hard in the sense of unyielding: a burden that will not let up, a manner that gives no ground, or a person who will not bend
The picture underneath every use of this word is rigidity. Something hard does not give way: press it, and it stays exactly as it was. Hebrew keeps that one picture and turns it outward in every direction, so the same word can describe a workload, a reply, a wind, and a person.
The range runs along a single line, from stiff matter to a stiff will:
- a burden or a battle that never lets up, which is where the standing phrase for the grinding labor in Egypt comes from
- a reply or a message that comes down hard on whoever has to hear it
- a master or a neighbor who shows no give at all
- a people pictured with a neck too rigid to turn when they are led
Two of its uses can catch a reader off guard. A matter that is hard is simply beyond the person facing it: the case a local judge cannot settle, the kinsmen a new king cannot control. And a hard spirit or a hard day belongs to the sufferer rather than the offender. Hannah is not being difficult; she is pouring out a life that has been pressed down.
The word also closes a circle in the story. The crushing labor Egypt imposed on Israel is described this way, and generations later Israel uses the very same word for the load its own kings lay on it. Ezekiel then aims it at Israel's own face and heart, the place Exodus had reserved for Egypt's king. Two neighboring words carry hardness differently: strength that holds firm (חָזָק) and weight that is slow to move (כָּבֵד) stand alongside this word's rigidity, and the three should not be melted down into one idea.
Nuances
Whether the hardness this word ascribes to Israel names a chronic condition that only God can reverse, or a state the people are addressed as able to abandon.
- contestedIt names a chronic historical pattern running from the wilderness to the exile, which Israel has shown itself unable to break, so the cure has to come from God's side.; Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School (Clarendon, 1972), 273-319; Moshe Weinfeld, Deuteronomy 1-11 (AB 5; Doubleday, 1991), 407-408
- contestedIt names a moral condition the audience is genuinely summoned out of, since the same texts command the people to stop being stiff-necked and answer the charge with intercession and obedience.; Peter C. Craigie, The Book of Deuteronomy (NICOT; Eerdmans, 1976), 194-201; Jeffrey H. Tigay, Deuteronomy (JPS Torah Commentary, 1996), 96, 106
- contestedThe tension is deliberate: the hardness is neither simply curable by the people nor simply fixed, and the texts hold both together while looking for a fresh act of God.; John Goldingay and David Payne, Isaiah 40-55 (ICC; T&T Clark, 2006), 2:143-147; Joseph Blenkinsopp, Isaiah 40-55 (AB 19A; Doubleday, 2002), 287-292
What Hannah calls herself in this verse, and whether the Hebrew wording for a hard spirit should be kept.
- majorityThe Hebrew wording should be kept and describes a woman in bitter distress of spirit.; P. Kyle McCarter, I Samuel (AB 8; Doubleday, 1980), 56; HALOT, s.v. קָשֶׁה
- minorityThe phrase denotes misfortune understood as coming from God, not merely a subjective mood, so it presents Hannah as a woman whose lot has been made hard.; Aaron Koller, "Translating Misfortune," Vetus Testamentum 65 (2015): 649-653
- minorityThe Hebrew should be emended toward the reading behind the ancient Greek version, giving the idiom for one whose day is hard.; BHS apparatus at 1 Samuel 1:15, reported and rejected in McCarter, I Samuel (AB 8), 56