Pharaoh and God’s Justice
the justice of hardening his heart
Then you shall say to Pharaoh,
‘Thus says the LORD:
“Israel is My son, My firstborn.
So I say to you,
let My son go that he may serve Me.
But if you refuse to let him go,
indeed I will kill your son,
your firstborn.
Exodus 4:23
Pharaoh’s hardened heart is a multi-faceted topic with several elements, some of which we have covered in previous posts. One element is the definitions and meanings of the Hebrew words related to hardening, which was the focus of several earlier posts. Another element we discussed is the relation of strengthening to hardening. One of the later posts looked at Pharaoh’s opportunities for repentance and discussed the scope of the hardening. In this post, we want to bring these and other elements together to build a more comprehensive picture of the topic. We’ll start with a look at sovereignty on a human level.
Human Sovereignty
When we call a human, such as a king, sovereign, we mean that person has authority to decree what other people must do. The Bible teaches that God places people in positions of authority; or we could say, gives men sovereignty. Such was true for Pharaoh. In fact, God even told Pharaoh that He had given him his sovereignty.
But indeed for this purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth. Exodus 9:16
The sovereignty that God gave Pharaoh was real sovereignty, not a mere illusion of sovereignty. Pharaoh really was in charge of the Israelites and really had the authority to say whether they could leave their bondage. When God commanded Pharaoh to release the Israelites, Pharaoh, as ruler over Egypt, said they could not go. God certainly had the power to take the people whenever He pleased. But He didn’t take them out of Egypt until… until when? He didn’t take them out until Pharaoh said they could depart.
When God delegates sovereignty, He honors the decrees men make even if they contradict His commands. Of course, He holds rulers responsible for their decrees, but He doesn’t override them to accomplish His will. Instead, He achieves His purpose by working within the choices they make.
Pharaoh made two choices. He chose to defy God and chose to keep the people. God did not override Pharaoh’s two choices, but worked within the parameters of these choices to accomplish His purpose.
God’s Purpose
When God set Pharaoh on the throne, He placed a stubborn man in a position of authority over His people. He could have established a more compliant person on the throne of Egypt, but He had a purpose in raising up a stubborn man.
“You shall speak all that I command you. And Aaron your brother shall tell Pharaoh to send the children of Israel out of his land. And I will harden [H7185] Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt. But Pharaoh will not heed you, so that I may lay My hand on Egypt and bring My armies and My people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch out My hand on Egypt and bring out the children of Israel from among them.” Exodus 7:2-5
God’s purpose was to demonstrate who He was to the Egyptians, to the Israelites (Exodus 10:2), and to the entire earth (Exodus 9:16). He told Moses that He would harden Pharaoh, using the word that describes a rebellious ox who does not listen to its master. God was saying He would demonstrate who He was by making Pharaoh like a stubborn ox who resists his master’s goading. He would use Pharaoh’s rebelliousness to show all people that He was the LORD, above all other gods.
There were, undoubtedly, other rebellious and unrepentant Egyptians during that time, but God specifically chose Pharaoh as the agent of His demonstration. Although the others were possibly just as rebellious as Pharaoh, God didn’t use them for a public demonstration of His power. Instead, He allowed them to live out their lives as they wished until they died, as He does with most unrepentant people.
God worked differently with Pharaoh, making an example of that one rebellious person to give a warning to other rebellious people. What Pharaoh experienced was harsh, but it was nothing compared to the final judgment at the end of time. God’s purpose with Pharaoh was to warn other people against being rebellious (1 Samuel 6:5-8).
God’s Purpose vs Pharaoh’s Choices
From the beginning, when Pharaoh first heard God’s command as delivered by Moses, he chose to dismiss the Israelite God. Pharaoh’s position was that the Hebrew God was irrelevant to him and he had no obligation to obey Him. His stance directly contradicted God’s purpose, which was to show the earth that He was not an irrelevant god, but was God over all.
Pharaoh’s decision to dismiss God did not obstruct God’s purpose in the least. God did not find it necessary to force Pharaoh to abandon his position in order to demonstrate the truth of His sovereignty. In fact, God used each of Pharaoh’s subsequent rejections as a reason to send increasingly greater demonstrations of power. In other words, Pharaoh’s every attempt to show that God was irrelevant gave God further opportunity to show that He was all important. Thus, instead of nullifying Pharaoh’s choices, God used his choices to further His purpose.
Surely God’s wisdom in handling people’s choices is unparalleled!
Hardening
Not only was God not stymied by Pharaoh’s choices, but He intervened by hardening Pharaoh’s heart to ensure Pharaoh did not falter from his choice.
In one of the earlier posts, we pointed out that God’s hardening of Pharaoh was a process of strengthening. The significance is that strengthening means to make something stronger, or to build something up. Strengthen does not mean to create, produce, or generate. Thus, there was something existing in Pharaoh that God made stronger, or built up.
In another post, we noted that Pharaoh had two features of his inner will: he did not want to fear the God of Israel, and he did not want to release the people. These two desires went hand in hand, but they were distinct.
We also pointed out that God’s hardening had a specific result. Scripture said the hardenings produced a refusal to release the people. But it never said that it produced some kind of unbelief.
Putting these things together leads us to conclude that when God hardened Pharaoh, He was strengthening a desire in Pharaoh’s heart. Based on the result of the hardening, we can see it was a strengthening of Pharaoh’s determination to keep the people. God didn’t create Pharaoh’s desire to keep the people, but strengthened this desire that Pharaoh already had.
