Exodus - Lesson 13

Dr. Carmen Imes 
Exodus 
OT605-13 
Pharoah's Hard Heart 
Lesson Transcript

Okay, so now we have come to a question that, to use a pun, plagues readers of Exodus. I have had so many people ask me, what is the deal with Pharaoh's hard heart? It seems so confusing about why God would say he's going to harden someone's heart, and then he would punish them for having a hard heart. So does God remove Pharaoh's free will in these chapters? What does it mean that he has a hard heart? How are we supposed to understand this? And to help us with this, we're going to look again, remember back to the beginning, to our very first session, where I talked about the three-legged stool, that we need to pay attention to the historical background, the literary design, and the theological themes.

So what we want to get to here is the theological theme, but we're going to take a really careful look at how is this text constructed literarily? How does the hard heart fit in with the the literary patterning that we've already talked about in the Signs and Wonders? And then historically, what do we need to know about Egyptian culture or Israelite culture that might help us understand what's going on here? So the first thing to say is that our English Bibles, for a reason I cannot explain, always say hard heart or harden Pharaoh's heart, even when there are multiple Hebrew words to describe what's happening to Pharaoh. So you might have already picked up on this in my really complex chart of the Twelve Signs and Wonders, that I was talking there about a heavy heart and about a firm heart. And so there, I was already trying to distinguish between two different modes of Pharaoh's heart that become clear when you pay attention to precisely what Hebrew word is being used to describe Pharaoh's heart.

The other thing we'll have to pay attention to is who is doing what to Pharaoh's heart. So sometimes God is acting on Pharaoh's heart, sometimes Pharaoh's acting on his own heart, and how does that pattern or how does that difference play out with regard to the different Hebrew words that are being used to describe his heart? And to me, this was really helpful when I slowed down and checked every reference, a clearer picture began to emerge that I think we often miss. There are three Hebrew words used to describe Pharaoh's heart.

One of them only occurs twice, and it's the word kashay, which is the word hard. And in Hebrew, the problem with understanding it or translating it as hard heart is in English, hard-heartedness is a particular idiom that we use to describe a certain kind of person. If someone's hard-hearted, they tend to be someone who's cruel.

So if someone's hard-hearted, they're cruel, they're stubborn, they're unyielding. There's some overlap with the Egyptian idea of a hard heart, but it's not exact. So kashay is used twice.

Many times the word that's used is chazak, and chazak describes a firm heart or a resolute heart. And so this is the most common word that's used to describe Pharaoh's heart. And I don't think hard heart quite captures it, given that it doesn't have a negative connotation.

This is not someone who's cruel or someone who is oppressive, necessarily. It's someone who's resolute. It takes a heart that is chazak to finish a college degree.

You have to be resolute. You have to finish all your requirements. It doesn't mean you're bad.

It doesn't mean you've done anything wrong. You just need to be firm and resolved to finish it. The third word that's used to describe his heart is kaved, which means heavy.

And that also doesn't work in English, because in English, when we have a heavy heart, it means we're really sad or burdened about something. But that is not what it means in an Egyptian context or in a Hebrew context. So I'm going to just summarize this with these two categories, a heavy heart and a hard heart or firm heart.

Just to say that a heavy heart in an Egyptian context suggests that Pharaoh is guilty of injustice. And this is coming out of the idea of, in Egyptian thought, of what happens after you die. So there are many, many copies of a text called the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

And most of them come with illustrations that depict someone who's died being led by the gods through the underworld. And they go through all of these different scenes or different rooms where different things are done to them or happen to them, eventually being judged by the gods for how did they live their life. It's kind of similar to our idea of being judged by God after death, standing before the throne of God.

And on the slide, I have a picture of one of the most famous scenes where a particular man has died and he's being led through. So the one who died is in the white garments, and he's being led by, I think, a jackal headed God through the underworld. And you see there, the image of a scale, like where you would weigh two things.

And the heart of this dead man has been taken out of his chest and put in a jar. And it's on one side of the scale. And on the other side of the scale is a feather.

And the feather represents ma'at, that concept we talked about earlier, which is the Egyptian idea of justice and order and harmony and truth and doing the right thing. All is right with the world. So when someone dies, their heart is weighed against ma'at.

And if it turns out that their heart is heavy, that means that they're guilty of injustice. They have not upheld ma'at. If they have upheld ma'at, it will come out even.

And so to say that Pharaoh's heart was heavy is to use an Egyptian context. To say that Pharaoh's heart is heavy is to use an Egyptian concept to judge Pharaoh as guilty of the very qualities that he is supposed to uphold. He is supposed to keep order in his realm, and he has not.

He's brought disorder. He's supposed to have harmony and truth and rightness and justice, but he's not. He has oppressed the Israelites, and he's refused to listen to Yahweh.

So that's what gives him a heavy heart. He's guilty. So Pharaoh is guilty by his own standards in this story.

In those cases where we hear that Pharaoh's heart is hard or firm, that indicates that he's resolute. So as in Hebrew, the Egyptian concept of a hard heart doesn't mean cruel, but it means resolute. So Yahweh inverts the positive Egyptian concept of stout-heartedness and shows that Pharaoh's ideals are contrary to Yahweh's.

So Pharaoh fails to define good and evil on Yahweh's terms. He is resolute in doing the wrong thing. He sets his heart on opposing Yahweh instead of doing Yahweh's will, and that's what makes him ultimately guilty of injustice.

So the two concepts work together, but they're slightly different. Here's a zooming in on that scene from the Book of the Dead where the heart is being weighed against the feather, and we can see a description here of Hunefer, the dead man, who's being taken into the judgment hall by this jackal-headed god named Anubis. So there's the weighing of the heart, and then the next thing he does is he is presented by the god Horus to the god Osiris, who's seated, we saw this on the previous slide, the god seated on that throne.

