I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.
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I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.
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And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.
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And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt.
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Cross-references (18)
Passages linked to Exodus 7:3 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Exodus 4:21 Yahweh said to Moses, “When you go back into Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the wonders which I have put in your hand, but I will harden his heart and he will not let the people go.
- Exodus 11:9 Yahweh said to Moses, “Pharaoh won’t listen to you, that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.”
- Psalms 78:43-51 how he set his signs in Egypt, his wonders in the field of Zoan, he turned their rivers into blood, and their streams, so that they could not drink. He sent among them swarms of flies, which devoured them; and frogs, which destroyed them. He gave also their increase to the caterpillar, and their labor to the locust. He destroyed their vines with hail, their sycamore fig trees with frost. He gave over their livestock also to the hail, and their flocks to hot thunderbolts. He threw on them the fierceness of his anger, wrath, indignation, and trouble, and a band of angels of evil. He made a path for his anger. He didn’t spare their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence, and struck all the firstborn in Egypt, the chief of their strength in the tents of Ham.
- Psalms 105:27-36 They performed miracles among them, and wonders in the land of Ham. He sent darkness, and made it dark. They didn’t rebel against his words. He turned their waters into blood, and killed their fish. Their land swarmed with frogs, even in the rooms of their kings. He spoke, and swarms of flies came, and lice in all their borders. He gave them hail for rain, with lightning in their land. He struck their vines and also their fig trees, and shattered the trees of their country. He spoke, and the locusts came with the grasshoppers, without number, ate up every plant in their land, and ate up the fruit of their ground. He struck also all the firstborn in their land, the first fruits of all their manhood.
- Psalms 135:9 He sent signs and wonders into the middle of you, Egypt, on Pharaoh, and on all his servants.
- John 4:48 Jesus therefore said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders, you will in no way believe.”
- Acts 2:22 “Men of Israel, hear these words! Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved by God to you by mighty works and wonders and signs which God did by him among you, even as you yourselves know,
- Acts 7:36 This man led them out, having worked wonders and signs in Egypt, in the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for forty years.
- Romans 15:19 in the power of signs and wonders, in the power of God’s Spirit; so that from Jerusalem, and around as far as to Illyricum, I have fully preached the Good News of Christ;
- Exodus 4:7 He said, “Put your hand inside your cloak again.” He put his hand inside his cloak again, and when he took it out of his cloak, behold, it had turned again as his other flesh.
- Exodus 4:29 Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the children of Israel.
- Exodus 9:16 but indeed for this cause I have made you stand: to show you my power, and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth,
- Deuteronomy 4:34 Or has God tried to go and take a nation for himself from among another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, by war, by a mighty hand, by an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, according to all that Yahweh your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?
- Deuteronomy 7:19 the great trials which your eyes saw, the signs, the wonders, the mighty hand, and the outstretched arm, by which Yahweh your God brought you out. So shall Yahweh your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid.
- Nehemiah 9:10 and showed signs and wonders against Pharaoh, and against all his servants, and against all the people of his land; for you knew that they dealt proudly against them, and made a name for yourself, as it is today.
- Isaiah 51:9 Awake, awake, put on strength, arm of Yahweh! Awake, as in the days of old, the generations of ancient times. Isn’t it you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the monster?
- Jeremiah 32:20-21 who performed signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, even to this day, both in Israel and among other men; and made yourself a name, as it is today; and brought your people Israel out of the land of Egypt with signs, with wonders, with a strong hand, with an outstretched arm, and with great terror;
- Micah 7:15 “As in the days of your coming out of the land of Egypt, I will show them marvelous things.”
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John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Exo 7:3 And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and…
Exo 7:3 And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.
Ver. 3. And I will harden.] {See Trapp on "Exo 4:21"} The Dutch have a proverb, Quem Deus excaecaturus est, huic primum oculos claudit. When God will blind a man, he first closeth up his eyes.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And I will harden Pharaoh's heart,.... See Gill on…
And I will harden Pharaoh's heart,.... See Gill on Exo 4:21.
and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt; work one miracle and wonderful sign after another, until they are all wrought intended to be wrought; and which he had given Moses power to do, and until the end should be answered and obtained, the letting go of the children of Israel.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 3. I will harden Pharaoh's heart] I will…
Verse 3. I will harden Pharaoh's heart] I will permit his stubbornness and obstinacy still to remain, that I may have the greater opportunity to multiply my wonders in the land, that the Egyptians may know that I only am Jehovah, the self-existent God. See Clarke on Ex 4:21.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Wonders - A word used only of portents performed…
Wonders - A word used only of portents performed to prove a divine interposition; they were the credentials of God’s messengers.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain I shall harden, &c.; not by being the efficient…
I shall harden, &c.; not by being the efficient cause of his hardness of heart, but by permitting it; and by withdrawing grace from him, in punishment of his malice; which alone was the proper cause of his being hardened. (Challoner) --- He took occasion even from the miracles to become more obdurate. (Haydock) --- Yet Pharao was less impious than Calvin, for he takes the sin to himself, chap. ix. 27. (Tirinus)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain I will harden Pharaoh's heart--This would be the result.…
I will harden Pharaoh's heart--This would be the result. But the divine message would be the occasion, not the cause of the king's impenitent obduracy.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 3. And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart — At…
3. And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart — At this stage of history Pharaoh had so far resisted the truth that God’s judgments but increased his obstinacy, and made him plunge into deeper and deeper rebellion. This result is foreseen and predicted, that Moses may be prepared for it. Pharaoh’s sin and its judicial consequences were to be the means of setting forth the attributes of Jehovah before the heathen. See on Exo_4:21.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 3. And I (emph.) will harden, &c.] cf. Exo_4:21…
3. And I (emph.) will harden, &c.] cf. Exo_4:21 (E). Harden (הקשה), as Psa_95:8; but used only here of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart.
my signs and my portents] alluding, probably, partly to ‘portents’ (see on Exo_4:21) performed as credentials (cf. v. 9), partly to the less severe plagues (cf. Exo_11:10, in P).
