Chapter XII: Exodus (2)

The first miracle (Ex. 7: 10–13) that of changing Aaron’s rod to a serpent, was rather a _test_ than a _plague_. Pharaoh met it by calling in his magicians to try their hand――his thought being, My men can do that! They did _seem_ to do it, and though Aaron’s rod-serpent swallowed up theirs, yet Pharaoh did not love to be convinced and therefore was not. Under this result, which perhaps seemed to him a partial victory, he braced himself against God this time.

Next, in the turning of water into blood we read (Ex. 7: 22) “The magicians did so with their enchantments, and Pharaoh’s heart was hardened.” This seemed to him a complete success for his side. Naturally, therefore, his heart is hardened to withstand God yet.

Under the plague of frogs――not by any means one of the most severe――Pharaoh seemed to yield; he at least begged the prayers of Moses and Aaron; and promised to let the people go (Ex. 8: 8). To make God’s hand the more distinctly visible, Moses said――Set your own time, and I will pray that this plague may cease. Done: “but when Pharaoh saw that there was _respite_, he hardened his heart and hearkened not unto them” (8: 15). Alas, how he abused God’s mercy! God lifted the plague――and up springs the old rebellion of his soul against God. Perhaps he flatters himself that this is the last, or he hopes that Moses will pray the rest away as he has this; or, as often happens, the simple sense of respite without any particular reasoning in the case makes him feel strong again to withstand God. Not the least sense of gratitude for the favor――the mercy of removing the plague! O how many of the sinners of our world have done this very thing! Stricken down with sickness, have they not begged for life and besought the prayers of all the good, and promised the Lord that with restoring mercy they would give him their hearts and their lives? But when the respite came their vows were forgotten; their hearts were hardened.

The plague of lice brings out another element of depraved hearts. The magicians try, but make an utter failure, and (what is to Pharaoh more provoking still) they frankly declare to him, “This is the finger of God.” They retire from the contest, and leave Pharaoh to fight it out alone. They can help him no longer. He is apparently vexed and maddened, but not at all subdued. Rather, he rouses himself to greater desperation, for the record puts these points in the closest connection: the frank admission, “This is the finger of God”; and the stiffening of Pharaoh’s rebellious will――“_And_ Pharaoh’s heart was hardened and he hearkened not unto them.”

The plague of flies brings out yet another element of human nature which not unfrequently comes into play in the hardening of men’s hearts against God――viz. the habit of bantering――shall we say dickering, driving a bargain and quibbling over the terms and conditions of God’s requirements. The flies are terribly annoying: Pharaoh sees that something must be done; in fact he concludes he must make some concessions: so he calls for Moses and Aaron and says――“Go ye, sacrifice to your God _in the land_.” The last words were emphatic――in _this_ land: stay here, and you shall have time to offer your sacrifices. I can not let you go three days journey into the wilderness lest ye never come back.――――Moses insists on the original terms; and then Pharaoh concedes yet a little more: “I will let you go that ye may sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wilderness, only ye shall not go very far away. Entreat for me”――_i. e._ entreat the Lord to take away these flies――the same word being used here as in v. 8. Moses entreated: the Lord removed the plague, and according to the record “Pharaoh hardened his heart at this time also, neither would he let the people go.” Allowing himself to make terms with God and to banter him upon the conditions, coupled with the respite――the temporary relief found in the removal of the plague――are manifestly the causes and modes in this case of his hardening his own heart.

Next is the plague of murrain――a terrible loss of their cattle. In the antecedent threatening of this plague, Moses said to Pharaoh, “The Lord will _sever_ between the cattle of Israel and the cattle of Egypt: there shall nothing die of all that belongs to Israel.” So it was; for we read――“Pharaoh sent [_i. e._ to inquire] and lo! not one of the cattle of the Israelites was dead. And the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people go” (9: 1–7). This discrimination gave a keener edge to the plague; it cut the deeper; but in the result it only maddened him the more. It showed most clearly that God’s hand was in these plagues and that he was on the side of Israel; but Pharaoh was committed to the contest and seemed to have but the one ruling purpose――to fight it out to the bitter end.

