In the book
of Exodus, Pharaoh’s “heart” is said to have been “hardened” by God. This is
often cited by Calvinists as “proof” of their theology. Commenting on this, Carl
S. Ehrlich wrote:
Ethicists have long been disturbed by the
motif of God hardening Pharaoh’s heart in order to magnify the latter’s obstinacy
(Sarna, Exploring Exodus, pp. 63-65).
If God was truly in control of the situation, why did he have to compel the
Egyptians to participate in their own destruction? It should, however, be noted
that what was hardened was not Pharaoh’s capacity for empathy or emotion,
characteristics that we in the Western world associate with the heart, but
rather his capacity for making sound judgments. In the ancient Near East the
heart was not considered the seat of emotion; that function was fulfilled by
the liver and the kidneys. The heart was the seat of the intellect, a function
more correctly associated with the brain in Western culture.
The first few times the text relates the
hardening appear to occur mainly through the agency of Pharaoh himself (7:22;
8:11, 15, 28; 9:7). Only during the last few times the motif is mentioned, in a
narrative and not a predictive context, it is stated that God hardened Pharaoh’s
heart (9:12; 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10; 14:8). This could be the narrator’s attempt
to convey the message that the initial evil impulse came from Pharaoh himself,
and that YHWH was simply reinforcing a preexisting and previously evidenced
predilection (See also Exodus Rabbah 13:3).
Be that as it may, the midrashic literature
also deals with this troubling question, in essence agreeing that God was
simply reinforcing a preexisting tendency on Pharaoh’s part. First, in an
effort to justify the deserved punishment of the Egyptians for their cruelty
toward the Hebrews, the midrash told many tales amplifying on the biblical narratives
about the burden of the slaves in Egypt. Among them may be mentioned the tale
in which an expectant other in labor was not allowed to take a break from work
in order to bear her child. She had to give birth while reading the clay for
bricks. When her child was born, it fell into the mud and was drowned. The
angel Michael took the child in the clay and brought it before the divine
throne. It was then that the punishment of Egypt was ordained (Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer 48). Second, the
hardening of Pharaoh’s heart was justified in the midrashic tradition through
recourse to fables such as the one on which God is compared to a lion and the
pharaoh to an uppity ass. The punch line of the tale was that if the ass had
had a heart, i.e., what we could call a brain, it would never have defied the
lion (Yalqut Shimoni, Va-era 148).
Through tales such as these, the midrashic tradition indicated its own
discomfort with the justifications presented in the biblical text for the
disasters that befell the Egyptians and felt compelled to add to the received text
in order to justify God’s actions against Egypt. (Carl S. Ehrlich, “Moses,
Torah, and Judaism” in David Noel Freedman and Michael J. McClymond, eds. The Rivers of Paradise: Moses, Buddha,
Confucius, Jesus, and Muhammad as Religious Founders [Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Eerdmans, 2001], 11-119, here, pp. 72-73)
For more on
the overwhelming biblical evidence against Reformed theology, see:
