfortune rather than as divine discipline. The Septuagint's πλάγιος ("oblique, crooked") shows that the ancient versions already read the stance as perversity, and the "contrary" of the English tradition preserves a deliberately open rendering.
- majorityThe word names hostile opposition: a deliberate adversarial stance taken up against the covenant partner, derived from the verb meaning to meet or confront.; BDB, s.v. קְרִי; DCH, s.v. קְרִי; Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 23-27 (Anchor Bible 3B; New York: Doubleday, 2001), comment on Leviticus 26:21; John E. Hartley, Leviticus (Word Biblical Commentary 4; Dallas: Word Books, 1992), comment on Leviticus 26:21
- contestedThe word names stubborn contrariness or obstinacy, a refusal to be brought into line rather than open belligerence.; HALOT, s.v. קְרִי
- minorityThe word means "by chance": the offence is treating what befalls Israel as random misfortune rather than as God's disciplining hand, the noun being taken from the same root as מִקְרֶה, "chance occurrence."; Rashi, commentary on Leviticus 26:21; Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed 3.36