The plague of boils was a visitation of physical suffering, perhaps somewhat adapted to make a fretful man irritable. The narrative notes the circumstance that the magicians were completely broken down by this plague: “They could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boil was upon the magicians and upon all the Egyptians” [not upon the Israelites]. As to Pharaoh, all human help fails him; every man among his people seems to quail and give up the contest; yet his proud heart is only the more maddened and the more determined! It is said, “The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh and he hearkened not unto them;” but such mad infatuation is wont to appear in depraved human souls without any miraculous infliction of hardness from the hand of God. There is not the least occasion to assume any other influences than those of a proud, maddened human heart, working out its own obstinate will against God.

The hail with attendant thunder and lightning (next in order) were fearfully appalling. All Egyptian hearts seemed to quiver with terror under this infliction. Pharaoh is brought (shall we say) to his knees: he sends hastily for Moses and Aaron and says to them: “I have sinned this time; the Lord is righteous and I and my people are wicked.” Truly this seems hopeful. For the first time he appears penitent. “Entreat the Lord (for it is enough) that there be no more mighty thunderings and hail; and I will let you go and ye shall stay no longer.”――――This seems to be a final victory over the proud heart and the long time inflexible will of Pharaoh. He confesses sin; he begs again for prayer; he promises to yield to God’s entire demand and let the people go. Consequently the plague was removed. “And when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder were ceased, he sinned yet more and hardened his heart, he and his servants.”――――Alas for man’s perverse and false nature――his proud heart and his lying lips! How readily he relapses back into his old and much-loved sin and becomes more hardened than ever! The judgments of God extort confessions and tears and prayers; but God’s mercies let off this pressure and leave the guilty soul to fly back to its old sins again. So it was with Pharaoh. God’s mercies, abused, worked out his ruin. But it were simply monstrous to say that this showing of mercy is on God’s part a moral wrong and that it throws over upon him the moral responsibility of hardening the sinner’s heart. Yet it was precisely in this way――perhaps more really and potently than in any other――that God hardened the heart of Pharaoh.

The plague of locusts brings to view a new group of elements. Egypt had known something about locusts before: so when this scourge was announced, Pharaoh’s servants beg him to yield the contest. “How long shall this man” [Moses] “be a snare unto us? Let the men go that they may serve the Lord their God. Knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed”? (10: 7).――――Pharaoh yields to their entreaty only so far as to send for Moses and Aaron, and again try his hand upon bantering with them and with God over the conditions. “Go serve the Lord, said he; but _who are they that shall go_”? Moses answers, Every thing must go; we with our young and with our old; with sons and with daughters; with flocks and with herds――all, absolutely _all_ must go.――――No indeed, replies Pharaoh――with what we must take as his royal oath――with the most fearful threat he could make and the most solemn asseveration――he says, “_Not so_; go _ye that are men_ and serve the Lord, for that ye did desire.” That was all ye asked at first: it is the utmost I shall give! “And they were driven out of his presence.” Pharaoh is thoroughly mad! This allowing himself to banter them as to the terms of the arrangement helped him to a stronger feeling of his own importance. He seemed to himself to be yet more a king on his throne, and why should not he dictate the conditions?――――Soon the plague comes, and for the moment it quite changes the face of affairs. “Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron in haste, and said” [again]――“I have sinned against the Lord your God and against you. Now, therefore, forgive, I pray thee, my sin only this once, and entreat the Lord your God that he may take away from me this death only.” Apparently he remembers that once before he confessed, and more than once has begged their prayers, and more than once has promised to let the people go. So he labors to give a little more emphasis to his beseechings this time by confessing his sin against Moses, and especially by the limitation――“_for this once_”――once more _do_ hear me――this time only. But he has been through this very process once before; most of its points, many times before; and it is much more easy for him to turn back upon every promise and break every most solemn vow than it ever has been before. It is safe to predict that any sinner who has broken so many solemn vows of amendment will never do any thing better than break vows when God’s mercy lifts off the plague. So Pharaoh’s heart is hardened yet again. The statement is――“But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart”――yet the way he did it, here as before (9: 34), was by removing the plague; by hearing his prayer for relief and apparently trusting his sacred promise to let the people go. This was the way and these the agencies by which the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart.

