Exodus 7:3-5

"And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt. But 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. And the Egyptians shall know that I am Jehovah, when I stretch forth my hand upon Egypt, and bring out the children of Israel from among them."

"I will harden Pharaoh's heart ..." The mention of this here does not mean that God would harden Pharaoh's heart at the beginning of these events, but that such hardening executed upon him by God would be the final result. What we have in these verses (Exodus 7:1-7) is a prophetic summary of the next seven chapters. See under Exodus 4:21, above, for more on "Hardening." Canon George Harford has a very perceptive comment on this subject, as follows:

"There are three forms of the word used in reference to hardening: (1) hard; (2) self-hardened; and (3) God-hardened; raising difficulty, but a little reflection lightens the difficulty. In all human conduct there is a mysterious combination of man's choice and God's enabling. God uses events to produce opposite effects upon different characters, as fire melts wax and hardens clay. Assertions of God's sovereignty must not be isolated, but interpreted in harmony with His moral rule. Thus read, the cumulative assaults upon Pharaoh's resolution call forth one of the most dramatic exhibitions of the vacillations of man whose conscience has been weakened, or silenced, by self-will.[5]

"The Egyptians shall know that I am Jehovah ..." This means that they would learn that, "Jehovah is the only God who is truly existent, all other gods being non-entities."[6] Here is also revealed one of the principal purposes of the great wonders executed upon Egypt, that being the total triumph of the true God over the gross and shameful idolatry that prevailed. "The contest here is not so much with the monarch himself as with the idols in whom he trusted."[7]