Moses and Aaron worked to convince Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go; but time after time “Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them” (Exodus 7:13). In all, there are sixteen references to the hardened heart of the Pharaoh.

In three of these (8:15, 8:32, 9:34) the text plainly states that Pharaoh hardened his heart, stubbornly refusing to let the people of Israel go. In six more passages the text simply indicates that the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, with a passive construction that does not tell us who was responsible for this hardening of the heart (7:13, 7;14, 7:22, 8:19, 9:7, 9:35). In the remaining seven verses, the text declares that God is the one who hardened Pharaoh’s heart (7:3, 9:12, 10:1, 10:20, 10:27, 14:4, 14:8).

Well, then, why was Pharaoh’s heart so hard? Because he was wicked and stubborn and kept going back on his word after he said he would let the people go? Or because God caused this stubbornness by actively and decisively hardening Pharaoh’s heart? Or is it unexplainable: we can only recognize that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, but we can’t say whether it was the hand of God or Pharaoh’s own wickedness that made his heart so hard.

To state the obvious: we can read all three of these explanations directly from the text, and the contrast between them is quite challenging. We could just shrug and call it a contradiction, and count it against the reliability of the Bible. But I think we will be better served to recognize in these high contrast texts a reflection of the contrariness of our own souls and our own behaviors. We harden our hearts, or somehow our hearts get hard without any apparent effort on our part, or the power of God steers us in strange and unexpected ways, and our own behavior baffles us.

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Help us, O Lord! We cannot explain our own stubbornness: we say we want to repent and then fail to live up to our own best decisions, turning back to rebellion. Turn us to yourself, so that we may live in the light of your good purpose, day by day.

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