And I will render Pharaoh's heart obdurate, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.
Before Moses meets Pharaoh, God tells him how it will go. He will harden the king's heart, and His signs in Egypt will multiply. That raises the question people stumble over. If God hardened Pharaoh, how could Pharaoh be at fault?
These words are not where the story starts. They answer something Pharaoh has already done. One writer treats the difficulty as a problem of reading verses out of context:
The doubt Satan would suggest here is this: where was Pharaoh's sin, if God hardened his heart like that? Or, how could God righteously destroy someone He had hardened to resist Him? If people had looked at where these words occur, the difficulty would have gone... So note this: God does not say it of Pharaoh until Pharaoh has rejected the claims of the Lord with contempt. He had said, "Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD, and moreover, I will not let Israel go." He rejected the word of the Lord. He set himself in open opposition to Him and to His people. Only now is his heart hardened by God's judgment.
The Hebrew keeps the two hardenings apart. The order they come in settles the question of blame:
"But I will harden Pharaoh's heart." God said this before, in chapter 4:21. Eighteen times we read of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. However, the Hebrew uses different words to show an important distinction. One means to "make firm" or "strong." The other means "to make stubborn." These two words show two different acts. Pharaoh hardened his own heart. God hardened it later, after Pharaoh kept on in his wicked way. After it is five times declared that Pharaoh hardened his heart, then God began His hardening... God never hardens first nor compels a man to be an unbeliever.
Commentators do not soften the statement. One describes the hardening as God withdrawing and leaving a man to the direction his own heart had already chosen:
There is no need at all for anyone to try to avoid the full, plain sense of this most solemn statement. If a man resists the light of divine testimony, God gives him over to blindness and hardness of heart as a judgment. God leaves him to himself, and then Satan comes in and carries him headlong to destruction. There was plenty of light for Pharaoh... But his heart was really set on acting against God. So God left him to himself, and made him a monument for the display of His glory "through all the earth."
The announcement was given to the messengers before they went in, so that the refusals ahead would not read as failure:
Again He tells Moses that He will harden Pharaoh's heart and will use Pharaoh's stubbornness as a cause of multiplying His signs and wonders in Egypt. There was no reason for Moses and Aaron to be discouraged by Pharaoh's refusals, for God was in perfect control of this. Egypt would only incur the greater judgment by their defiance, and would find by painful experience that God is absolutely Lord.
The signs were not for display. They taught who God is, and they reached more people than Pharaoh's court:
The other miracles He worked in Egypt were to show Pharaoh the mighty power of God. God said, I will "multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt... The Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt." Then came the ten plagues. They were miracles, or signs of the power of God. They were signs not only to the Egyptians but also to the Israelites, as their later references to them show.
Romans 9 uses this king as its example of a man raised high and then judged. One writer points to the exact wording about how such people reach ruin:
Though God does not choose anyone for judgment, He does sometimes harden the hearts of wilful rebels. He may even take up such a man and "raise him up" (Romans 9:17). That is, He lifts him to a place of great prominence and fame, as He did with the Pharaoh of the exodus. He does it to make a warning example of him, and to declare His own power throughout all the earth... Pharaoh was one of those "vessels of wrath prepared for destruction." Scripture does not say God had prepared them. They had fitted themselves by their sin and rebellion.
The same writer says God still deals this way:
God still acts on the same principle. In 2 Thessalonians we read that He will send a strong delusion on some, so that they believe a lie. Why? Because they did not receive the love of the truth, so that they might be saved... God has fixed a limit to His day of grace, just as He did for Pharaoh. Once someone passes that limit, nothing remains but judgment.
- Refusal first. God speaks only after Pharaoh has said, "I do not know the LORD." Hardening never causes unbelief. It is the sentence passed on it.
- Two words. The Hebrew uses one word for Pharaoh making his own heart firm and another for God making it stubborn. Scripture records Pharaoh's act five times before God's begins.
- Left alone. Hardening is God leaving a man to himself, in the direction he insisted on. Satan then carries him the rest of the way.
