God Hardening Pharaoh’s Heart

The various statements that are made in the Scriptures in regard to God’s hardening Pharaoh’s heart have perplexed a great many young Christians, and have frequently been made use of by unbelievers in their attacks upon the Bible. It is said that if God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and in consequence of this hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, Pharaoh rebelled against God, then God Himself was responsible for Pharaoh’s sin, and that it was unjust to hold Pharaoh accountable for his rebellion and to punish him for it. In Exodus 4:21 we read, “And the Lord said unto Moses, when thou goest back into Egypt see that thou do before Pharaoh all the wonders which I have put in thy hand, but I will harden his heart and he will not let the people go,” (see also Ex. 7:3; 14:4). Now from reading these passages it does seem at the first glance as if there were some ground for criticism of God’s action in this matter, or of the Bible account of it. But when we study carefully exactly what the Bible says, and exactly what God is reported as saying, and the circumstances under which He said it, the difficulty all disappears. For God to take a man who really desires to know and do His will, and harden his heart and thus incline him not to do His will, would indeed be an action on God’s part that it would be difficult or impossible to justify. But when we read God’s utterances on this matter in their setting, we find this is not at all what God did with Pharaoh. Pharaoh was not a man who wished to obey God. The whole account begins, not with God’s hardening Phataoh’s heart, but with Pharaoh’s hardening his own heart. In Ex. 4:21 we have a prophecy of what God would do with Pharaoh, a prophecy that God made, fully knowing beforehand what Pharaoh would do before He hardened his heart. In Ex. 9:12 and later passages we have the fulfilment of this prophecy, but before God does here harden Pharaoh’s heart, we have a description of what Pharaoh himself did. In Ex. 5:1, 2 we are told that Moses and Aaron appeared in the presence of Pharaoh with Jehovah’s message, “thus saith the Lord God of Israel, let my people go that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness,” and that then Pharaoh replied, “Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice and let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go.” Here Pharaoh definitely and defiantly refuses to recognize or obey God. This was before God hardened his heart. He here hardened his own heart. Then follows a description of how Pharaoh gave himself over to more cruel oppression of the Israelites than ever (Ex. 5:3-9). In Ex. 7:10 and following we see Moses and Aaron coming into the presence of Pharaoh and doing signs before him as proof that they were messengers sent from God; but Pharaoh would not listen. In the 13th verse we read in our Authorized Version, “And he hardened his heart for he hearkened not unto them”; but the Revised Version correctly renders “Pharaoh’s heart was hardened.” It does not say as yet that the Lord hardened his heart. The facts, then, in the case are these, that Pharaoh was a cruel and oppressive tyrant, subjecting the people of Israel to most awful bondage, suffering and death. God looked down upon His people, heard their cries, and in His mercy determined to deliver them. (Ex. 2:25; 3:7, 8). He sent Moses, as His representative, to Pharaoh to demand the deliverance of His people, and Pharaoh in proud rebellion defied Him and gave himself up to even more cruel oppression of the people. It was then, and ° only then, that God hardened his heart. This was simply in pursuance of God’s universal method of dealing with men. God’s universal method is, if man chooses error to give them up to error (II Thess. 2: 9-12 R. V.); if with a stout heart, they choose sin, at last He

gives them over to sin (Rom. 1: 24-26, 28 R. V.). This is stern dealing, but it is just dealing. If there is any difficulty that still remains in the incident, it all disappears when we consider the manner in which God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. It was, of course, not a physical act. God was not dealing with Pharaoh’s heart as a part of his body. He was dealing with Pharaoh’s heart in the sense in which we constantly use the word, as the supposed seat of intelligence, affection and will. The will cannot be coerced by force. The will can no more be moved by force than a train of cars can be drawn by an argument or an inference. The way in which God hardened Pharaoh’s heart was by sending to him a series of demonstrations of His own existence and power, and a series of judgments. If Pharaoh had taken the right attitude toward these revelations of God’s existence and power in these judgments that God sent upon him, they would have led to his repentence and salvation. But by willingly and wilfully taking the wrong attitude toward them, he was hardened by them. There is nothing that God sends us which is more merciful than the judgments which He sends upon our sins. If we take these judgments aright they will soften our hearts and lead us to repentance and entire surrender to God, and thus bring us salvation. But if we rebel against them, they will harden our hearts and bring us eternal ruin. The fault is not with God, and the fault is not with His judgments; the fault is with ourselves and the attitude we take toward His judgments, and toward the truth of God itself. The Gospel is the savour of life unto life unto men who receive it aright, but it is the savour of death unto death to those who reject it (cf. IL Cor. 2:15, 16).

The trouble is not with the Gospel, that is “the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth” (Rom. 1:16). The trouble is with the man who rejects the Gospel, and who is thus hardened, condemned and destroyed by it, and to him it thus becomes the savour of death unto death. The same sermon brings life to one man and death to another. It brings life, pardon, and peace to the one who believes it and acts upon it; it brings condemnation and death to the one that rejects its truth. It softens the heart of one; it hardens the heart of the other. Jesus Christ Himself came into the world, not to condemn the world, but to save the world (John 3:17); but to the one who believes not, He brings condemnation and eternal ruin (John 3:18, 36; Heb. 10: 28, 29).