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (3) I will harden Pharaoh’s heart.—See the comment on…
(3) I will harden Pharaoh’s heart.—See the comment on Exo_4:21.
My signs and my wonders.—“Signs” (‘othoth) were miracles done as credentials, to prove a mission (Exo_4:8-9; Exo_4:30). “Wonders” (môphôth) were miracles generally; niphle’oth, also translated” wonders” (Exo_3:20), were miracles, wrought in the way of punishment. These last are called also shôphëtiin, “judgments.” (See Exo_7:4.)
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain I will harden Pharaoh"s heart. See the comment on…
I will harden Pharaoh"s heart. See the comment on Exo_4:21. And multiply my signs and my wonders. The idea of a long series of miracles is here, for the first time, distinctly introduced. Three signs had been given; (Exo_4:3-9) one further miracle had been mentioned (ib. 23). Now a multiplication of signs and wonders is promised. Compare Exo_3:20, and Exo_6:6, which, however, are not so explicit as the present passage.
Vers. 3-5. The fierceness of man turns to God"s praise.
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The most signal triumphs of Divine power are those in which the resistance to it is the most determined. The greatest of all victories was probably that which was gained when after "war in heaven Satan was seen, like lightning, falling from heaven to earth. Since then, great triumphs, tending to God"s praise, occur whenever the right and the truth succeed against seemingly insuperable opposition. When the boy shepherd with his sling and stone smites to the earth the gigantic Philistine when the proud Sennacherib after all his boasts has to leave Jerusalem unhurt and fly to Nineveh when Epiphanes is defied and baffled by a handful of Jewish mountaineers when victory is finally gained by "Athanasius contra mundum," God"s might is seen and recognised, as it would not have been, unless overwhelming strength had seemed to be arrayed against comparative weakness. When the "heathen rage," and the "kings of the earth and rulers" are on their side, and the cry of defiance goes forth: "Let us break God"s bands asunder, and cast away his cords from us then God is most apt to show his might to "refrain the spirit of princes," and make it manifest that he "is wonderful among the kings of the earth." The longer and fiercer the opposition, the more conspicuously is God"s praise shown forth. Blow follows blow until the opposing power is shattered, smitten to the ground, laid prostrate. Then is the time for the song of triumph: "Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the right way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed arc all they that put their trust in him!". (Psa_51:10-12)
Heart-hardening.
On this subject, see above, and on Exo_4:21. The present seems an appropriate place for a somewhat fuller treatment.
I HARDENING AS PROCEEDING FROM GOD. "I will harden Pharaoh"s heart." This, assuredly, is more than simple permission. God hardens the heart
1. Through the operation of the laws of our moral constitution, These laws, of which God is the author, and through which he operates in the soul, ordain hardening as the penalty of evil conduct, of resistance to truth, and of all misimprovement and abuse of privilege.
2. Through his providence as when God, in the execution of his judgments, places a wicked man in situations which he knows can only have a hardening effect upon him. He does this in righteousness. "God, having permitted evil to exist, must thereafter of necessity permit it also to run its whole course in the way of showing itself to be what it really is, as that which aims at the defeat of the Divine purpose, and the consequent dissolution of the universe." This involves hardening.
3. Through a direct judgment in the soul of the individual, God smiting him with a spirit of blindness and infatuation in punishment of obstinate resistance to the truth. This is the most difficult of all aspects of hardening, but it only cuts the knot, does not untie it, to put superficial meanings upon the scriptures which allege the reality of the judgment. (e.g. Deu_28:28; 2Th_2:11) It is to be viewed as connected with what may be called the internal providence of God in the workings of the human mind; his government of the mind in the wide and obscure regions of its involuntary activities. The direction taken by these activities, seeing that they do not spring from man"s own will, must be as truly under the regulation of Providence, and be determined in quite as special a manner, as are the outward circumstances of our lot, or those so-called fortuities concerning which we are assured: "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father." (Mat_10:29) It is a significant fact that, as sin advances, the sinner becomes less and less a free agent, falls increasingly under the dominion of necessity. The involuntary activities of the soul gain ground upon the voluntary. The hardening may be conceived of, partly as the result of a withdrawal of light and restraining grace; partly as a giving of the sou up to the delusions of the adversary, "the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience", (Eph_2:2) whose will gradually occupies the region in the moral life vacated by the human will, and asserts there a correspondingly greater power of control; and partly as the result of a direct Divine ordering of the course of thought, feeling, and imagination. Hengstenberg acutely remarks: "It appears to proceed from design, that the hardening at the beginning of the plagues is attributed, in a preponderating degree, to Pharaoh, and towards the end to God. The higher the plagues rise, so much the more does Pharaoh"s hardening assume a supernatural character, so much the more obvious is it to refer it to its supernatural causality.