- Signs multiplied. Pharaoh's stubbornness became the occasion for wonders. The ten plagues taught Egypt, and Israel too, who the Lord is.
- A warning. In Romans 9, Pharaoh is a vessel of wrath who fitted himself for destruction. God has fixed a limit to His day of grace, so anyone still resisting His testimony should take warning.
And Pharaoh will not hearken unto you; and I will lay my hand upon Egypt, and bring forth my hosts, my people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments.
God speaks this word to Moses before a single plague falls. He tells him in advance that the king of Egypt will refuse. He also tells him that the refusal will change nothing. The verse holds two things together: a man resisting God, and God saying in advance how that resistance ends.
Moses goes back to a king who has already refused him once. God does not promise that Pharaoh will soften. He promises that the ending is fixed either way.
Now God repeated to Moses, in substance, what He had told him at Horeb. Pharaoh would refuse to let the people go. But go they would, after the Lord had struck Egypt by His direction and by His power. Everything was working out as God had foreseen and had already declared. So Moses was not to lose heart.
God had already said that He would harden Pharaoh's heart. So readers ask a fair question: how could Pharaoh be blamed for refusing? The answer lies in where those words come in the story.
Here is the doubt Satan would suggest: where was Pharaoh's sin, if his heart was hardened like this? Or how could God justly destroy a man He had hardened to resist Him? If people had noticed where these words come in the story, the difficulty would have vanished... Note this, then: it is not said of Pharaoh until after he had scornfully rejected the claims of the Lord. He had said, "Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and I will not let Israel go." He rejected the word of the Lord and set himself in open opposition to Him and to His people. Only then did God harden his heart as an act of judgment.
Pharaoh had claimed he did not know the Lord. He would know Him now — but not in the way God first offered.
It was the day of judgment for Egypt, as later it was for Canaan... Egypt had despised the day of grace that came through Joseph. Now comes the day of judgment through Moses... Pharaoh said he did not know the Lord, but Pharaoh would have to know Him. If Pharaoh would not own Him in His goodness, he must know Him in His righteousness. God's judgments were now to be shown openly, and "the LORD has made Himself known; He has executed judgment."
God does not call the Israelites runaways. He calls them His hosts — His armies. They are still slaves, and He already speaks of them as an army.
At the very moment when the people were in their deepest distress, the Lord gave Moses and Aaron a charge concerning the children of Israel and Pharaoh king of Egypt. God recognised that the oppressor really did hold authority, and the power of Satan today is just as real. The charge was to bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt. And how were the slaves to be brought out? As runaways? No — they came out in their armies, with all the dignity of the Lord's own host.
Israel does not walk out by agreement. God forces the door open by judgment. But a God who judges sin cannot judge only Egypt's sin, so Israel needed shelter too.
Pharaoh refused to obey the Lord's demand and let them go. So their deliverance had to come by judgment. But when God acts in judgment, He shows no favour to anyone, because He is righteous. So He must judge sin wherever He finds it, in an Israelite as much as in an Egyptian. In grace He gave Israel a shelter. They sprinkled the blood of the Passover lamb on the doorposts of their houses and on the beam above the door.
God did to Egypt exactly what He said He would do. Commentators hear a warning in it for readers now, not only a piece of old history.
This terrible story still speaks to people today. God was acting as the judge who avenges sin. Pharaoh and his people had openly defied His commands. Plague followed plague, and still they refused to let Israel go. Even God's patience has limits... He laid Egypt waste long ago, and just as surely He will lay the whole earth waste before long. No one will escape His avenging hand except those who shelter under the Saviour's blood.
- Refusal first. Pharaoh rejected the Lord before God hardened him. The hardening followed his refusal; it did not cause it.
- Foretold, not uncertain. God announced the refusal in advance so His servant would not lose heart when it came.
- Known either way. Egypt despised God's grace, so God made Himself known by His judgment instead.
- Slaves named armies. Still slaves, they are already God's hosts, His people — brought out with dignity, not as runaways.
- Judgment needs shelter. Great acts of judgment fell on Egypt. Only blood on the door kept them from falling on Israel. That shelter still stands today.