Pharaoh didn’t want to release the people, but the power demonstrated in the plagues threatened to overwhelm his resolve. God intervened at least three times and strengthened Pharaoh’s heart so that he didn’t falter in his resolve. This strengthening was called hardening.
Duration
It was not a permanent hardening. The scripture plainly states that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened ten times during the plagues and one additional time at the Red Sea. Each hardening enabled him to stand firm for the duration of the respective plague. Naturally, when that difficult time period passed, the hardening (strengthening) was no longer needed to bolster his resolve. Since it was no longer needed, it evidently was no longer in effect. Thus, it became necessary to harden his heart again when the next plague came. The hardening was not a ‘once hardened, always hardened’ condition.
The events after the tenth plague, which was the only plague when Pharaoh’s heart was not hardened, also attest to the temporary nature of the hardening. With no hardening in effect, Pharaoh was unable to maintain his resolve to keep the people, and so capitulated. The previous hardenings did not sustain him. They were temporary in nature.
God’s hardening of Pharaoh was not a process of locking him on to the path of judgment, but an enabling him at the time to endure the great troubles he faced.
God’s Justice
Even so, the following set of verses seem to show an apparent abuse of justice in God’s dealing with Pharaoh. God said He would kill Pharaoh’s firstborn if Pharaoh refused to let the Israelites go. But He also said He would harden Pharaoh so that he would not let the Israelites go. This sounds like God was going to punish Pharaoh for doing what God made him do.
And the LORD said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do all those wonders before Pharaoh which I have put in your hand. But I will harden [H2388] his heart, so that he will not let the people go. Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the LORD: “Israel is My son, My firstborn. So I say to you, let My son go that he may serve Me. But if you refuse to let him go, indeed I will kill your son, your firstborn.” ’ ” Exodus 4:21-23
Let’s lay out what these verses are saying. First, the Lord informed Moses that He would harden Pharaoh’s heart so that Pharaoh would not release the people. Then, He instructed Moses to tell Pharaoh that he should give up his resolve to defy God’s command. If he did not, it would be at the expense of his son’s life. But how could Pharaoh give up his resolve if God was strengthening him in it?
At the root of Pharaoh’s resolve to keep the people was his resolve to dismiss the Hebrew God as irrelevant. In order for him to be willing to release the people, he would need to turn from his denial of YHWH to acknowledging that YHWH was God. His inner defiance produced his outward action of refusing to let the people go.
For the LORD does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:7
God could see Pharaoh’s inner defiance, but Moses could not. Moses could only see Pharaoh’s outward action of keeping or releasing the people. Of course, Pharaoh’s outward action betrayed his inner attitude of defiance against God.
In an earlier post, we discussed the possibility of a person’s outer actions to contradict their inner attitude. As we pointed out, this happened to Pharaoh after the tenth plague. But it didn’t happen earlier because God intervened and hardened Pharaoh against releasing the people, enabling him to keep his actions consistent with his inner attitude through the ninth plague.
When the tenth plague arrived, God didn’t harden Pharaoh. But He arranged the plague so that it would accomplish two things. First, it provided a way of escape. Second, it revealed Pharaoh’s inner attitude.
As we mentioned in the previous post, God ensured Pharaoh knew about the way of escape from judgment. To escape, all Pharaoh (or anyone else in Egypt) had to do was apply blood on his doorposts in the manner God prescribed.
However, to heed YHWH’s warning and follow His instructions would have been a public display acknowledging that He was God. It was psychologically impossible for Pharaoh to apply the blood without giving up his defiance. Thus, God’s approach to bringing the judgment not only provided Pharaoh with a genuine opportunity to escape, it also revealed the defiance that was still in his heart.
God informed Pharaoh that his outward action of keeping the people would result in the death of his firstborn son. Pharaoh’s outward actions were an outflow of his inner defiance of God. When God hardened Pharaoh, He was causing Pharaoh’s outward actions to remain consistent with his inner defiance, and He was enabling Pharaoh to do what he wanted to do. The repeated hardenings of Pharaoh’s heart carried him through the ninth plague, to the doorstep of the tenth plague. But it was his defiance against God that caused his son’s death in the tenth plague.
The passage in Exodus focuses on Pharaoh’s hardened heart. But the final plague came upon everyone in Egypt, including the Hebrews, whether or not their hearts were hardened. However, death did not come to all because God provided a way of escape. As a result, the plague was executed only on those who defied God.
The final plague came because of Pharaoh’s action of keeping the people. But Pharaoh lost his son in the plague because he defied God.
Conclusion
Pharaoh did not want to acknowledge the truth about the God of Israel. In all that God did, He did not override Pharaoh’s will. Instead, He actually used Pharaoh’s defiance to accomplish His purpose of making known the truth of the God of Israel. Thus, for a time, both Pharaoh’s will (defying the Israelite God) and God’s will (making His name known) were simultaneously fulfilled, even though they were contrary to each other.
- God’s hardening did not force Pharaoh to do what he didn’t want to do, it enabled him to do what he wanted to do.
- Being temporary in nature, God’s hardening did not lock Pharaoh into judgment, it only brought him to the brink.
- The final plague had a built in way of escape, but none who defied God would take it.
- Pharaoh’s defiance of God carried him into judgment.