Exodus 4:19-23

Moses did not return immediately to Egypt when he arrived back in Midian following his encounter with God at Horeb (Exodus 4:19). God spoke to him again in Midian and sent him back to Egypt assuring His servant that everyone who had sought his life earlier had died. Compare Abram’s stalling in Haran until God again urged him to press on to the unknown Promised Land.

Exodus 4:20 describes what Moses did after God’s full revelation to him in Midian that continues in Exodus 4:21-23. In chronological order Exodus 4:20 follows Exodus 4:23.

God gave Moses a preview of all that would take place in his dealings with Pharaoh (Exodus 4:21-23). When God said He would harden Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus 4:21), He was not saying that Pharaoh would be unable to choose whether he would release the Israelites. God made Pharaoh’s heart progressively harder as the king chose to disobey God’s will (cf. Leviticus 26:23-24).

"The hardening of Pharaoh is ascribed to God, not only in the passages just quoted [Exodus 14:4; Exodus 14:17; Exodus 7:3; and Exodus 10:1], but also in Exodus 9:12; Exodus 10:20; Exodus 10:27; Exodus 11:10; Exodus 14:8; that is to say, ten times in all; and that not merely as foreknown by Jehovah, but as caused and effected by Him. In the last five passages it is invariably stated that ’Jehovah hardened . . . Pharaoh’s heart.’ But it is also stated just as often, viz. ten times, that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, or made it heavy or firm; e.g., in Exodus 7:13; Exodus 7:22; Exodus 8:15; Exodus 9:35; . . . Exodus 7:14; . . . Exodus 9:7; . . . Exodus 8:11; Exodus 8:28; Exodus 9:34; . . . Exodus 13:15. . . .

"According to this, the hardening of Pharaoh was quite as much his own act as the decree of God. But if, in order to determine the precise relation of the divine to the human causality, we look more carefully at the two classes of expressions, we shall find that not only in connection with the first sign, by which Moses and Aaron were to show their credentials as the messengers of Jehovah, sent with the demand that he would let the people of Israel go (Exodus 7:13-14), but after the first five penal miracles, the hardening is invariably represented as his own. . . . It is not till after the sixth plague that it is stated that Jehovah made the heart of Pharaoh firm (Exodus 9:12). . . . Looked at from this side, the hardening was a fruit of sin, a consequence of self-will, high-mindedness, and pride which flowed from sin, and a continuous and ever increasing abuse of that freedom of the will which is innate in man, and which involves the possibility of obstinate resistance to the word and chastisement of God even until death. . . .

". . . God not only permits a man to harden himself; He also produced obduracy, and suspends this sentence over the impenitent. Not as though God took pleasure in the death of the wicked! No; God desires that the wicked should repent of his evil way and live (Ezekiel 33:11); and He desires this most earnestly, for ’He will have all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth’ (1 Timothy 2:4; cf. 2 Peter 3:9). As God causes His earthly sun to rise upon the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45), so He causes His sun of grace to shine upon all sinners, to lead them to life and salvation.

"’The sun, by the force of its heat, moistens the wax and dries the clay, softening the one and hardening the other; and as this produces opposite effects by the same power, so, through the long-suffering of God, which reaches to all, some receive good and others evil, some are softened and others hardened’ (Theodoret).

"It is the curse of sin, that it renders the hard heart harder, and less susceptible to the gracious manifestations of divine love, long-suffering, and patience. In this twofold manner God produces hardness, not only permissive but effective; i.e., not only by giving time and space for the manifestation of human opposition, even to the utmost limits of creaturely freedom, but still more by those continued manifestations of His will which drive the hard heart to such utter obduracy that it is no longer capable of returning, and so giving over the hardened sinner to the judgment of damnation. This is what we find in the case of Pharaoh." [Note: Keil and Delitzsch, 1:453-456. Johnson, p. 56; Walter C. Kaiser, Toward Old Testament Ethics, p. 255; Nahum M. Sarna, Exodus, p. 23; Robert B. Chisholm, "Divine Hardening in the Old Testament," Bibliotheca Sacra 153:612 (October-December 1996):411, 429; and Dorian G. Coover Cox, "The Hardening of Pharaoh’s Heart in Its Literary and Cultural Contexts," Bibliotheca Sacra 163:651 (July-September 2006):292-311, took essentially the same position.]

See Romans 1:24-32 for the New Testament expression of this truth. Even though God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart was only the complement of Pharaoh’s hardening his own heart, God revealed only the former action in Exodus 4:21. God’s purpose in this revelation was to prepare Moses for the opposition he would face. He also intended to strengthen his faith by obviating any questions that might arise in Moses’ mind concerning God’s omniscience as his conflict with Pharaoh intensified. [Note: F. E. Deist, "Who is to blame: the Pharaoh, Yahweh or circumstance? On human responsibility, and divine ordinance in Exodus 1-14," OTWSA 29(1986):91-110, argued that documents J, D, and P each give a different answer to the question of the relationship between divine sovereignty and human responsibility.]

"Egyptians believed that when a person died his heart was weighed in the hall of judgment. If one’s heart was ’heavy’ with sin, that person was judged. A stone beetle scarab was placed on the heart of the deceased person to suppress his natural tendency to confess sin which would subject himself to judgment. This ’hardening of the heart’ by the scarab would result in salvation for the deceased.

