Exodus 4:21

21. I will harden his heart Lest Moses should be despondent in his long conflict with Pharaoh’s obstinate disobedience, he is now assured that this also has been fully foreseen and provided for by Jehovah, for it is to be taken up into His plan as one of the evils which “work together for good” to God’s elect . Romans 8:28. It would give Moses hope and courage to know that no step of the struggle had been unforeseen and unprovided for . Every action, good and bad, may be viewed in two aspects, either as proceeding from the voluntary and responsible agent, or as used by God in his providence; and it is the latter, or divine side, that is here specially emphasized, because the history is specially a history of providence of the divine overruling . Yet both sides of the action are in this narrative equally presented, for it is notable that, while we read here ten times that God “hardened the heart” of Pharaoh, we read precisely the same number of times that “Pharaoh hardened his heart,” or that his heart “was hardened,” “stiff,” or “heavy . ”

But this is not the whole meaning, nor is the interpretation adequate, that God permitted rather than caused. Hardness of heart is a judgment proceeding directly from God. It is a consequential punishment of sin. But before God inflicts this penalty man has deserved it by trifling with God’s goodness and mercy. Increasing stubbornness and moral insensibility are the judicial consequences of conscious resistance to God’s will; and this judgment proceeds directly from God, while the sin which invokes the judgment and brings man within the range of these consequences proceeds from man. Thus Pharaoh hardened his heart, and yet it was hardened by Jehovah. While ignorant of Jehovah, disobedience to his law could not harden him; but, from the moment that he knew him, resistance hardened. For this conscious disobedience and this judicial consequence Pharaoh was responsible. This sin of his was, moreover, foreseen. The prediction here made to Moses, and the providential preparations for the punishment of Pharaoh’s sin, were the effects of that sin, divinely foreseen as, in a lower sphere, the erection of court-houses and jails are the effects of sin humanly foreseen. But knowledge, whether fore or after, in man or God, can never be the cause, but is ever the effect, of the thing known. See notes on Romans 8:29; Romans 9:18.