The plague of darkness is next in order. Again Pharaoh sets himself to negotiate as to the terms. He will consent that not only the men may go, but their wives and their little ones; _but their flocks must be left behind_. He must have some hostages――something left in his hands that will bring his bondmen back. Moses says _No!_ we need our flocks for sacrifice; not a hoof is to be left behind! Pharaoh is more mad than ever: he not only drives Moses out from his presence, but adds――“Take heed to thyself; see my face no more; for in the day thou seest my face thou shalt die.” In this case it is said――“The Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart”; but these terrible uprisings and outbursts of madness well up from the depths of a depraved sinner’s soul. No supernatural miracle of divine hardening is at all needful to create them. Pharaoh is too proud a king to bear such confrontings of his will. Shall he yield to such a man as Moses, or even to the God of Moses? Not he. It stirs up all the elements of his pride and madness to have his propositions of compromise so peremptorily rejected. It is this in special that works in this present case to the hardening of his heart.

There remains but one more plague――that awful night on Egypt when the wailing cry rang out over all the land, “for there was not a house where there was not one dead”! and that the _first-born_! Under this, Pharaoh for the time really broke down; he called for Moses and Aaron by night and said――“Go ye and all your people, and take your flocks and herds as ye have said and be gone, and bless me also.” This conceded everything, closing off with begging their blessing upon his consciously guilty soul! The Egyptians too were all astir; they were urgent upon the people to send them out of the land in haste; for they said――“We be all dead men.” And the people of Israel do really go.――――But strange as it may seem, when “it was told the king of Egypt that the people had really gone, then the heart of Pharaoh and of his servants was turned against the people and they said――Why have we done this that we have let Israel go from serving us”?――――Forthwith armed chariots are made ready and are off in hot pursuit;――till they find themselves battling the mighty waves of the Red Sea, quailing before the awful eye and under the uplifted arm of the Almighty!――――This last instance of hardening the heart seems most like pure and simple infatuation. No doubt Pharaoh and his servants had a fresh sense of what they had lost in letting go such a host of hard working bondmen. No doubt they also felt the mortification of having been worsted in the long-fought struggle over this national question of letting the people go; but after all they had seen and felt of God’s power to curse and to plague and to crush them, nothing but the most senseless infatuation can rationally account for this last desperate dash upon Israel with the armed force of the nation. Yet no one will say that such infatuation does not often appear in the history of human sinning. In his own sphere many a poor sinner is just as madly infatuated as Pharaoh and his people were――is altogether as senseless, as void of wisdom, as reckless of the hot thunderbolts of the Almighty! It is an awfully sad fact, a most humiliating confession as to the manner of human sinning; but it is only too true! There is no need of assuming any direct supernatural divine interposition to produce it.

Nothing more seems necessary to complete the argument from the history of the case unless it be to suggest that when we have accounted for the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart satisfactorily on the one principle――the well-known proclivities and activities of a proud, stubborn human heart, it is entirely unphilosophical to bring in another principle, viz. the miraculous, immediate, direct action of Almighty Power. When we have proved the former power adequate to produce all the results, we have virtually precluded the latter. There can be no reason whatever for assuming a joint, co-ordinate action of both the natural laws of the human mind and of the supernatural power of God. If the former suffices, the latter is uncalled for. Miracles are never to be assumed where non-miraculous agency is fully adequate.

