Hardness of heart
Monday, Oct. 19
Exodus 5:22 – 7:13 Read it here Listen to it here

God promises Moses that God will free his people. “I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.”
Like many of God’s promises, though, the route between making the promise and fulfilling the promise will have challenges along the way. Pharaoh will have a hard heart against freeing the Israelites; that hardness of heart will raise its own questions that we still wrestle with today.
One of the great debates over how we understand scripture is visible throughout the interactions between Moses and Pharaoh. In several cases, such as 7:3, we read that God will “harden Pharaoh’s heart.”
This raises a lot of questions and can become a stumbling block for some readers. If we take these words literally, Pharaoh had no free will in the matter; it was God who caused him to reject Moses’s plea to free the Israelites. But if that’s the case, it seems to us unfair that Pharaoh and the Egyptian people would suffer for a decision they had no say in.
The same question comes up elsewhere in scripture; it is often asked about Judas: did he really have a choice in betraying Jesus, or what he simply doing what had to be done in order for God’s plan to be realized?
From this we ask about guilt and responsibility. If the decision was really God’s decision, how can the humans involved be considered guilty of sin?
It can even lead us to question our understanding of good and evil. Is an action that leads to a good result ever really evil? Is an evil action ever justified by its good result?
And behind all this we get into questions about free will vs. predestination. Do we really make choices?
There are also questions of what we believe about the divine inspiration of scripture: Did God choose the words that are on the page, or was God simply behind the events that are relayed to us (or, in a more extreme understanding, was God even involved in making scripture happen?).
I’m bringing these questions up not to encourage philosophical detours, but because they are likely to arise, and they shape our understanding of what the text means.
For myself, I do not think that a rigid understanding of predestination is consistent with scripture. Yes, there are passages that suggest it, but strict belief in predestination requires setting aside a lot of the biblical story.
But even without a strict understanding of predestination, we can question if God prompted Pharaoh to resist in order that God’s power might be shown more decisively.
That’s not really a question I have a satisfying answer for, and I’ve simply accepted that for now.
But fortunately, there is much we can learn from the story without coming to a conclusion on that point. Regardless of why the things that happened the way they did, we know what occurred: Pharaoh did resist, and God used that resistance to build up faith in Moses and Aaron, and to let his people see signs of his immense power.
Leaving questions unanswered is always frustrating, but sometimes we need to learn what lessons we can for today and trust that we’ll gain more understanding and wisdom as we go along.
–
Throughout the Bible, and especially later in the Old Testament, we meet people who are described as prophets. Verse 7:1 provides insight as to exactly what the word means. “Then the Lord said to Moses, “See I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet.” A prophet, then, is one who speaks about and testifies to the godliness of another—often of God himself.
–
The “six things…seven things” phrasing that was used in the Proverbs passage emphasizes the comprehensiveness of the list. Six represents incompleteness, and seven represents completion.

Monday meditation

Proverbs 6:16-19
There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.

Prayer focus
Lord, give me grace to find wisdom even when I can’t fully find understanding, and protect me from the vices that cause conflict in the world.

– Rev. Mark Fleming