In an article entitled “Punishment of the Offending Organ in Biblical Literature” (my thanks to my friend Matt Roper for sending this article my way), we read the following about the punishment of the “heart”:
The heart
The Lord warns Pharaoh, “For this
time I will send all my plagues upon your heart, and upon your servants
and your people, that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth”
(Ex. ix 14). Some have proposed ending אֶל-לִכְּךָ to אֵלֶּה בְּךָ, i.e., “these
plagues upon you.” But in light of the crucial role that Pharaoh’s heart
plays in his conduct—time and again we read that Pharaoh hardened his heart and
refused to let the Israelites go—the Masoretic text seems preferable: The Lord
will strike Pharaoh precisely in the organ that perpetuates his transgression—his
heart. In this case we are not dealing with a concrete publishment directed at
the physical heart, but with figurative language only. (Yael Shemesh, “Punishment
of the Offending Organ in Biblical Literature,” Vetus Testamentum 55 no.
3 [July 2005]: 346)
This assumption is strengthened by
the fact that the Lord’s words incorporate another manifestation of measure for
measure, by means of a common verb: The Lord demands that Pharaoh “Let my
people go (שַׁלַּח)” (v. 13); should he refuse, “this time I will send (אֲנִי שֹׁלֵחַ)
all my plagues upon your heart” (v. 14). . . . See also Lev. xxvi 15-16: “If
you spurn my statues, and if your soul (נַפְשְׁכֶם) abhors my
ordinances . . . I will do this to you: I will appoint over your sudden terror,
consumption, and fever that waste the eyes and cause life to pine away (מְדִיבֹת
נָפֶשׁ).” (Ibid., 346 n. 14)
. . .
The idea that the heart that sins
is punished is found in Ezekiel:
Son of man, these men have
taken their idols into their hearts, and set the stumbling block of their iniquity
before their faces; should I let myself be inquired of all by them? Therefore speak
to them, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Any man of the house of
Israel who takes his idols into his heart and set the stumbling block of
his iniquity before his face, and yet comes to the prophet, I the Lord will
answer him myself because of the multitude of his idols, that I may lay hold
of the hearts of the house of Israel, who are all estranged from me through
their idols. (Ezek. xiv. 3-5).
In other words, the Lord will
indeed answer the fence-sitters of Israel, who come to inquire of the Lord even
though they worship idols as well. His reply, however, will not be what they
are expecting. Rather, it is intended to “lay hold of the hearts of the house
of Israel” (v. 5)—that is, “to strike terror into the hearts of all idolaters
among the Israelites” (J. W. Wevers, Ezekiel [NCB; London, 1969, p.
112). This is on account of their transgression—that they “have taken their
idols into their hearts” (v. 3 and again in v. 4). (Ibid., 356)