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Exodus 9:12 (DRB):
And the Lord hardened Pharao's heart, and he hearkened not unto them, as the Lord had spoken to Moses.
I was little surprised, How the LORD punishes Pharaoh for the hardness of his heart, while the LORD himself who made the heart of Pharaoh hard?
Look:
"I will harden Pharaoh's heart," 3.
Many attempts have been made by commentators to soften the impact of this statement because it is uncomfortable to come to grips with the harshness of this statement by the Lord.
Some suggest that God does not overtly harden the hearts of men but merely allows them to harden their own hearts. While it is certainly true that God allows men to harden their own hearts, this does not take away God's prerogative to actively create a hardened heart in a person in order to fulfill his purposes.
Others merely pass it off as a lack of intervention on God's part, i.e. God did not act to intervene. There may be some truth in this. Romans 1 certainly shows us that in dealing with the rebellious mind, the more intent man becomes in embracing evil and adding evil to evil, "God gave them over" to even deeper levels of corruption.
What we cannot get around is the language of the text. "I will harden Pharaoh's heart." God is declaring himself as active in the hardening process. From the very beginning, God is overtly engaged in insuring that Pharaoh does not permit Israel to go. Even in 4:21 God says, "I will harden Pharaoh's heart that he will not let the people go."
The difficulty in understanding this narrative is that we cannot measure scripture on human philosophical grounds, nor are we allowed to judge God in the courtroom of human ethics. God always reserves the right of contravention in all things. Regarding the ultimate purpose of man, does not God create one vessel for glory and another for dishonor? "Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?" Romans 9:21. Pharaoh is in this place at this time for divinely established purposes so that the glory, power, and might of Jehovah might be revealed through his rebellion.
a. "That I may multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt."
b. "That I may stretch out my hand on Egypt."
c. "That the Egyptians shall know that I am Jehovah."
The moral of this story is that if you want a hardened heat, God can see to it that you have one.
Note the circumstances. Pharaoh considered himself a god. As a polytheist of his time, a god of slaves was supposed to be subject to the master's gods. What God had Moses to do in front of Pharaoh was extremely insulting and embarrassing to Pharaoh. God knew such an approach would harden Pharaoh's heart. God could have done this differently, but it wouldn't have fit His plan to remove Israel from Egypt. God had to remove Egyptian polytheism from them, not just where they were located. Doesn't the golden calf and grumbling tell us this?
In fairness, each time Pharaoh gave in to a plague, except the last, God removed the plague before Pharaoh made his final decision, so that Pharaoh could harden his heart and changed his mind. Even with the final plague the Children of Israel seemed to be trapped by the sea, so that Pharaoh saw this as an opportunity. God could have waited until Pharaoh released the Children of Israel before removing a plague. If you need, I can detail these plagues. Essentially God controlled the circumstances, but he did not remove responsibility.
The Bible teaches human responsibility, but science and philosophy struggle with free will and cannot see responsibility without free will. However, in theology even the ultra-Calvinist acknowledges human responsibility as taught in the Bible. It is a cognitive and caring God, who provides for human responsibility, in an otherwise cold and deterministic universe when limited by known science. God's sovereignty makes personal responsibility possible rather than contradict it.
Note: God manipulated the circumstances so that Pharaoh would harden his heart, but it was still Pharaoh's decision in the circumstances and his responsibility.
Here's a human example to illustrate human choice and responsibility in spite of the circumstances. Of course, this falls short of God's sovereignty. Look at it this way. If police create a sting to catch a criminal in the act, does this mean the criminal is not guilty of the crime?
At the risk of appearing irreverent, I note from the scriptures that if God and his son were sitting in lounge chairs on a beach, wearing sunglasses and sipping Pina Coladas contentedly and the ocean before them were filled with sinners drowning in their own sin, neither would feel any compulsion to put down their drink and intervene. From the divine perspective, God owes no sinner anything. What a sinner gets, the sinner deserves. Period. God is under no obligation to lift a finger to save a sinner. They are free even to laugh at the plight of the sinner, even if in fact he was sold into sin by his ancestor.
AS FAR AS GOD IS CONCERNED, SINNERS HAVE NO RIGHTS.
God does choose to save some. This perspective of "optional mercy" is offensive to some but is entirely scriptural:
[Rom 9:14-18 NLT] (14) Are we saying, then, that God was unfair? Of course not! (15) For God said to Moses, "I will show mercy to anyone I choose, and I will show compassion to anyone I choose." (16) So it is God who decides to show mercy. We can neither choose it nor work for it. (17) For the Scriptures say that God told Pharaoh, "I have appointed you for the very purpose of displaying my power in you and to spread my fame throughout the earth." (18) So you see, God chooses to show mercy to some, and he chooses to harden the hearts of others so they refuse to listen.
