God sends Ezekiel to people who will not want to listen, and promises to make him as stubborn as they are: “As an adamant harder than flint have I made thy forehead: fear them not, neither be dismayed at their looks.” Adamant here means a stone harder than flint. Its cousin in the KJV is the diamond, which sits among the jewels of the priest’s breastplate in Exodus 28 and is the point that engraves Judah’s sin in Jeremiah 17:1. In each place, hardness is what makes the mark last. The calling of Ezekiel in chapter 3 is the best place to begin.
5 verses
And the second row shall be an emerald, a sapphire, and a diamond.
And the second row, an emerald, a sapphire, and a diamond.
The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond: it is graven upon the table of their heart, and upon the horns of your altars;
As an adamant harder than flint have I made thy forehead: fear them not, neither be dismayed at their looks, though they be a rebellious house.
Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created.
Matthew George Easton, 1897
(Heb. shamir), Ezek. 3:9. The Greek word adamas means diamond. This stone is not referred to, but corundum or some kind of hard steel. It is an emblem of firmness in resisting adversaries of the truth (Zech. 7:12), and of hard-heartedness against the truth (Jer. 17:1).
William Smith, 1884
the translation of the Hebrew word Shamir in (Ezekiel 3:9) and Zech 7:12 In (Jeremiah 17:1) it is translated "diamond." In these three passages the word is the representative of some stone of excessive hardness, and is used metaphorically. It is very probable that by Shamir is intended emery , a variety of corundum , a mineral inferior, only to the diamond in hardness.