II HARDENING IN ITSELF CONSIDERED. The heart is the centre of personality, the source of moral life, the seat of the will, the conscience, and the affections. (Pro_4:23; Mat_15:18) The hardening of the heart may be viewed under two aspects:
1. More generally as the result of growth in sin, with consequent loss ofmoral and religious susceptibility; and
2. As hardening against God, the author of its moral life. We have but toput these two things together the heart, the seat of moral life, hardening itself against the Author of its moral life to see that such hardening is of necessity fatal, an act of moral suicide. It may elucidate the subject to remark that in every process of hardening there is something which the heart parts with, something which it resists, and something which it becomes. There is, in other words
(1) That which the heart hardens itself in, viz. some evil quality, say injustice, cruelty, lust, hate, secret enmity to God, which quality gradually becomes a fixed element in character;
(2) that which the heart hardens itself against, viz. the influences of truth, love, and righteousness, in whatever ways these are brought to bear upon it, whether in the promptings of conscience, the movements of natural sensibility, the remonstrances of parents and friends, the Word of God, the internal strivings of the Spirit; and
(3) that which the heart parts with in hardening, viz. with its original susceptibility to truth, with its sensitiveness to moral influences, with its religious feeling, with its natural generosity, etc. The result is blindness, callousness, lostness to the feeling of right, to the sense of shame, to the authority of God, to the voice of truth, even to true self-interest. All hardening is thus double-sided; hardening in hate, e.g. , being at the same time hardening against love, with a loss of the capacity of love; hardening in injustice being a hardening against justice, with a loss of the capacity for moral discernment; hardening in cruelty being a hardening against kindliness, with a corresponding destruction of the benevolent sensibilities; hardening against God being at the same time hardening in self-hood, in egoism, with a loss of the capacity of faith. We hence conclude:
1. All evil hardens, and all hardening in moral evil is in principle hardening against God. The hardening may begin at the circumference of the moral nature, and involve the centre, or it may begin at the centre, and work out to the circumference. Men may be enemies to God in their mind by wicked works, (Col_1:21) they may have "the understanding darkened," and be "alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness (marg. hardness) of their hearts," and being "past feeling" may give "themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness", (Eph_4:17-19) and yet be strangers to God"s revealed truth. All sin, all resistance to light, all disobedience to conscience, has this hardening effect. (cf. Rom_1:19-32) But it is a will which has broken from God which is thus in various ways hardening itself, and enmity to God is latent in the process. The moment the truth of God is brought to bear on such a nature, this latent enmity is made manifest, and, as in the case of Pharaoh, further hardening is the result. Conversely,
2. Hardening against God is hardening in moral evil. The hardening may begin at the centre, in resistance to God"s known will, and to the strivings of his Spirit, and thence spread through the whole moral nature. This is the deepest and fundamental hardening, and of itself gives a character to the being. A heart hardened in its interior against its Maker would be entitled to be called hard, no matter what superficial qualities of a pleasant kind remained to it, and no matter how correct the moral conduct.
3. Hardening results in a very special degree from resistance to the Word of God, to Divine revelation. This is the type of hardening which is chiefly spoken of in Scripture, and which gives rise to what it specially calls "the hard and impenitent heart". (Rom_2:5) All revelation of God, especially his revelation in Christ, has a testing power, and if resisted produces a hardness which speedily becomes obduracy. God may be resisted in his Word, his Spirit, his servants, his chastisements, and in the testimony to his existence and authority written on the soul itself. But the highest form of resistance the worst and deadliest is resistance to the Spirit drawing to Christ.
III THE HARDENING OF PHARAOH COMPARED WITH HARDENING UNDER THE GOSPEL. Pharaoh stands out in Scripture as the typical instance of hardening of the heart.
1. He and Jehovah stood in direct opposition to each other.
2. God"s will was made known to him in a way he could not mistake. Hepretended at first to doubt, but doubt soon became impossible.
3. He resisted to the last. And the longer he resisted, his heart grew harder.
4. His resistance was his ruin.
In considering the case of this monarch, however, and comparing it with our own, we have to remember
1. That Pharaoh was a heathen king. He was naturally prejudiced in favour of the gods of Egypt. He had at first no knowledge of Jehovah. But we have had from infancy the advantage of a knowledge of the true God, of his existence, his attributes, and his demands.
2. Pharaoh had a heathen upbringing. His moral training was vastly inferior to that which most have enjoyed who hear the Gospel.
3. The influences he resisted were outward influences strokes of judgment. The hardening produced by resistance to the inward influences of Christianity, strivings of the Spirit, etc., is necessarily of a deeper kind.
4. What was demanded of Pharaoh was the liberation of a nation of slaves in our case it is required that we part with sins, and yield up heart and will to the Creator and Redeemer. Outward compliance would have sufficed in his case; in ours, the Compliance must be inward and spiritual. Here, again, inasmuch as the demand goes deeper, the hardening produced by resistance is of necessity deeper also. There is now possible to man the unpardonable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. (Heb_6:4 Heb_6:6)
5. The motives in the two eases are not comparable. In the one case, God revealed in judgments; in the other, in transcendent love and mercy.
Conclusion: if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts". (Heb_3:7, Heb_3:8, Heb_3:13, Heb_3:15, Heb_4:7) Beware, in Connection with this hardening, of "the deceitfulness of sin," The heart has many ways of disguising from itself the fact that it is resisting God, and hardening itself in opposition to him. One form is procrastination. Not yet a more convenient season. A second is compromise. We shall find attempts at this with Pharaoh. By Conceding part of what is asked-giving up some sin to which the heart is less attached we hide from ourselves the fact that we are resisting the chief demand. Herod observed John the Baptist, and "when he heard him, he did many things, and heard him gladly". (Mar_6:20) The forms of godliness, as in the Pharisees, may Conceal from the heart its denial of the power thereof. Conscience is quieted by church-membership, by a religious profession. There is disguised resistance in all insincere repentance. This is seen in Pharaoh"s relentings. Even when the resistance becomes more avowed, there are ways of partially disguising the fact that it is indeed God we are resisting. Possibly the heart tries to wriggle out of the duty of submission by cavilling at the evidence of revelation. Or, objection is perhaps taken to something in the manner or form in which the truth has been presented; some alleged defect of taste, or infelicity of illustration, or rashness of statement, or blunder in science, or possibly a slip in grammar. Any straw will serve which admits of being clutched at. So conviction is pushed off, decision is delayed, resistance is kept up, and all the while the heart is getting harder less sensible of the truth, more ensnared in error. It is well also to remember that even failure to profit by the word, without active resistance to it (if such a thing is possible) simple want of care in the cherishing of good impressions, and too rash an exposure to the influences which tend to dissipate and destroy them will result in their disappearance, and in a consequent hardening of the heart. The impressions will not readily return with the same vividness. To-day, then, and now, hear and obey the voice of God. J.O.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain I will harden Pharaohs heart, and multiply My signs…
Exo_7:3-4
I will harden Pharaohs heart, and multiply My signs and My wonders.
