The Case Of Pharaoh
THE CASE OF PHARAOH
ROMANS 9:17-20
God permitted Pharaoh to pursue his disastrous course to demonstrate that God cannot be defied with impunity.
Seen as human history, it was apparent that the ruler of Egypt was a tyrant, who repeatedly and randomly changed his policy, and fought with dogged and arrogant persistence against justice and human rights, and also against fearsome natural phenomena, which he was assured demonstrated the power and urgency of God pressing upon him. He was clearly a self-willed, evil and obstinate man determined to deny justice to a race of trampled slaves. (You may find it helpful to look at Exodus chapters 4–14.)
When the Bible says that God “hardened Pharaoh’s heart,” it does not mean that here was a human being who might have surrendered and done righteously, if God had not deliberately frustrated his desire for good and headed his unfortunate victim in the direction of evil. It would violate the nature of God, and make him like a sinful man if God could be imagined forcing a human soul to do evil, or in any way blocking a desire to do good.
Pharaoh willed it all. What then does the strange phrase mean? It means that God initiated and set in motion those moral and psychological laws which Pharaoh refused to recognize. One of those laws is that, when a mind sets itself with determination to do evil, the very choice makes it more easy to do evil. When, in rebellious self-will, someone places themselves in opposition to God, each moment’s persistence promotes the death of conscience, and makes the road to retreat and to penitence longer and more difficult. Hebrew thought does not distinguish the intermediate steps. God created the laws of the mind. Therefore, said the Jew, God “hardened Pharaoh’s heart.”
God permitted Pharaoh, a prominent and historic example of defiant sin, to pursue his disastrous course, in order to demonstrate to Egyptian and Jew alike that God cannot be defied with impunity. Pharaoh willed it. God sentenced him to go on his chosen course of wickedness, and used him as a warning beacon at its ending. Grim is the fate of the person to whom God says: “Your will be done.”