Kerygmania: God hardened Pharaoh's heart
I have more trouble with this than with anything else in the Bible.
Here are the passages that disturb me:Exodus 7:3-4
Exodus 8:15
Exodus 9:12
I am disturbed by the statements that God caused Pharaoh's heart to harden. In some verses of this narrative, Pharaoh hardens his own heart, but in these I have cited and others, God causes Pharaoh to harden his heart.
I don't believe this narrative is true, but I wonder what the author had in mind. If God really did harden Pharaoh's heart in order that he might inflict bad things on Pharaoh and his people, he doesn't sound like an admirable god.
What is your take on this?
Here are the passages that disturb me:Exodus 7:3-4
But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and I will multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt. When Pharaoh does not listen to you, I will lay my hand upon Egypt and bring my people the Israelites, company by company, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgement.
Exodus 8:15
But when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he hardened his heart, and would not listen to them, just as the Lord had said.
Exodus 9:12
But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he would not listen to them, just as the Lord had spoken to Moses.
I am disturbed by the statements that God caused Pharaoh's heart to harden. In some verses of this narrative, Pharaoh hardens his own heart, but in these I have cited and others, God causes Pharaoh to harden his heart.
I don't believe this narrative is true, but I wonder what the author had in mind. If God really did harden Pharaoh's heart in order that he might inflict bad things on Pharaoh and his people, he doesn't sound like an admirable god.
What is your take on this?
Comments
I wonder whether it was the same difference to people who thought that everything that happened was an act of God (or a god), so that if Pharoah hardened his heart this was because God willed it to happen, in the author's eyes.
But I note that (IIRC) Pharaoh did the hardening of his heart first, and I believe several times; it was only toward the end that we get told explicitly that God did it.
Which suggests to me that it was a free choice in the beginning (and no, I'm not even getting into the predestination thing) as far as any human choice ever is. But it also suggests, worryingly, that one can reach a point where one's bad choices, ah, get confirmed. Perhaps in a way analogous to what we see when an addiction starts to take hold.
Which basically I take as a warning to myself, not to go wading in dangerous waters spiritually, lest I find myself deeper than I expected.
This is another idea I have some difficulty with, but that seems worth consideration. And if I recall correctly, there are other long-standing approaches to this story from a Jewish perspective. I’ll have to see if I can dig them up.
Please explain what you mean about Jesus.
Killing children because their people killed yours isn't redress. In fact I can't actually find a word to describe it, it's that hideous and dark a concept.
I don't think you should be "having difficulties" with this. You should be appalled and disgusted.
They weren't particularly smart, academically speaking. But they could often be wise.
Removing toffee mixture from the hob and pouring it in a baking tray will result in the toffee hardening. It hardens because it is left to return to its own natural state. It becomes what it is without the assistance of heat.
So it might have been with Pharoah. His heart was hardened because God “poured him out into the baking tray of his own malice” and left him to return to his own natural state. Pharoah became what he was - and would always have been - without the warming assistance of grace.
There are two kinds of non-justice in the world: injustice and grace. Both are unfair and undeserved, but one is always evil and the other is never evil. The problem, for us, is that we find seem to find it very hard to discriminate between grace and injustice. But I think the problem lies in our perception, not in God’s action.
Fair enough. No analogy is perfect and this one is probably flawed. At risk of mixing metaphors, peeling the onion of God's sovereignty vs. human responsibility can only have one ultimate outcome.
I can't recall any. Obviously I am not infallible.
The Apostle Paul uses Pharoah (the story we’re discussing) to make a point which seems to have a universal application of the kind that Jesus made in the above passage.
Paul applies the same thinking to Israel, a group of people.
And again here,
I can’t think of any individual people in the New Testament whose hardness of heart is explicitly attributed to God, but there is, arguably, an underlying theology in the NT which could lead the reader in that direction regarding people like Herod, maybe Ananias and Sapphira and possibly in the personal soteriogy of the Apostle Paul. It’s all over John’s gospel too, but stated positively in terms of God’s action in election.
........and the theological point is that because God is sovereign everything that happens is because he wills it. If that is the case then there can be no human moral responsibility and no justified human culpability for sin or, indeed, merit for behaving well and selflessly. God is the author of evil as well as good.
Of course, the bible is not consistent in this matter because it also argues strongly for the severe punishment of those who perversely act against God's laws and purposes. It also argues that the devil and evil spirits are at work influencing human actions and that humans make culpably conscious decisions to sell out to them.
This raises the question, however, is whether God has the choice to do evil or anything other than to will actions which are loving, given his essential uncomplicated nature. In my opinion the concept of free will in relation to God is inappropriate because he is other.
My understanding is that 1) God, in some sense, permits evil, 2) but is not pleased by evil, 3) and will ultimately judge and punish all agents of evil.
In this instance, of course, it is not that God permits Pharaoh to chose evil but forces him so to do. Under these premises God would have to punish himself.
I don’t think so. As I suggested earlier, it’s possible that God can be said to have “hardened” Pharaoh’s heart simply by giving him over to his own evil devices and desires, as the psalmist here describes concerning Israel.
“So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own devices.”
Psalm 81:12 NIVUK
I take this to mean that God gave Pharoah over to the evil devices of his heart and chose not to have mercy on him, by which I mean he chose to not withhold the punishment that Pharoah’s injustice rightly deserved.
I understand mercy to be the withholding of rightful punishment, and grace to be the conferrence of undeserved favour.
So God could have done otherwise? By not giving him over?
Except that's not what scripture says. It says God hardened Pharaoh's heart. God did something to Pharaoh's heart that prevented him from relenting. He didn't let Pharaoh be a stubborn fool. He MADE Pharaoh be a stubborn fool. Otherwise it makes no sense that at the beginning of the plagues Pharaoh hardens his own heart, but toward the end God does it for him. The agency changes; the person doing the hardening changes. First it's Pharaoh, then it's God. That HAS to mean something, and "God gave him over" is what happened at the beginning, so that can't also explain what happened at the end.
The Apostle Paul puts it like this:
Verse 18 not only suggests that God effects the hardening of an evil human heart by withholding mercy; it also suggests that God is under no particular obligation to be merciful. It’s not unjust for God to withhold mercy from an evil person.
Yes. People don’t naturally like the idea that a soft-hearted response to God may require a prior gracious act of softening by God. They think it violates their free will. The irony of course is that a stony heart toward God isn’t actually free; it is enslaved to the sin of hating God.