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The struggle between Gods will and Pharaohs
The text brings before us the two great results which God forewarned Moses would rise from the struggle between His will and Pharaohs. On the one hand, the tyranny was to be gradually overthrown by the sublime manifestations of the power of the Lord; on the other, the heart of Pharaoh himself was to be gradually hardened in the conflict with the Lord.
I. Why was the overthrow of Pharaohs tyranny through the miracles of Moses so gradual? Why did not God, by one overwhelming miracle, crush for ever the power of the king?
1. It was not Gods purpose to terrify Pharaoh into submission. He treats men as voluntary creatures, and endeavours, by appealing to all that is highest in their natures, to lead them into submission.
2. In his determination to keep Israel in slavery, Pharaoh had two supports--his confidence in his own power, and the flatteries of the magicians. Through both these sources the miracles appealed to the very heart of the man.
3. The miracles appealed to Pharaoh through the noblest thing he had left--his own sense of religion. When the sacred river became blood, and the light turned to darkness, and the lightning gleamed before him, he must have felt that the hidden God of nature was speaking to him. Not until he had been warned and appealed to in the most powerful manner did the final judgment come.
II. We are told that the heart of Pharaoh was hardened by the miracles which overthrew his purpose. What does this mean? One of the most terrible facts in the world is the battle between Gods will and mans. In Pharaoh we see an iron will manifesting itself in tremendous resistance, the results of which were the hardening and the overthrow. There are three possible explanations of the hardening of Pharaohs heart.
1. It may be attributed entirely to the Divine sovereignty. But this explanation is opposed to the letter of Scripture. We read that Pharaoh hardened his heart.
2. We may attribute it wholly to Pharaoh himself. But the Bible says distinctly, The Lord hardened Pharaohs heart.
3. We may combine the two statements, and thus we shall get at the truth. It is true that the Lord hardened Pharaoh, and true also that Pharaoh hardened himself. (E. L. Hull, B. A.)
Hardening of conscience
It is a very terrible thing to let conscience begin to grow hard, for it soon chills into northern iron and steel. It is like the freezing of a pond. The first film of ice is scarcely perceptible; keep the water stirring and you will prevent the frost from hardening it; but once let it film over and remain quiet, the glaze thickens over the surface, and it thickens still, and at last it is so firm that a waggon might be drawn over the solid ice. So with conscience, it films over gradually, until at last it becomes hard and unfeeling, and is not crushed even with ponderous loads of iniquity. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Seven characteristics of Pharaoh
I. Ignorant (Exo_5:2).
II. Disobedient (Exo_5:2).
III. Unbelieving (Exo_5:9).
IV. Foolish (Exo_8:10).
V. Hardened (Exo_8:15).
VI. Privileged (Exo_9:1).
VII. Lost (Exo_14:26-28). (C. Inglis.)
Judicial hardness of heart inflicted by God
I. I shall give some general observations from the story; for in the story of Pharaoh we have the exact platform of a hard heart.
1. Between the hard heart and God there is an actual contest who shall have the better. The parties contesting are God and Pharaoh.
2. The sin that hardened Pharaoh, and put him upon this contest, was covetousness and interest of State.
3. This contest on Pharaohs part is managed with slightings and contempt of God; on Gods part, with mercy and condescension.
4. The first plague on Pharaohs heart is delusion. Moses worketh miracles, turneth Aarons rod into a serpent, rivers into blood, bringeth frogs, and the magicians still do the same; God permitteth these magical impostures, to leave Pharaoh in his wilful error.
5. God was not wanting to give Pharaoh sufficient means of conviction. The magicians turned their rods into serpents, but Aarons rod swallowed up their rods (Exo_7:12); which showeth Gods super-eminent power.
6. Observe, in one of the plagues Israel might have stolen away, whether Pharaoh would or no (Exo_10:22-23): but God had more miracles to be done. When He hath to do with a hard heart, He will not steal out of the field, but go away with honour and triumph. This was to be a public instance, and for intimation to the world (1Sa_6:6). The Philistines took warning by it, and it will be our condemnation if we do not.
7. In all these plagues I observe that Pharaoh now and then had his devout pangs. In a hard heart there may be some relentings, but no true repentance.
8. In process of time his hardness turns into rage and downright malice (Exo_10:28). Men first slight the truth, and then are hardened against it, and then come to persecute it. A river, when it hath been long kept up, swelleth and beareth down the bank and rampire; so do wicked men rage when their consciences cannot withstand the light, and their hearts will not yield to it.
9. At length Pharaoh is willing to let them go. After much ado God may get something from a hard heart; but it is no sooner given but retracted; like fire struck out of a flint, it is hardly got, and quickly gone (Hos_6:4).
10. The last news that we hear of hardening Pharaohs heart was a little before his destruction (Exo_14:8). Hardness of heart will not leave us till it hath wrought our full and final destruction. Never any were hardened but to their own ruin.
II. How God hardens.
1. Negatively.
(1) God infuseth no hardness and sin as he infuseth grace. All influences from heaven are sweet and good, not sour. Evil cannot come from the Father of lights. God enforceth no man to do evil.
(2) God doth not excite the inward propension to sin; that is Satans work.
2. Affirmatively.
(1) By desertion, taking away the restraints of grace, whereby He lets them loose to their own hearts (Psa_81:12). Man, in regard to his inclinations to sin, is like a greyhound held by a slip or collar; when the hare is in sight, take away the slip, and the greyhound runneth violently after the hare, according to his inbred disposition. Men are held in by the restraints of grace, which, when removed, they are left to their own swing, and run into all excess of riot.
(2) By tradition. He delivereth them up to the power of Satan, who worketh upon the corrupt nature of man, and hardeneth it; he stirreth him up as the executioner of Gods curse; as the evil spirit had leave to seduce Ahab (1Ki_22:21-22).
