To hear requires a response (ignoring is also a response). It is what you actively or passively choose to do or not to do. It is to grasp the other person’s response. This particular verse is found 1072 times in the Old Testament. So far (I haven’t read all the verses), it is only used when Yah, man, woman, or child communicates. Yah understands our groaning and crying. Which means he understands the message.

When we hear, we grasp what is being said, without our own doctrine, understanding, hurts, pains, glasses, emotions, or thoughts. We are able to comprehend what is being said fully. When Adam and Eve hid from the Lord, and they heard him calling out to them, they grasped the message, but they choose to do the opposite.

Often the word is related to obedience, but not necessarily. In Haggai, it is connected to obedience. They heard, and their actions afterward speak of the grasping of what Yah said through Haggai. Adam and Eve heard, and their actions make us understand that they understood what was being said to them, but they choose to hide. This is the power of choice. It has not to do with will.

Hearing is not just awareness of sounds that come our way. It is the ability to put these sounds together and grasp what the messenger is expressing, without our own stuff in the way.