Year 1, Week 9, Day 2 Bible Reading Observations

Year 1, Week 9, Day 2

I have a brief observation for today’s reading of Exodus 10-11.

Today’s reading describes plagues eight and nine and then provides some information concerning the tenth plague. Exodus 10 records the plague of locusts as well as the plague of darkness. Pharaoh’s credibility among the Egyptians has waned: “How long shall this man be a snare to us? Let the men go, that they may serve the LORD their God. Do you not yet understand that Egypt is ruined?” (Exodus 10:7). After the ninth plague, Pharaoh wants nothing else to do with Moses. Exodus 11 provides some of the set up leading to the tenth plague, indicating that it will be the last: “Yet one plague more I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt. Afterward he will let you go from here. When he lets you go, he will drive you away completely.” (Exodus 11:1). While Pharaoh’s statue is in decline, Moses’ statue rises: "And the LORD gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh's servants and in the sight of the people.” (Exodus 11:3).

What struck me in today’s reading is the continued description of the LORD’s activity in reference to hardening Pharaoh’s hard heart. Since Exodus 4 the condition of Pharaoh’s heart has been an ongoing subject. A hard heart is a posture toward the LORD that does not truly acknowledge the LORD nor genuinely turn to the LORD in faith and obedience. The LORD warns against a hard heart: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.” (Psalm 95:7b-9). The hard condition of Pharaoh’s heart is described in several ways. 

The first description of Pharaoh’s hard heart describes the action as something from the LORD: “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go." (Exodus 4:21). Today’s reading describes it the same way: "Go in to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, that I may show these signs of mine among them…But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not let the people of Israel go…But the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let them go.” (Exodus 10:1,20,27). Before the tenth plague, Moses is told, “Pharaoh will not listen to you, that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 11:9), and then an explanation is supplied to explain why Pharaoh won’t listen: “Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh, and the LORD hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not let the people of Israel go out of his land.”(Exodus 11:10).

While the LORD is often described as the active agent in the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, this is not the only way that condition of Pharaoh’s hard-heartedness is described. In some passages, Pharaoh himself is described as the active agent in the hardening of his own heart: ”But when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he hardened his heart and would not listen to them, as the LORD had said." (Exodus 8:15); or "But Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also, and did not let the people go." (Exodus 8:32). In still other cases, the hardened condition of Pharaoh’s heart is just stated without any clear agent of cause being listed: “Still Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the LORD had said.” (Exodus 7:13); or “So Pharaoh's heart remained hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the LORD had said." (Exodus 7:22). Did Pharaoh harden his own heart? Did the LORD harden Pharaoh’s heart? Was Pharaoh’s heart just found to be in a hardened state? Yes can be a proper answer to each question.

When the Scripture states that the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart, it would be a great error to think this means that the LORD took Pharaoh’s heart and turned it against his own natural inclinations. Pharaoh, like each of us in our native state, have hard hearts toward the LORD. Unbelievers "are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.” (Ephesians 4:18). Hard-heartedness is our natural default setting. What that says about Pharaoh is that his hard-heartedness was both self-induced personal choice as well as an inherited condition. In either case, only the LORD Himself and cure a hard heart: "And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:26b). It is mercy that softens a hard heart.

While it is the LORD, whose intervention in our lives changes our hearts from a hardened, unbelieving posture, to that of a softened, believing posture, the LORD does not work from the other direction. The LORD does not need to harden a heart; it is already hard. So, I would suggest that what the LORD did actively do in Pharaoh’s situation is that He hardened, in the sense of either confirming or strengthening the hardness of Pharaoh’s heart that was already present. Pharaoh chose hardness toward the LORD, and the LORD fortified Pharaoh’s choice to bring about His own purposes: “For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.” (Romans 9:17-18). While it is a mercy to soften a hard heart; it is justice to leave a hard heart in its own natural state: “And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.” (Romans 1:28).

What struck you in today’s reading? What questions were prompted from today’s reading?

Pastor Joe