(3) There is an active providence which deposeth and propoundeth such objects as, meeting with a wicked heart, maketh it more hard. God maketh the best things the wicked enjoy to turn to the fall and destruction of those that have them. In what a sad case are wicked men left by God! Mercies corrupt them, and corrections enrage them; as unsavoury herbs, the more they are pounded, the more they stink. As all things work together for good to them that love God, so all things work for the worst to the wicked and impenitent. Providences and ordinances; we read of them that wrest the scriptures to their own destruction (2Pe_3:16). Some are condemned to worldly happiness; by ease and abundance of prosperity they are entangled: The prosperity of fools shall destroy them (Pro_1:32); as brute creatures, when in good plight, grow fierce and man-keen. If we will find the sin, God will find the occasion. (T. Manton, D. D.)
A hardened heart
God hardened Pharaohs heart by submitting to him those truths, arguments, and evidences which he ought to have accepted, but the rejection of which recoiled upon himself, and hardened the heart they did not convince. Everybody knows, in the present day, that if you listen, Sunday after Sunday, to great truths, and, Sunday after Sunday, reject them, you grow in your capacity of repulsion and ability to reject them, and the more hardened you become; and thus, the preaching of the gospel that was meant to melt, will be the occasion of hardening your heart--not because God hates you, but because you reject the gospel. The sun itself melts some substances, whilst, from the nature of the substances, it hardens others. You must not think that God stands in the way of your salvation. There is nothing between the greatest sinner and instant salvation, but his own unwillingness to lean on the Saviour, and be saved. (J. Cumming, D. D.)
The punishment of unbelief
The gospel is the savour of life unto life, and of death unto death, as one and the same savour is to some creatures refreshing, to others poisonous. But that the gospel is unto death, is not a part of its original intention, but a consequence of perverse unbelief; but when this takes place, that it is unto death comes as a punishment from God. Thus the expression hardening presupposes an earlier condition, when the heart was susceptible, but which ceased in consequence of the misuse, of Divine revelations and gifts. As Pharaoh hardens himself, so God hardens him at the same time. (Otto Von Gerlach, D. D.)
Heart-hardening
1. Both the expressions employed and the facts themselves lead to the conclusion, that hardening can only take place where there is a conflict between human freedom and Divine grace.
2. Again, it follows from the notion of hardening, that it can only result from a conscious and obstinate resistance to the will of God. It cannot take place where there is either ignorance or error. So long as a man has not been fully convinced that he is resisting the power and will of God, there remains a possibility that as soon as the conviction of this is brought home to his mind, his heart may be changed, and so long as there is still a possibility of his conversion, he cannot be said to be really hardened. The commencement of hardening is really hardening itself, for it contains the whole process of hardening potentially within itself. This furnishes us with two new criteria of hardening;
(1) before it commences, there is already in existence a certain moral condition, which only needs to be called into activity to become positive hardness; and
(2) as soon as it has actually entered upon the very first stage, the completion of the hardening may be regarded as certain. In what relation, then, does God stand to the hardening of the heart? Certainly His part is not limited to mere permission. Hengstenberg has proved that this is utterly inadmissible on doctrinal grounds; and an impartial examination of the Scriptural record will show that it is exegeti-cally inadmissible here. No. God desires the hardening, and, therefore, self-hardening is always at the same time hardening through God. The moral condition, which we have pointed out as the pre-requisite of hardening the soil from which it springs, is a mans own fault, the result of the free determination of his own will. But it is not without the co-operation of God that this moral condition becomes actual hardness. Up to a certain point the will of God operates on a man in the form of mercy drawing to himself, He desires his salvation; but henceforth the mercy is changed into judicial wrath, and desires his condemnation. The will of God (as the will of the Creator), when contrasted with the will of man (as the will of the creature), is from the outset irresistible and overpowering. But yet the wilt of man is able to resist the will of God, since God has created him for freedom, self-control, and responsibility; and thus when the human will has taken an ungodly direction and persists in it, the Divine will necessarily gives way. Hence, the human will is at the same time dependent on the Divine will, and independent of it. The solution of this contradiction is to be found in the fact, that the will of God is not an inflexibly rigid thing, but something living, and that it maintains a different bearing towards a mans obedience, from that which it assumes towards his stubborn resistance. In itself it never changes, whatever the circumstances may be; but in relation to a creature, endowed with freedom, the manifestation of this will differs according to the different attitudes assumed by the freedom of the creature. In itself it is exactly the same will which blesses the obedient and condemns the impenitent--there has been no change in its nature, but only in its operations--just as the heat of the sun which causes one tree to bloom is precisely the same as that by which another is withered. As there are two states of the human will--obedience and disobedience--so are there two corresponding states of the Divine will, mercy and wrath, and the twofold effects of these are a blessing and a curse. (J. H. Kurtz, D. D.)
Lessons
1. First and foremost, we learn the insufficiency of even the most astounding miracles to subdue the rebellious will, to change the heart, or to subject a man unto God. Our blessed Lord Himself has said of a somewhat analogous case, that men would not believe even though one rose from the dead. And His statement has been only too amply verified in the history of the world since His own resurrection. Religion is matter of the heart, and no intellectual conviction, without the agency of the Holy Spirit, affects the inmost springs of our lives.
2. A more terrible exhibition of the daring of human pride, the confidence of worldly power, and the deceitfulness of sin, than that presented by the history of this Pharaoh can scarcely be conceived. And yet the lesson seems to have been overlooked by too many! Not only sacred history, but possibly our own experience, may furnish instances of similar tendencies; and in the depths of his own soul each believer must have felt his danger in this respect, for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.
3. Lastly, resistance to God must assuredly end in fearful judgment. Each conviction suppressed, each admonition stifled, each loving offer rejected, tends towards increasing spiritual insensibility, and that in which it ends. It is wisdom and safety to watch for the blessed influences of Gods Spirit, and to throw open our hearts to the sunlight of His grace. (A. Edersheim, D. D.)
Providence penal
In accordance with a vow a Hindu once bandaged up his eyes so tightly that not a single ray of light could enter them. So he continued for years. At last, when his vow was completed, he threw off his bandage, but only to find that through disuse he had completely lost his sight. In one sense, he had deprived himself of sight; in another, God had deprived him of it. So it was with Pharaohs spiritual sight. Then comes the warning of consequences. It is very pleasant to go floating down the river toward the rapids. The current is so gentle that one can easily regain the bank. But remain in that current, in spite of all warnings, just one moment too long, and you and your boat will go over the falls. (S. S. Times.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain
CHAPTER VII.