And this is where they are proclaiming whether he is guilty or innocent. If you've watched the Bible Project video on Exodus, you've seen this explanation. This is a simplified explanation of what's happening to Pharaoh's heart, and what they noted there is that in the 10 traditional plagues, we have five, the first five in which Pharaoh hardened his heart, and the second five is with God hardening Pharaoh's heart.

And what's really striking about this, and where I want to complexify this a little bit, is that when what Pharaoh is doing to his heart is making it heavy, whereas what God is doing to his heart is making it firm. So God is not making Pharaoh guilty of injustice, God is making Pharaoh resolute, and Pharaoh is resolute in doing the wrong thing, therefore he's guilty of injustice. So God is not undermining Pharaoh's free will, he's actually helping Pharaoh to be more Pharaoh-like, he's egging him on to do what he's already freely decided to do.

And if you look at any of the passages where it says God is acting on Pharaoh's heart, it's very clear from the immediate context that Pharaoh is refusing to listen, that he is not heeding Yahweh's command, that he's making an active choice to disregard what God says. Here's a chart that I made that complexifies that Bible Project slide, where I'm showing in the three columns the three different Hebrew words, kashay, chazak, and kaveid, and then you can see who's doing the acting on who. So if Pharaoh is doing the acting on his heart, then it's blue, whereas if Yahweh is doing the acting, it's cream colored.

And so you can see there's a gradual transition from Pharaoh acting to God acting on Pharaoh's heart. So it's as if Pharaoh has stubbornly made himself guilty of injustice, and finally God says, all right, we're going to see this through to the end. At any point, Pharaoh could have changed his mind.

God is giving him chance after chance, but he is so determined that he doesn't yield to God's will. So here's a few takeaways about Pharaoh's hard heart. So generally speaking, as I've shown, causation shifts from Pharaoh to Yahweh.

There is an exception to that. In the Sign of Hail, we have one example of Pharaoh and his servants hardening or making their own hearts heavy again. Pharaoh never makes his own heart strong or resolute.

He always makes his own heart heavy or guilty. Yahweh only makes Pharaoh's heart heavy one time. Almost of all the other times, Yahweh makes it strong or resolute.

And the one time that God makes Pharaoh's heart heavy is in chapter 10. And it seems to me that there it could be telescoping because unlike all of the other signs and wonders, the rest of the signs and wonders, there's a statement at the end saying the state of Pharaoh's heart. But in chapter 10 begins by Yahweh saying, go to Pharaoh for I have hardened his heart or I've made his heart heavy and the hearts of his officials so that I may perform these signs of mine among them.

And that could be a telescoping of God's making them firm, looking from the back and in God's purposes are being fulfilled. But from the beginning, God knows where this is going to go. Given that every other time that is his heart's made heavy is Pharaoh's own action.

That's how I'm inclined to read this. Yahweh and Pharaoh each make his heart hard once that's using the word kashay. One is kind of in anticipation of what will happen and the other is Pharaoh acting on his own heart when the firstborn.

A couple of other ways that this fits in the literary design of Exodus. First of all, Pharaoh imposes heavy labor on the punishment fits the crime. Not that the heavy heart is a punishment, but it sort of corresponds to what he's done.

Moses hazzocks the snake. You might have noticed when I was reading from the NIV, I changed one word that Moses is supposed to throw down his staff and then he's supposed to hazzock it. He's supposed to seize it.

And what he's done doing with the snake is what God does with Pharaoh's heart. And given that Pharaoh pictures himself as a snake, he's got the snake on his headdress to symbolize his royal authority. It's a fascinating thing to me that Yahweh is treating Pharaoh like that snake that he has to seize by the tail.

And then he becomes just a tool in God's hand, becomes like a staff again. Yahweh sends heavy swarms of flies and plague on livestock and heavy hail and heavy locusts in response to Pharaoh's heavy heart in those episodes. So there again, there's a kind of punishment fits the crime or lex talionis in those stories.

Even when the causation of the heavy or strong heart is not explicit, the context always makes clear that Pharaoh is at fault. There's some passages on the screen that you can look up if you want to see what I mean. The heavy heart goes along with inaction while the strong heart goes with a refusal to listen.

So when Pharaoh makes his heart heavy, he's refusing to do anything which is a form of injustice or guilt. Whereas when his heart is resolute, it's like he's plugging his ears and he doesn't care what Yahweh wants him to do or is saying to him. He doesn't want to listen.

Ultimately, Yahweh's strong arm overcomes Pharaoh's strong heart. So the strong arm is using that same word chazak that overcomes Pharaoh's heart, that's chazak. And Yahweh's glory outweighs Pharaoh's heavy heart.

So the the word kaved that describes Pharaoh's heart is the same word that describes Yahweh's glory. This is not saying Yahweh's unjust. It's not saying God has a heavy heart.

It's just that Yahweh is weighty overall. It's his glory. And so there's a key correspondence between these two main characters or main players throughout the narratives.

I read a really helpful article on Pharaoh's hard heart by Dorian Coover Cox in Bibliotheca Sacra back in 2006. It was published, The Hardening of Pharaoh's Heart in its literary and cultural context. She says, Exodus gives no sign that Pharaoh longed to submit to Yahweh as his sovereign and was prevented from doing so.

He received numerous rebukes, explanations, and commands that imply that he had an opportunity to submit. In fact, we mentioned at the beginning of our study of the signs and wonders that God warned Pharaoh that, by now I could have reached out my hand and struck you with a plague, but I wanted to show you who I was and I wanted to give you an opportunity to respond. And so I think that's clear throughout these texts.