Why Did God Harden Pharaoh’s Heart? ![rw-book-cover](https://img.youtube.com/vi/rXXy34nrnX0/maxresdefault.jpg) ## Metadata - Author: [[YouTube]] - Full Title: Why Did God Harden Pharaoh’s Heart? - Category: #articles - Document Tags: [[biblical]] [[literary]] [[theology]] - Summary: Why did God harden Pharaoh’s heart? - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXXy34nrnX0 Great question. Here's the short version. >> All right, let's see it. >> Picture God like the sun, unchanging in his love, justice, and mercy. And picture our hearts like vessels that we can fill up. In the world, there are lifegiving things. You can think about these like candles. But on the other hand, there are also destructive things. You can think about this like clay. So we have wax and we have clay. God loves us enough to give us free will. So we can fill our hearts with whatever one we want. If we fill our hearts with wax, then when God shines on our heart, it's going to be softened. However, if we fill our hearts with destructive things like clay, then when the same God shines on us, that heart is going to be hardened. God's character stays the same. Our choices change our response to him. So, this is obviously an apologetic attempt to sidestep the fact that the book of Exodus repeatedly and explicitly describes God hardening Pharaoh's hearts in order to bring about God's own rhetorical goals. And the argument relies on this notion that human hearts are filled by their possessors with either things that soften the heart up under the influence of the rays of glory of God or they are filled with things by their possessors that harden under the influence of the rays of glory from God. And obviously this is all entirely made up. There's nothing anywhere in the Bible that supports this notion that God treats everyone the same and our hearts are either softened or hardened based on what we have done. And all this does is shifts the blame from God to Pharaoh. Basically making it so that it's Pharaoh who is putting his own heart in a position to be hardened under God's glory. And this doesn't work for a handful of different reasons. to begin. Again, it's just entirely made up. This is not based on anything anywhere in the Bible. This is something that was necessary when you come to this text presupposing the univocality of the Bible and presupposing that the Bible would never represent God, robbing a human of their agency in order to manipulate that human like a marionette in their own narrative. But that's precisely how the book of Exodus describes things. But if you presuppose that can't happen, you need to find some way around what the text seems to be suggesting. And so you have to make stuff up. You have to fabricate and jin up scenarios and frameworks and principles that you can then overlay upon the narrative to make it all feel like it makes sense under the interpretive lenses that we have brought to the text. But let's take a look at all the passages that talk about why God is hardening Pharaoh's heart. And by the way, Pharaoh also hardens his own heart in the book of Exodus, which would kind of undermine the notion that this hardening is just a product of God's glory shining on a heart that has been irresponsibly managed by its possessor. Pharaoh is hardening his own heart as well. So, it's obviously not something that just happens when a human heart is exposed to God's glory. But here's Exodus 4:21. And the Lord said to Moses, "When you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders that I have put in your power, but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go." And the idea here is clearly that if God does not do this, Pharaoh will let the people go. God must do this in order to prevent the people from being released. Let's go down to Exodus 7 3-5. 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 judgment. The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out from among them. In other words, the point seems to be to allow God to manifest their power and their wonders and their glory so that the Egyptians will know who's the boss. So that the Egyptians will know that Adonai is not to be messed with. Let's go on to 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. A couple verses down. For this time, I will send all my plagues upon you yourself, your officials, and your people, so that you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth. Indeed, by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been cut off from the earth. But this is why I have let you live to show you my power and to make my name resound through all the earth. The next chapter. Then the Lord said to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his officials, in order that I may show these signs of mine among them, and that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I have made fools of the Egyptians, and what signs I have done among them, so that you may know that I am the Lord." So here, God is quite explicitly saying, I'm responsible for this, and I did it. so that I could show off. So that you could have these stories to tell. So that you could know that Adonai is not to be messed with. So that you can know who's the boss. And as we have seen in the previous passage, God said, "Hey, I could have ended this, but I didn't." It was God's prerogative. It was God's agency that stretched this out because God wanted to show off. Exodus 11, the Lord