THE HARDENING OF PHARAOH'S HEART.
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Exo_7:3-13.
When Moses received his commission, at the bush, words were spoken which are now repeated with more emphasis, and which have to be considered carefully. For probably no statement of Scripture has excited fiercer criticism, more exultation of enemies and perplexity of friends, than that the Lord said, "I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and he shall not let the people go," and that in consequence of this Divine act Pharaoh sinned and suffered. Just because the words are startling, it is unjust to quote them without careful examination of the context, both in the prediction and the fulfilment. When all is weighed, compared, and harmonised, it will at last be possible to draw a just conclusion. And although it may happen long before then, that the objector will charge us with special pleading, yet he will be the special pleader himself, if he seeks to hurry us, by prejudice or passion, to give a verdict which is based upon less than all the evidence, patiently weighed.
Let us in the first place find out how soon this dreadful process began; when was it that God fulfilled His threat, and hardened, in any sense whatever, the heart of Pharaoh? Did He step in at the beginning, and render the unhappy king incapable of weighing the remonstrances which He then performed the cruel mockery of addressing to him? Were these as insincere and futile as if one bade the avalanche to pause which his own act had started down the icy slopes? Was Pharaoh as little responsible for his pursuit of Israel as his horses were--being, like them, the blind agents of a superior force? We do not find it so. In the fifth chapter, when a demand is made, without any sustaining miracle, simply appealing to the conscience of the ruler, there is no mention of any such process, despite the insults with which Pharaoh then assails both the messengers and Jehovah Himself, Whom he knows not. In the seventh chapter there is clear evidence that the process is yet unaccomplished; for, speaking of an act still future, it declares, "I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt" (Exo_7:3). And this terrible act is not connected with the remonstrances and warnings of God, but entirely with the increasing pressure of the miracles.
The exact period is marked when the hand of doom closed upon the tyrant. It is not where the Authorised Version places it. When the magicians imitated the earlier signs of Moses, "his heart was strong," but the original does not bear out the assertion that at this time the Lord made it so by any judicial act of His (Exo_7:13). That only comes with the sixth plague; and the course of events may be traced, fairly well, by the help of the margin of the Revised Version.
After the plague of blood "Pharaoh's heart was strong" ("hardened"), and this is distinctly ascribed to his own action, because "he set his heart even to this" (Exo_7:22-23).
After the second plague, it was still he himself who "made his heart heavy" (Exo_8:15).
After the third plague the magicians warned him that the very finger of some god was upon him indeed: their rivalry, which hitherto might have been somewhat of a palliation for his obstinacy, was now ended; but yet "his heart was strong" (Exo_8:19).
Again, after the fourth plague he "made his heart heavy"; and it "was heavy" after the fifth plague, (Exo_8:32, Exo_9:7).
Only thenceforward comes the judicial infatuation upon him who has resolutely infatuated himself hitherto.
But when five warnings and penalties have spent their force in vain, when personal agony is inflicted in the plague of boils, and the magicians in particular cannot stand before him through their pain, would it have been proof of virtuous contrition if he had yielded then? If he had needed evidence, it was given to him long before. Submission now would have meant prudence, not penitence; and it was against prudence, not penitence, that he was hardened. Because he had resisted evidence, experience, and even the testimony of his own magicians, he was therefore stiffened against the grudging and unworthy concessions which must otherwise have been wrested from him, as a wild beast will turn and fly from fire. He was henceforth himself to become an evidence and a portent; and so "The Lord made strong the heart of Pharaoh, and he hearkened not unto them" (Exo_9:12). It was an awful doom, but it is not open to the attacks so often made upon it. It only means that for him the last five plagues were not disciplinary, but wholly penal.
Nay, it stops short of asserting even this: they might still have appealed to his reason; they were only not allowed to crush him by the agency of terror. Not once is it asserted that God hardened his heart against any nobler impulse than alarm, and desire to evade danger and death. We see clearly this meaning in the phrase, when it is applied to his army entering the Red Sea: "I will make strong the hearts of the Egyptians, and they shall go in" (Exo_14:17). It needed no greater moral turpitude to pursue the Hebrews over the sands than on the shore, but it certainly required more hardihood. But the unpursued departure which the good-will of Egypt refused, their common sense was not allowed to grant. Callousness was followed by infatuation, as even the pagans felt that whom God wills to ruin He first drives mad.
This explanation implies that to harden Pharaoh's heart was to inspire him, not with wickedness, but with nerve.
And as far as the original language helps us at all, it decidedly supports this view. Three different expressions have been unhappily rendered by the same English word, to harden; but they may be discriminated throughout the narrative in Exodus, by the margin of the Revised Version.
One word, which commonly appears without any marginal explanation, is the same which is employed elsewhere about "the cause which is too hard for" minor judges (Deu_1:17, cf. Deu_15:18, etc.). Now, this word is found (Exo_7:13) in the second threat that "I will harden Pharaoh's heart," and in the account which was to be given to posterity of how "Pharaoh hardened himself to let us go" (Exo_13:15). And it is said likewise of Sihon, king of Heshbon, that he "would not let us pass by him, for the Lord thy God hardened his spirit and made his heart strong" (Deu_2:30). But since it does not occur anywhere in all the narrative of what God actually did with Pharaoh, it is only just to interpret this phrase in the prediction by what we read elsewhere of the manner of its fulfilment.
The second word is explained in the margin as meaning to make strong. Already God had employed it when He said "I will make strong his heart" (Exo_4:21), and this is the term used of the first fulfilment of the menace, after the sixth plague (Exo_9:12). God is not said to interfere again after the seventh, which had few special terrors for Pharaoh himself; but from henceforth the expression "to make strong" alternates with the phrase "to make heavy." "Go in unto Pharaoh, for I have made heavy his heart and the heart of his servants, that I might show these My signs in the midst of them" (Exo_10:1).