"However, God reversed this process in Pharaoh’s case. Instead of his heart being suppressed so that he was silent about his sin and thus delivered, his heart became hardened, he confessed his sin (Exodus 9:27; Exodus 9:34; Exodus 10:16-17), and his sinfully heavy heart resulted in judgment. For the Egyptians ’hardening of the heart’ resulted in silence (absence of confession of sin) and therefore salvation. But God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart resulted in acknowledgment of sin and in judgment." [Note: Hannah, pp. 114-15.]

The real question that God’s dealings with Pharaoh raises is, Does man have a free will? Man has limited freedom, not absolute freedom. We have many examples of this fact in analogous relationships. A child has limited freedom under his or her parent. An adult has limited freedom under his or her human government. Likewise individuals have limited freedom under divine government. God is sovereign, but we are responsible for the decisions God allows us to make (cf. John 1:12; John 3:16; John 3:36; John 5:24; John 6:47; John 20:31; Romans 9:14-21; Jeremiah 18:1-6). [Note: See C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, pp. 52-53.]

"Childs suggests that the matter of causality in the heart-hardening is a side-track; that those critics, for example, who have seen here a theological dimension of predestination and freewill, have been wrong. I would say, No, they have been right (at least in principle) to sense such a dimension, but wrong to see the question of divine determination in human affairs arising only in connection with Pharaoh’s heart-hardening. For the whole story may be seen in these terms-Moses and the people, as well as Pharaoh, exist and act within a framework of divine ’causality.’ With them, too, the question arises, Are they independent agents? Are they manipulated by God? (Have they freewill? Are they ’pre-destined?’) The story is about freedom; but freedom turns out to involve varieties of servitude.

"Thus Isbell’s observation bears repeating: the story is above all one about masters, especially God. No one in the story entirely escapes God’s control or its repercussions, whether directly or indirectly. Moses who sits removed in Midian finds himself forced by Yahweh into a direct servitude but is nevertheless allowed to develop a measure of freedom. Pharaoh (Egypt) exalts his own mastery and is cast into a total and mortal servitude. The people of Egypt and Israel are buffeted this way and that in varying indirect roles of servitude. . . .

"God himself is depicted as risking insecurity, because that is the price of allowing his servants a dimension of freedom. An exodus story that saw no murmuring, no rebellion (or potential for rebellion) by Moses and by Israel, would indeed be a fairy tale, a piece of soft romance. But to talk of God and ’insecurity’ in the same breath is also to see that the gift of human ’freedom’ (to some if not to others) itself creates external pressures on God which in turn circumscribe his own action. Egypt/Pharaoh must be made an example of, spectacularly, so that Israel, the whole world, may freely come to recognize that Yahweh is indeed master, one who remembers his obligations as well as one who demands ’service’ (labour!). In short, in his relations with humankind, God’s freedom is circumscribed by humankind just as the freedom of humankind is circumscribed by God." [Note: David Gunn, "The ’Hardening of Pharaoh’s Heart’: Plot, Character and Theology in Exodus 1-14," Art and Meaning: Rhetoric in Biblical Literature, pp. 88-89. For a more strongly Calvinistic explanation of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, see G. K. Beale, "An Exegetical and Theological Consideration of the Hardening of Pharaoh’s heart in Exodus 4-14 and Romans 9," Trinity Journal 5NS:2 (Autumn 1984):129-54. For a helpful discussion of several ways of explaining God’s freedom and our freedom, see Axel D. Steuer, "The Freedom of God and Human Freedom," Scottish Journal of Theology 36:2:163-180.]

Exodus 4:22-23 summarize Moses’ future messages to Pharaoh on several different occasions.

Israel was God’s first-born son in the sense that it was the nation among all others on which God had chosen to place His special blessing. It was first in rank and preeminence by virtue of God’s sovereign choice to bless Abraham’s seed.

The essence of the conflict between Pharaoh and Yahweh was the issue of sovereignty. Sovereignty refers to supreme power and authority. Regarding God, it refers to the fact that He has supreme power and authority, more than any other entity. Sovereignty does not specify how one exercises supreme power and authority. Specifically, it does not mean that God exercises His sovereignty by controlling everything that happens directly. Scripture reveals that this is not how He exercises His sovereignty. Rather He allows people some freedom yet maintains supreme power and authority.

Were Egypt’s gods or Israel’s God sovereign? This issue stands out clearly in the following verses.

"The Egyptian state was not a man-made alternative to other forms of political organization [from the Egyptian point of view]. It was god-given, established when the world was created; and it continued to form part of the universal order. In the person of Pharaoh a superhuman being had taken charge of the affairs of man. . . . The monarch then was as old as the world, for the creator himself had assumed kingly office on the day of creation. Pharaoh was his descendant and his successor." [Note: Henri Frankfort, Ancient Egyptian Religion, p. 30.]

Pharaoh would not release Yahweh’s metaphorical son, Israel. Therefore Yahweh would take Pharaoh’s metaphorical son, namely, the Egyptians as a people, and his physical son, thus proving His sovereignty.