said to Moses, "Pharaoh will not listen to you in order that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt." Why is Pharaoh's heart being hardened? Because God wants the time to show off. God wants their wonders, their glory, their powers, their actions, all this to be manifest so there will be stories to tell and so that both the Egyptians and the Israelites know whose boss, know who is not to be messed with. Verse 10, Moses and Aaron performed all these wonders before Pharaoh. But the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let the Israelites go out of the land. The Lord is the one who did this. If the Lord had not stepped in to do this, Pharaoh would have let them go. The notion that this is Pharaoh whose heart is being hardened just as a result of exposure to the glory of God in a state where it is filled with clay makes no sense of the rest of the Bible. It makes no sense of these stories. It makes no sense of God's explanations. It's something that's not just naturally happening to Pharaoh at any given point. It's something that God causes to happen at specific points. And God is explaining that it is for specific reasons. Now, we can go on to chapter 14. I will harden Pharaoh's heart and he will pursue them so that I will gain glory for myself over Pharaoh and all his army and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord. and they did so. When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, the minds of Pharaoh and his officials were changed toward the people, and they said, "What have we done, letting Israel leave our service?" Down in verse 17, then I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them. And so I will gain glory for myself over Pharaoh and all his army, his chariots, and his chariot drivers. Then the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I have gained glory for myself over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his chariot drivers. So the hardening of these hearts is not something that is just constantly ongoing because these people have poorly curated the soil of their hearts. It's something that God selectively does to individuals, whether Pharaoh or Pharaoh and his officials or the Egyptian people. It's something that God is selectively doing for the expressed explicit purpose of bringing about God's own rhetorical goals which are entirely and exclusively to do with making sure God's power is manifest to the Egyptians to Israel and to the rest of the world. The entire story of the Exodus is crafted with its rhetorical utility as a memory in mind. Everything is oriented toward how this story is going to function among later generations, which is indicative that the story has been written by later generations. If it's always telling you this is so your children and your grandchildren and everybody will remember what happened, will know that I am the Lord, will know who's in charge of Israel, will know who has power over the nations of the earth. If everything is written with that memorial function in mind, that is a good indication that the story was crafted as a memorial. That the story was crafted post hawk. That the story was crafted for the benefit of the people who are circulating it precisely as a memorial, as a way for people to remember what happened. This is a story that was written centuries after the ostensible fact. Now the story never actually happened. The Exodus is not historical. There are no data that support the historicity of the Exodus. In fact, the data unilaterally indicate it did not happen. But the way God is represented is not as somebody who is just shining glory on everybody and their hearts are either softened or hardened depending on how they have curated the soil of their hearts. The story very clearly has God selectively deciding who and when is going to have their heart hardened so that God's own rhetorical goals can be achieved. And those rhetorical goals serve the function of the story as a memorial for later generations. So if you want to know why God hardened Pharaoh's heart, it was clearly so that God would have the opportunity to flex on Pharaoh, on Moses, on the Egyptians, on the rest of the world. It was because God wanted the opportunity to show off and so needed Pharaoh to be pushing back. And when Pharaoh didn't want to push back, God compelled Pharaoh to push back. So the notion that God would not interfere with human agency is flatly precluded by the story of the Exodus. Exodus 4-14 very clearly represent God meddling in human agency so that God's own purposes can be achieved. And the notion that this is just about God's unchanging influence either hardening or softening hearts depending on how well they have been curated by their possessors is a ridiculous bit of apologetic misinformation that was just made up so that people who already want that to be true can feel justified in thinking that it's true because it feels truthy to them because of the very similitude of the argument. ments. But the argument is not based on the text. The argument is based on the interpretive lenses and the unifying frameworks and the dogmas that are being imposed upon the texts because the text has to be subordinated to those interpretive lenses, those unifying frameworks and those dogmas. It's putting dogma over data. And the fit for this video has been Shawn of the Dead., Why Did God Harden Pharaoh’s Heart?, YouTube, 01ka795eanhr260t8yf116ntx8.