It may be safely assumed that these two expressions cover between them all that is asserted of the judicial action of God in preventing a recoil of Pharaoh from his calamities. Now, the strengthening of a heart, however punitive and disastrous when a man's will is evil (just as the strengthening of his arm is disastrous then), has in itself no immorality inherent. It is a thing as often good as bad,--as when Israel and Joshua are exhorted to "Be strong and of a good courage" (Deu_31:6-7, Deu_31:23), and when the angel laid his hand upon Daniel and said, "Be strong, yea, be strong" (Dan_10:19). In these passages the phrase is identical with that which describes the process by which Pharaoh was prevented from cowering under the tremendous blows he had provoked.
The other expression is to make heavy or dull. Thus "the eyes of Israel were heavy with age" (Gen_48:10), and as we speak of a weight of honour, equally with the heaviness of a dull man, so we are twice commanded, "Make heavy (honour) thy father and thy mother"; and the Lord declares, "I will make Myself heavy (get Me honour) upon Pharaoh" (Deu_5:16, Exo_20:12, Exo_14:4, Exo_14:17-18). In these latter references it will be observed that the making "strong" the heart of Pharaoh, and the making "Myself heavy" are so connected as almost to show a design of indicating how far is either expression from conveying the notion of immorality, infused into a human heart by God. For one of the two phrases which have been thus interpreted is still applied to Pharaoh; but the other (and the more sinister, as we should think, when thus applied) is appropriated by God to Himself: He makes Himself heavy.
It is also a curious and significant coincidence that the same word was used of the burdens that were made heavy when first they claimed their freedom, which is now used of the treatment of the heart of their oppressor (Exo_5:9).
It appears, then, that the Lord is never said to debauch Pharaoh's heart, but only to strengthen it against prudence and to make it dull; that the words used do not express the infusion of evil passion, but the animation of a resolute courage, and the overclouding of a natural discernment; and, above all, that every one of the three words, to make hard, to make strong, and to make heavy, is employed to express Pharaoh's own treatment of himself, before it is applied to any work of God, as actually taking place already.
Nevertheless, there is a solemn warning for all time, in the assertion that what he at first chose, the vengeance of God afterward chose for him. For indeed the same process, working more slowly but on identical lines, is constantly seen in the hardening effect of vicious habit. The gambler did not mean to stake all his fortune upon one chance, when first he timidly laid down a paltry stake; nor has he changed his mind since then as to the imprudence of such a hazard. The drunkard, the murderer himself, is a man who at first did evil as far as he dared, and afterwards dared to do evil which he would once have shuddered at.
Let no man assume that prudence will always save him from ruinous excess, if respect for righteousness cannot withhold him from those first compliances which sap the will, destroy the restraint of self-respect, wear away the horror of great wickedness by familiarity with the same guilt in its lesser phases, and, above all, forfeit the enlightenment and calmness of judgment which come from the Holy Spirit of God, Who is the Spirit of wisdom and of counsel, and makes men to be of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord.
Let no man think that the fear of damnation will bring him to the mercy-seat at last, if the burden and gloom of being "condemned already" cannot now bend his will. "Even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up unto a reprobate mind" (Rom_1:28). "I gave them My statutes and showed them My judgments, which if a man do, he shall even live in them.... I gave them statutes that were not good, and judgments wherein they should not live" (Eze_20:11, Exo_20:25).
This is the inevitable law, the law of a confused and darkened judgment, a heart made heavy and ears shut, a conscience seared, an infatuated will kicking against the pricks, and heaping to itself wrath against the day of wrath. Wilful sin is always a challenge to God, and it is avenged by the obscuring of the lamp of God in the soul. Now, a part of His guiding light is prudence; and it is possible that men who will not be warned by the fear of injury to their conscience, such as they suppose that Pharaoh suffered, may be sobered by the danger of such derangement of their intellectual efficiency as really befel him.
In this sense men are, at last, impelled blindly to their fate (and this is a judicial act of God, although it comes in the course of nature), but first they launch themselves upon the slope which grows steeper at every downward step, until arrest is impossible.
On the other hand, every act of obedience helps to release the will from its entanglement, and to clear the judgment which has grown dull, anointing the eyes with eye-salve that they may see. Not in vain is the assertion of the bondage of the sinner and the glorious liberty of the children of God.
A second time, then, Moses presented himself before Pharaoh with his demands; and, as he had been forewarned, he was now challenged to give a sign in proof of his commission from a god.
And the demand was treated as reasonable; a sign was given, and a menacing one. The peaceable rod of the shepherd, a fit symbol of the meek man who bore it, became a serpent[10] before the king, as Moses was to become destructive to his realm. But when the wise men of Egypt and the enchanters were called, they did likewise; and although a marvel was added which incontestably declared the superior power of the Deity Whom Aaron represented, yet their rivalry sufficed to make strong the heart of Pharaoh, and he would not let the people go. The issue was now knit: the result would be more signal than if the quarrel were decided at one blow, and upon all the gods of Egypt the Lord would exercise vengeance.
What are we to think of the authentification of a religion by a sign? Beyond doubt, Jesus recognised this aspect of His own miracles, when He said, "If I had not done among them the works that none other man did, they had not had sin" (Joh_15:24). And yet there is reason in the objection that no amount of marvel ought to deflect by one hair's breadth our judgment of right and wrong, and the true appeal of a religion must be to our moral sense.
No miracle can prove that immoral teaching is sacred. But it can prove that it is supernatural. And this is precisely what Scripture always proclaims. In the New Testament, we are bidden to take heed, because a day will come, when false prophets shall work great signs and wonders, to deceive, if possible, even the elect (Mar_13:22). In the Old Testament, a prophet may seduce the people to worship other gods, by giving them a sign or a wonder which shall come to pass, but they must surely stone him: they must believe that his sign is only a temptation; and above whatever power enabled him to work it, they must recognise Jehovah proving them, and know that the supernatural has come to them in judgment, not in revelation (Deu_13:1-5).