If it be still argued that the very words declare, “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart,” the answer is: God is said to do what he foresees will be done by others and done under such arrangements of his providence as make it possible and morally certain that they will do it. Joseph said to his brethren (Gen. 45: 5, 7, 8), “Be not angry with yourselves that ye sold me hither, for God did send me before you to preserve life. So now it was not you that sent me hither but God.” Yet it is simply impious to put the sin of selling Joseph into Egypt over upon God. God did it only in the same sense in which he hardened Pharaoh’s heart. He had a purpose to subserve by means of the sin of Joseph’s brethren; and he did no doubt permit such circumstances to occur in his providence as made that sin possible and as resulted in their sinning and in the remote consequences which God anticipated.

It is of no particular use for us to find fault with the way in which the Scriptures speak of God’s hand in the existence of sin. There is no special mystery about it. It certainly does not involve the least moral obliquity on God’s part; and it is therefore every way prudent and wise to interpret such language in harmony with the common sense of the case and with the well-known character of God.

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2. We proceed to notice what is said of _God’s purpose_ in the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. It is the more important to speak of this because an extreme view is sometimes taken of the central passage (Ex. 9: 14–16); “And in very deed for this cause have I raised thee up for to show in thee my power,” etc. The extreme view referred to is that God made Pharaoh a great king, put him on a high throne, for the avowed purpose of displaying his own great power in his sin and punishment.

By consent of Hebrew lexicographers, the verb translated “_raised up_” means in this case _preserved alive_――have _caused thee to stand_ or continue among the living. The previous context moreover seems not to be quite accurately put in our English version. It should rather be thus, beginning with v. 14: “For at this very time I am sending [present tense] all my plagues to thine heart and upon thy servants and upon thy people that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth. For I might now have stretched out my hand and smitten thee and thy people with pestilence [_i. e._ might have smitten you all dead], and thou wouldest have been cut off from the earth. But truly for this very reason have I preserved thee alive to the end that thou mightest show forth [make others see] my power, and for the sake of proclaiming my name in all the earth.” To the same purport are the words (Ex. 14: 17, 18) with reference to the final destruction of Pharaoh’s host; “And I will get me honor upon Pharaoh and upon all his host, etc. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I shall have gotten me honor upon Pharaoh and upon his chariots and his horsemen.” The great thought is that God turns to account the sin and madness of Pharaoh for the purpose of making known his power to save his people and to crush their foes. He shapes his ways of providence to this end. He might have swept off Pharaoh and his people with the same pestilence which destroyed so many of their cattle; but he had a wiser purpose. He could make a better use of their sin and of their life; so he spared them till he had wrought all his wonders upon Egypt before all the nations of the earth; and then he let them plunge into the mighty waves of the Red Sea and make their grave there!――――Now if wicked men _will sin_, who shall object against God that he makes the best possible use of it? Why may he not reveal his power thereby and exalt his name as one “mighty to save” or to destroy?

3. It only remains to ask――What has God taught us of his character as bearing on the question before us, and of his agencies in the existence of sin?

Here few words ought to suffice. Nothing can be more plain than the revelations of scripture concerning God’s character as infinitely pure and holy――as a Being who not only can never sin himself but can never be pleased to have others sin, and above all can never put forth his power to _make them sin_. God can not be tempted with evil, “_neither tempteth he any man_” (Jam. 1: 13). When he declares so solemnly and so tenderly: “O do not that abominable thing which I hate”! shall it still be said――But he puts men to sinning; pushes them on in their sin; inclines their heart to sin and hardens them to more and guiltier sinning? Never!

Shall it be claimed that with one hand God gives his Spirit to impress the truth on human souls unto their salvation; and with the other sends his Spirit to augment the forces of temptation and to harden men’s hearts unto their damnation? Shall the same fountain send forth both sweet water and bitter? Shall the same God renew some human hearts unto holiness and harden other human hearts in sin――all by the same direct and similarly purposed agency, each work being done under the same impulses of infinite love?――――Surely there must be some egregious misconception of God’s character involved in supposing him capable of acts so fundamentally opposite and incompatible――not to say, in supposing him capable of tempting men into more and greater sin!

The fact that He wisely and mightily over-rules sin to bring good forth from it should never be construed to imply that he abhors sin any the less because he can extort some good results from its existence.