"The tragedy of common sense
it that it is not
very common."
(Albert Einstein)

"Politically correct Christianity
is tolerated but despised.
Full Gospel Christianity is
respected but persecuted."
(Unknown)

"If you marry the Zeitgeist
you will soon become widow."
(Goethe)

"To reach the source of a river
you must swim upstreams."
(Stanislaw Jerzy Lec)

"I note that all those,
who are positive to abortion
already are born."
(Ronald Reagan)

God "hardened Pharaoh's heart", i.e. he forced Pharaoh to sin, and then punished him for it. Is God therefore unjust?

In Exodus chapter 7 onwards we read how Moses and his brother Aaron performed various wonders before Pharaoh, to convince Pharaoh of God's power, and that Pharaoh should give the oppressed Jewish people its freedom. In the first miracle Aaron threw his staff to the ground, whereby it turned into a big serpent. Pharaoh's magicians then did the same thing, though Exodus says that "But Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods" (Exodus 7:12). In verse 13 we read, "And Pharaoh's heart grew hard…", i.e. Pharaoh refused to free the Jews. Moses and Aaron then made new and even greater miracles before Pharaoh, but his heart remained hardened. Eventually, however, Pharaoh began to give way when he witnessed more and more powerful miracles, and realized that Moses and Aaron must have a mighty God behind them. In Exodus 9:12 you read something that have made many people (including Christians) flinch, "But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not heed them [Moses and Aaron]…". Moses and Aaron continued to perform several more amazing miracles, until Pharaoh's magicians no longer were able to copy them. It all ends with Moses threatening Pharaoh with the killing of all firstborns, children as well as livestock, if Pharaoh does not free the Jews. God again hardened Pharaoh's heart, and the horrific and unimaginable befalls the Egyptians. Now Pharaoh can no longer resist, and finally grants the Jews their freedom. The reader knows, of course, that he later regrets and tries to prevent the Jews from leaving Egypt. It is now that the Jewish people make their famous march through the drained Red Sea and are later saved, when the pursuing Egyptian army is drowned.

The sum-total of this is that God "hardened the heart of Pharaoh", i.e. God made Pharaoh resist the will of God, leading to God's judgment befalling Pharaoh. But if God forces Pharaoh to sin, how, then, can God later punish him for it? The conclusion is that God is cruel and unfair.

Now, we must not jump at conclusions. The first thing we can establish is that the above does not agree with the general revelation of who God is and with God's characteristics. And if something is wrong with the general revelation of God, well, then something must be wrong. Many intractable problems in the Bible are solved if you go back to the original text. Hebrew differs in many respects from English (and other Germanic languages). Hebrew has, for example, fewer tenses (presence, past etc) than does English. Verb forms are also used in different ways. There are interpreters of the Hebrew text saying that the expression "the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart" can be interpreted as "the Lord strengthened Pharaoh so that he was able to do, what his heart wanted him to do", i.e. keeping the Jewish people as slaves. That is, Pharaoh wanted deep down to resist God, but he wavered before the great miracles he witnessed. God simply helped Pharaoh to do that what he secretly wished for. God, therefore, was not intruding on Pharaoh's free will, or forced him to act against his own will, but supported Pharaoh by giving him the strength to do what his heart desired, i.e. what he actually wanted to do.

There are other places in the Bible talking about the same thing. In Romans 1:24 we read:

Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves.

This text is about how people chose to follow their sexual desires in an unbridled way instead of obeying God. For people to realize that this was not working, God "gave them up" to their desires, so they should continue to the bitter end, hoping that some of them might wake up and come to their senses, when they perceived the full consequences of sin. Sometimes parents do much the same with their children.

Little Pete, in his rebellious age, insists on climbing up on a chair in front of the stove, and try to touch the hot plates all the time. Mom lifts him off again and again, but as soon as she sets him down on the floor, off he runs straight back to the stove to touch the plates. So far, mom has rescued Pete each time from being burned. Eventually she gives up and lets Pete burn himself (a little) before she rips away the howling child from the stove and flushes his hand for several minutes with ice-cold water to minimize blisters. Pete is now definitely "cured" from wanting to touch any hot plates in the future. It is probably better that Pete, under "controlled conditions", learns that it's terribly painful to put your hand on the hot plate, rather than testing it when no-one is around and then probably receive much more serious burns. In the same way God might allow us to follow our passions and to be disobedient to the full, so that we, in the end, (hopefully) can see the full consequences of our actions, and realize that disobedience to God only creates unhappiness and sadness for us.

Then you might ask yourself why it was so important to God that Pharaoh should not yield too soon. Why was the confrontation between Moses/Aaron and Pharaoh so important? It seems that this confrontation was actually a spiritual trial of strength between the Jewish God, the Lord Jehovah, and the idols of Egypt. Every miracle that Moses and Aaron performed challenged and convicted one of the idols of Egypt (the Nile-god, the Toad-goddess, etc) and proved that the Jews' God in all respect was the strongest. My personal belief is that the last miracle, the killing of all the firstborns in Egypt, which in our modern eyes may seem terribly grim, in fact constituted a judgment of Isis and Osiris (the gods of the Egyptian death-cult) and a defience of the Devil himself, who was in fact behind the idols of Egypt (and who ultimately lies behind all idols). Even if we today find it difficult to understand God's actions at this instance, there might be explanations. Maybe there was an awful lot at stake (even the whole future of mankind and the coming salvation), and there was no other way for God to act. Perhaps here the decision was made whether it be God or the Devil who would rule the earth for eternity?

There is a further aspect on what happened to all the first-borns of Egypt. In Exodus 4:22-23 God gives Moses instructions on what to say and do in the face of Pharaoh.

Then you shall say to Pharaoh, "Thus says the LORD: "Israel is My son, My firstborn. So I say to you, let My son go that he may serve Me, But if you refuse to let him go, indeed I will kill your son, your firstborn.""

God considers, therefore, Israel (the Jewish people) as his firstborn son. What God says to Pharaoh is that He loves his firstborn son as intensely as Pharaoh loves his firstborn son. God speaks to Pharaoh in terms that he can fully understand. When Pharaoh nonetheless refuses to let God have his firstborn son, he himself loses what he denied to God.

We may not understand everything that happens, but the person who has learnt to know God, and have met God's goodness and love, trusts that somehow there must have been a good reason why God acted in this way. We will probably not understand, until one day we get the opportunity to ask God Himself (here I discuss the different images of God in OT and NT). But now we have really strayed from the subject; what I discuss here is not why God does what he does, but the issue is whether God forced Pharaoh to sin, and then punished him for it, or if there perhaps is another possible interpretation. And we have seen that there is.

In conclusion: God did not force Pharaoh, against his will, to retain the Jewish people. God helped instead Pharaoh to do what he deep down in his heart, and willingly, wanted to do, but not really had the strength to carry through. This was to show the whole world that Egypt's idols were just that — empty idols — and that there is only one true God.

God simply gave Pharaoh the alternative to resist Him. Thus, it was not what emanated from God that made Pharaoh withstand God´s will. Instead, it was how Pharaoh received in his heart that what emanated from God, and this determined Pharaoh's actions. Much like the sun's rays make a piece of soft clay become dry and hard (that's how bricks are made in many parts of the world), while the very same rays make a piece of wax become soft and melt. The result depends on the receiver and not the sender. Likewise, the Gospels' effect on the receiver's heart is due to whether his heart is soft or hard. Paul writes:

For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. (2 Corinthians 2:15).

For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Hebrew 4:12).

That what emanates from God reveals what lives inside Man. What emanated from God did not mould Pharaoh's heart, but revealed what already lived there.

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