The Gra on Rebuke and the Hardened Heart

The Gra's teaching on Mishlei 29 identifies the hardening of one's neck against rebuke as the root snare of the evil inclination: Chochma uMusar 1 p. 132 cites a parallel from Bava Batra about one who hardens himself like a fortified city, then brings the verse from Mishlei 29 — that a man of rebukes who hardens his neck will suddenly be broken without remedy — as the scriptural capstone of this danger.

This teaching sits within a broader framework in the Gra's thought: Even Sheleimah 1:3 preserves his comment on the verse 'hold fast to mussar, do not let go, guard it for it is your life' — that the very reason a person lives is to break the character trait he has not yet broken, and therefore one must always strengthen himself, for without that strengthening his life has no purpose.

The corollary is that one who refuses rebuke and ceases to work on his traits forfeits the very point of his existence, and Even Sheleimah 1:4 reinforces this by teaching that each person must fence himself from transgression according to his own temperament, never relying on his own reasoning when it contradicts the Torah — precisely the self-hardening the verse in Mishlei 29 warns against.

The path of correction, Even Sheleimah 5:1 adds, is ideally one that must be tailored to the root of each person's soul and the nature of his body, as was once communicated through prophecy and ruach ha-kodesh — making the refusal to receive any guidance at all the graver failure the Gra highlights in his reading of Mishlei 29.