Road to Spiritual Growth

If God Hardened Pharaoh's Heart, Did God Cause the Evil?

Let's be honest, Exodus 1-18 is a super intense part of the biblical story, which raises some heavy theological questions. The epic showdown between and Pharaoh over the fate of the enslaved Israelites is a page-turner. Pharaoh is a really bad man—actually the worst person we have met in the Bible so far. As you read these stories, you may be tempted to ask, who is really calling the shots here? Is it God? If so, why would he allow this? And why does this showdown become so violent and intense?

Pharaoh with a Capital "P"

Pharaoh is not one single king in . If you pay attention, you'll see that this royal title refers to a sequence of Egyptian kings over many generations. It raises the interesting question of why the author doesn't actually name the Pharaoh who opposed Moses (was he Thutmose II or III, or Ramses I or II?). This was almost certainly on purpose. The author doesn't want us to focus on one single king. Rather, he wants us to see Pharaoh as an archetype of the of human rebellion that began in the garden and culminated in Babylon (Genesis 3-11).

This king, or sequence of kings, is the epitome of human evil. He embodies the strange and tragic turn the human heart can take when one person or society places their own values and well-being above another person or society. Pharaoh is what happens when an entire nation redefines good and evil apart from God's wisdom. You get an Egypt building its wealth and security on the backs of an abused, oppressed, and enslaved Israel. As the story develops, Pharaoh even places his own reputation and pride above the well-being of his own people. This is a horrific situation, and it's the Bible's diagnosis of the human condition in corporate terms. The Egyptian empire and its Pharaoh is the Babylon of Genesis on steroids. God has to respond.

Evil Turned Upside Down

A common question readers have about this story, concerns the repeated theme of Pharaoh's "hard heart." Sometimes we're told Pharaoh hardens his heart against God, but other times we read that God hardens his heart. Who is really behind all this evil? And what does this story tell us about God's relationship to evil at other times in history, or in our own lives?

To answer this question you have to be patient, and read the story slowly and in sequence. Otherwise you'll short-circuit the experience the author wants you to go through. In Moses' commissioning (Exodus 3-6), God first says he "knows" Pharaoh will resist the demand to let the Israelites go (Exodus 3:19-20), so God says that he will harden Pharaoh's heart (Exodus 4:21 and 7:3). God knows the hearts of humans and can anticipate their responses, a sobering thought echoed throughout the Bible (see Jeremiah 17:10). God will turn Pharaoh's evil back on his own head, but does that mean God is responsible for Pharaoh's rebellion from beginning to end? You have to keep reading, and stay alert.

Hardening of Hearts

In Moses' and Pharaoh's first encounter (Exodus 7:13-14), Pharaoh's heart "became hard." Get your Bible-nerd hat on because there's a translation issue here that unfortunately complicates things. The Hebrew verb for "became hard" (pronounced, khazaq) is not passive, nor does it indicate who is initiating the action (it's called a "stative" verb, meaning it doesn't say whether it's Pharaoh or God). If you're reading in the NIV, it's ambiguous, which seems to be the point. However, some other modern translations have regrettably inserted their interpretation into the text and rendered this verb "was hardened." In other words, they turn it into a passive verb. You walk away from chapter 7 thinking God was hardening Pharaoh's heart from the first, which isn't what the text says. As you read on, you'll notice a fascinating pattern emerge. In the first five plagues that God sends on Egypt, the hardening of Pharaoh's heart happens by his own will, or is again ambiguous, just as we saw in the opening scene. In the last five plagues, the pattern changes.