I said that I would write a blog about the idea of God “hardening” Pharaoh’s heart in the biblical story of the deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery, so here ya go.
The question that I can see is why? Why harden his heart?
Honest answer—I don’t know
I will give you my thoughts about it though. My goal then is not to answer the question but rather just cause an opening of thought about the situation.
First the situation of Pharaoh and the Israelites in slavery.
Pharaoh was more than king. He was THE god-king. He was raised knowing that he would be THE god-king and now was living as THE god-king. I write THE because this was not a relativistic culture that had discussions and opinions about this situation. It was a fact of facts. What Pharaoh said was and what Pharaoh willed happened.
The Israelites on the other hand were the lowest of Egyptian society. They had been invited into Egypt about 400 years prior to Moses birth by the Pharaoh whom a hero named Joseph served. They had been invited with hospitality and honor, but over the centuries their acceptance had completely eroded. Their refusal to integrate into Egyptian society and especially the Egyptian religious life had kept them isolated from any form of potential acceptance. In addition to these factors the Israelites were essentially shepherds. This doesn’t mean much to us but for Egyptian society, shepherds were absolutely one of the lower rungs on the societal ladder. As with many powerless outcasts the Israelites were seen as scarcely more than livestock. They were forced into forced labor and slavery. Essentially, what the Pharaoh willed, happened by the sweat of the Israelites.
So, here we are. THE god-king being confronted by the slaves, the outcasts, the livestock.
There is literally no reason at all that Pharaoh should ever in any way even consider the wants, desires, much less rights of the things that were demanding to have the freedom to stop slaving and go to worship some God that he did not know or acknowledge.
All that to say, I am not sure that God needed to do much work in the “heart hardening” area.
It still remains though, that God hardened Pharaohs heart.
My opinion is that Pharaoh became the instrument of God’s deliverance. As I said during a Sunday message, it is very easy to remove a person or group from captivity, but it is almost impossible to remove captivity from the person or group. The entire nation of Israel had been in this slavery for hundreds of years. They were born into it. They were raised in it. They built their lives around and within its constrictions. They were not simply nominally (being named) slaves. They were slaves. It wasn’t just the Egyptians that thought they were slaves. The Israelites thought they were slaves.
Now I ask, what kind of radical therapy is needed to change the identity of a person or especially a people?
What kind of aggressive treatment is necessary to rename and reclaim the soul of people?
Could the plagues make sense?
What is the only thing that could mess up this plan?
From this point of view, only Pharaoh not quite being stubborn enough to make it through the literal destruction of all his gods could mess this up.
God might have needed Pharaoh to be more Pharaoh. More arrogant. More stubborn.
Just an opinion though.
What do you think?
The hardening of Pharaoh's heart is certainly something that has bothered me. I suppose I have a different perspective on it altogether. To me, it's like keeping someone from resigning from a game of Risk so that you cannot just only defeat them, but annihilate them altogether and rub it in. What is a loving God doing actually manipulating people's thoughts/feelings/mind so that more plagues can come to pass that will result in many many more deaths? To me it's awfully disturbing.
ReplyDeleteSo with that, if God didn't mind interfering by hardening Pharaoh's heart why didn't he interfere with the hearts of the Hebrew's? In a sense, perform His own therapy on their hearts to help change their "slavery" mindsets. With the healings by Jesus of the deaf, lame, etc., the Bible points to the capability of God of bypassing all sorts of therapy that we know are associated with such things (deaf that suddenly start to hear are not able to distinguish sounds and such, folks that previously could walk then can't have to relearn how to (if able), etc.), so why not perform a mental therapy on the Hebrew's when the capability appears to be there? I would imagine it could have saved God a lot of headaches.
But since this therapy was not (or maybe could not) be performed, could you blame the Hebrews for acting the way they did? I picture myself in their shoes, witnessing all of these plagues topped by the slaughter of Egypt's first-borns and then being lead into the desert by the same God. I would imagine I would be a bit edgy and fearful of God, and not any good/nice definition of the word "fear". Terrified. Heck, had it not been for Moses in this story, God would have killed them as well in the desert.
So with that said, no, the plagues don't make sense to me. They ended up killing many innocent people I imagine and would make God appear pretty dangerous to the Hebrews I'd imagine as well, so very counterproductive. I agree that Pharaoh not being stubborn and simply letting the Hebrews go would have messed up this plan. To me, it sounds like God wasn't in a merciful mood at that time. Just my 2 cents.