By Water & Blood

Questions on Exodus 12: “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart”

How should one understand “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart”?

It would have been very easy for God, after the first disobedience, to bring total destruction; but using unspeakable long-suffering he laid on him moderate discipline. These things made that man’s heart resistant; for, thinking God unable to use greater punishments, he despised the moderate scourges. That this is so, the history teaches. First, when he heard those divine words, “Send out my people, that they may serve me in the wilderness,” he replied: “Who is the Lord? I will not listen to his voice. I do not know the Lord, and I will not send Israel out.” Then, when the rod was changed into a serpent, the divine Scripture says: “And Pharaoh’s heart was strengthened, and he did not listen to them, just as the Lord spoke to them.” And at once it adds: “And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Pharaoh’s heart has been made heavy, so as not to send out the people.’” Both phrases signify the freeness of his will: both “Pharaoh’s heart was strengthened” and “Pharaoh’s heart has been made heavy.” For a heart is made heavy when it is dragged down by wickedness. The blessed David also teaches us this clearly: “My lawlessness,” he says, “lifted my head above me; like a heavy burden they were made heavy upon me.” And Zechariah beheld lawlessness carrying a talent of lead in her mouth. But the heart that uses recklessness is said to be strengthened, as opposing the Lord God and boasting that it conquers his power. For the pious heart is subject according to the prophetic exhortation that says, “Be subject to the Lord, and entreat him”; but the resistant and, as it were, stony heart is hardened. Hence the God of all said through the prophet Ezekiel concerning the Jews: “And I will tear out the stony heart from them.” For this reason also the blessed Moses, singing the victory song about Pharaoh and the Egyptians, said: “They sank into the deep like a stone.” And again: “They sank like lead in mighty water.” For since they made their own heart heavy, “they sank like lead”; and since they also hardened it, “they sank into the deep like a stone.”

That the resistance and hardness of the heart come from ourselves, the divine Apostle is witness when he says: “Not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance; but according to your hardness and impenitent heart you are storing up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation and righteous judgment of God, who will render to each according to his works.” In addition to this one should also consider that if Pharaoh were wicked by nature, he would not have changed his mind; but as it is we see him softened by discipline and hardened by long-suffering. For when being disciplined he would entreat the lawgiver, saying “Pray for me”; and again, “The Lord is righteous, but I and my people are impious.” But when the punishment ceased he grew heavy and was hardened and spoke against the divine commands. When the dog-fly was brought on, he ordered sacrifice to God in Egypt; but when the most divine Moses said they could not do this because of the Egyptians—“for we shall sacrifice what they deify,” he says, “and they will stone us and kill us”—he permitted them to go into the wilderness and perform the sacrifices. When upon this the prophet prayed and made the dog-fly vanish, “he made his heart heavy,” it says, “also at this time, and he was not willing to send out the people.” This also happened with the plague of the cattle: “Pharaoh saw,” it says, “that not one of all the cattle of the sons of Israel had died, and Pharaoh’s heart was made heavy, and he did not send out the people.” In all these things showing the freeness of his will, and teaching how the affliction of the boils was brought upon them, and that the disease fell upon the sorcerers, “and the sorcerers could not stand before Moses because of the sores”—for they were ashamed, being covered with ulcers and unable even to help themselves—it added: “And the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not listen to them, just as the Lord appointed for them.” And a little later he said to Pharaoh himself: “For this you were preserved, that I might show in you my strength, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” And again a little later he also said these things: “For Pharaoh, seeing that the rain and the hail and the voices had ceased, added to sinning; and he made his heart heavy, and that of his servants, and Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he did not send out the sons of Israel, just as the Lord spoke to Moses.” And “just as he spoke” indicates God’s foreknowledge—that is, the God of all was ignorant of none of these things, but foretold them from the beginning.

I have gone through all this wishing to show that Pharaoh was neither of a wicked nature, nor did the Lord God make his mind hard and resistant. For one who now inclines this way and now that way shows the freeness of the will. And that I may also resolve the ambiguity from an image: the sun, by the working of its heat, moistens wax but dries clay, and softens the one but hardens the other. Just as, then, this one activity produces opposite results, so by the long-suffering of the God of all some reap benefit and others harm; and some are softened, others hardened. The Lord also made this clear in the holy Gospels: “For judgment,” he says, “I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.” This does not indicate the Lord’s purpose. For he did not come for this, that he might make those who see blind, but he indicated what happened: “for he wills that all human beings be saved and come to the knowledge of truth.” But since human nature has free will, those who believed enjoyed salvation, while those who disbelieved became for themselves the cause of Gehenna. Thus Judas, though seeing—for he was an apostle—was later blinded; but the divine Paul, though formerly blind, later saw again. Thus through the Savior’s appearing most of the Jews were blinded, but the nations saw again. Yet it was not necessary, because some were going to disbelieve, that the Savior’s economy according to the flesh not take place; for that would have deprived the inhabited world of salvation. Thus also the most divine Symeon said: “Behold, this one is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign spoken against.”

One must also know this: that the God of all made the present life a stadium for human beings, so that competing in it they may show their own purpose; and in the life to come, rendering just judgment, he will crown some as victorious athletes and punish others as workers of evil. And since not all believe in the life to come, the God of all most wisely both punishes some in this life who have lived with wickedness, and again proclaims others who have cared for piety above all. For this reason the divine Apostle named some “vessels of wrath” and others “vessels of mercy,” since through the former the Lord God becomes evident as punishing justly, and through the latter as deeming the athletes of virtue worthy of every care and providence. One might also see the physicians of bodies using cuttings and cauteries, and levering out and extracting the hidden humors that produce a severe disease, and making the latent affections plain. Thus also the God of all lays bare the wickedness of thoughts by disciplines. For this he also said to Israel in Deuteronomy: “And you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might afflict you and test you and discern what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he afflicted you and starved you,” and what follows. And just as again physicians cut those incurably disposed in the presence of many, not so much helping those—for they know their disease is incurable—but teaching the students the manner of healing, so also God subjected Pharaoh, who used a most cruel and beastly mind, to manifold punishments, teaching nearly all human beings that he himself steers creation, and justly aids those who are wronged, and justly punishes those who do wrong. For this he also said to Pharaoh himself: “For this you were preserved, that I might show in you my strength, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” That the memory of what was done ran everywhere, Rahab the harlot bears witness, saying to the spies that “your fear and your trembling have fallen upon us; for we heard how the Lord your God dried up the Red Sea before your face.” The foreigners also bear witness who, seeing the ark from afar, cried out: “Woe to us, foreigners; this is the God who struck Egypt.”