God is, in regards to being moved by sentiment, much like a bird in that he's above any kind of sweet talk or sentiment. He acts according to his eternal purposes, PERIOD.
To God, sinners are simply pinatas. Unless he decides to have mercy upon them. In which case he enters into covenant with them and thereafter they are protected in the same way that one protects their own eyeballs.
It is an idiomatic expression denoting passive works with active voice verbs. Learn from Bullinge'r book on Figure of Speech:
- Active verbs were used by the Hebrews to express, not the doing of the thing, but the permission of the thing which the agent is said to do. Thus:
Genesis 31:7.-Jacob says to Laban: "God did not give him to do me evil": i.e., as in A.V. [Note: The Authorized Version, or current Text of our English Bible, 1611.] , God suffered him not, etc.
Exodus 4:21.-"I will harden his heart (i.e., I will permit or suffer his heart to be hardened), that he shall not let the people go." So in all the passages which speak of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. As is clear from the common use of the same Idiom in the following passages.
Exodus 5:22.-"Lord, wherefore hast thou so evil entreated this people?" i.e., suffered them to be so evil entreated.
Psalms 16:10.-"Thou wilt not give thine Holy One (i.e., suffer Him) to see corruption." So the A.V. [Note: The Authorized Version, or current Text of our English Bible, 1611.]
Jeremiah 4:10.-"Lord God, surely thou hast greatly deceived this people": i.e., thou hast suffered this People to be greatly deceived, by the false prophets, saying: Ye shall have peace, etc.
Ezekiel 14:9.-"If the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet": i.e., I have permitted him to deceive himself.
Matthew 6:13.-"Lead us not (i.e., suffer us not to be led) into temptation."
Matthew 11:25.-"I thank thee, O Father … because thou hast hid (i.e., not revealed) these things," etc.
Matthew 13:11.-"It is given to know unto you," etc. (i.e., ye are permitted to know … but they are not permitted to know them.
Acts 13:29.-"When they (i.e., the rulers, verse 27) had fulfilled all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree, and laid him in a sepulchre": i.e., they permitted Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus to do so.
Romans 9:18.-"Whom he will he hardeneth": i.e., he suffereth to be hardened. Not that this in any way weakens the absolute sovereignty of God.
Romans 11:7.-"The rest were hardened": i.e., were suffered to become blind (as in A.V. [Note: The Authorized Version, or current Text of our English Bible, 1611.] marg. [Note: arg. Margin.] ).
Romans 11:8.-"God hath given them the spirit of slumber": i.e., hath suffered them to fall asleep.
2 Thessalonians 2:11.-"For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie": i.e., God will leave them and suffer them to be deceived by the great Lie which will come on all the world.
- Active verbs are used to express, not the doing of a thing, but the occasion of a thing’s being done
Genesis 42:38.-"If mischief befall him by the way … then shall ye bring down (i.e., ye shall be the occasion of bringing down) my gray hairs," etc.
1 Kings 14:16.-Jeroboam "made Israel to sin": i.e., was the cause of Israel’s sin by setting up the two calves in Bethel and Dan.
This question is dealt with extensively among the classic Jewish commentators.
One of the simplest approaches is to view this as a balance.
Imagine witnessing a plague absolutely ravish your land and people, especially after it was foretold by G-d's prophet. Now you have to make a decision whether to let the slaves leave or not. What chance is there that you would keep the slaves?!
The plagues would completely overwhelm a person's free will.
So in order to allow Pharaoh to have a free choice in the decision, it was necessary to harden his heart. This would enable him to make a decision based on his own judgement without being coerced into it.
This isn't a case where a "good person" (there is none) becomes a bad person because God hardened his heart. Pharaoh was plenty sinful apart from the times God hardened his heart. Notice that Pharaoh hardens his own heart 3 times: Exodus 8:15, Exodus 8:32 and Exodus 9:34. This shows a lack of repentance since he is refusing to submit to God.
How the LORD punishes Pharaoh for the hardness of his heart, while the LORD himself who made the heart of Pharaoh hard?
It never says that Pharaoh was punished for the times God hardened his heart. If God only judged him based on the rest of his life Pharaoh would still be guilty. Only being judged for times people have free will sounds like fair justice while still allowing God's plan to free his people.
A couple of reasons:
The hardening of Pharaoh's heart is not an isolated event but part of Yawheh's great wisdom in ruling.