Now, this is the true function of the miraculous. At the most, it cannot coerce the conscience, but only challenge it to consider and to judge.
A teacher of the purest morality may be only a human teacher still; nor is the Christian bound to follow into the desert every clamorous innovator, or to seek in the secret chamber every one who whispers a private doctrine to a few. We are entitled to expect that one who is commissioned directly from above will bear special credentials with him; but when these are exhibited, we must still judge whether the document they attest is forged. And this may explain to us why the magicians were allowed for awhile to perplex the judgment of Pharaoh whether by fraud, as we may well suppose, or by infernal help. It was enough that Moses should set his claims upon a level with those which Pharaoh reverenced: the king was then bound to weigh their relative merits in other and wholly different scales.
THE PLAGUES.
Exo_7:14.
There are many aspects in which the plagues of Egypt may be contemplated.
We may think of them as ranging through all nature, and asserting the mastery of the Lord alike over the river on which depended the prosperity of the realm, over the minute pests which can make life more wretched than larger and more conspicuous ills (the frogs of the water, the reptiles that disgrace humanity, and the insects that infest the air), over the bodies of animals stricken with murrain, and those of man tortured with boils, over hail in the cloud and blight in the crop, over the breeze that bears the locust and the sun that grows dark at noon, and at last over the secret springs of human life itself.
No pantheistic creed (and the Egyptian religion struck its roots deep into pantheistic speculation) could thus completely exalt God above nature, as a superior and controlling Power, not one with the mighty wheels of the universe, of which the height is terrible, but, as Ezekiel saw Him, enthroned above them in the likeness of fire, and yet in the likeness of humanity.
No idolatrous creed, however powerful be its conception of one god of the hills and another of the valleys, could thus represent a single deity as wielding all the arrows of adverse fortune, able to assail us from earth and sky and water, formidable alike in the least things and in the greatest. And presently the demonstration is completed, when at His bidding the tempest heaps up the sea, and at His frown the waters return to their strength again.
And no philosophic theory condescends to bring the Ideal, the Absolute, and the Unconditioned, into such close and intimate connection with the frog-spawn of the ditch and the blain upon the tortured skin.
We may, with ample warrant from Scripture, make the controversial application still more simple and direct, and think of the plagues as wreaking vengeance, for the worship they had usurped and the cruelties they had sanctioned, upon all the gods of Egypt, which are conceived of for the moment as realities, and as humbled, if not in fact, yet in the sympathies of priest and worshipper (Exo_12:12).
Then we shall see the domain of each impostor invaded, and every vaunted power to inflict evil or to remove it triumphantly wielded by Him Who proves His equal mastery over all, and thus we shall find here the justification of that still bolder personification which says, "Worship Him, all ye gods" (Psa_97:7).
The Nile had a sacred name, and was adored as "Hapee, or Hapee Mu, the Abyss, or the Abyss of Waters, or the Hidden," and the king was frequently portrayed standing between two images of this god, his throne wreathed with water-lilies. The second plague struck at the goddess HEKT, whose head was that of a frog. The uncleanness of the third plague deranged the whole system of Egyptian worship, with its punctilious and elaborate purifications. In every one there is either a presiding divinity attacked, or a blow dealt upon the priesthood or the sacrifice, or a sphere invaded which some deity should have protected, until the sun himself is darkened, the great god RA, to whom their sacred city was dedicated, and whose name is incorporated in the title of his earthly representative, the Pharaoh or PH-RA. Then at last, after all these premonitions, the deadly blow struck home.
Or we may think of the plagues as retributive, and then we shall discover a wonderful suitability in them all. It was a direful omen that the first should afflict the nation through the river, into which, eighty years before, the Hebrew babes had been cast to die, which now rolled bloody, and seemed to disclose its dead. It was fit that the luxurious homes of the oppressors should become squalid as the huts of the slaves they trampled; that their flesh should suffer torture worse than that of the whips they used so unmercifully; that the loss of crops and cattle should bring home to them the hardships of the poor who toiled for their magnificence; that physical darkness should appal them with vague terrors and undefined apprehensions, such as ever haunt the bosom of the oppressed, whose life is the sport of a caprice; and at last that the aged should learn by the deathbed of the prop and pride of their declining feebleness, and the younger feel beside the cradle of the first blossom and fruit of love, all the agony of such bereavement as they had wantonly inflicted on the innocent.
And since the fear of disadvantage in war had prompted the murder of the Hebrew children, it was right that the retributive blow should destroy first their children and then their men of war.
When we come to examine the plagues in detail, we discover that it is no arbitrary fancy which divides them into three triplets, leading up to the appalling tenth. Thus the first, fourth, and seventh, each of which begins a triplet, are introduced by a command to Moses to warn Pharaoh "in the morning" (Exo_7:15), or "early in the morning" (Exo_8:20, Exo_9:13). The third, sixth and ninth, on the contrary, are inflicted without any warning whatever. The story of the third plague closes with the defeat of the magicians, the sixth with their inability to stand before the king, and the ninth with the final rupture, when Moses declares, "Thou shalt see my face no more" (Exo_8:19, Exo_9:11, Exo_10:29).
The first three are plagues of loathsomeness--blood-stained waters, frogs and lice; the next three bring actual pain and loss with them--stinging flies, murrain which afflicts the beasts, and boils upon all the Egyptians; and the third triplet are "nature-plagues"--hail, locusts and darkness. It is only after the first three plagues that the immunity of Israel is mentioned; and after the next three, when the hail is threatened, instructions are first given by which those Egyptians who fear Jehovah may also obtain protection. Thus, in orderly and solemn procession, marched the avengers of God upon the guilty land.
It has been observed, concerning the miracles of Jesus, that not one of them was creative, and that, whenever it was possible, He wrought by the use of material naturally provided. The waterpots should be filled; the five barley-loaves should be sought out; the nets should be let down for a draught; and the blind man should have his eyes anointed, and go wash in the Pool of Siloam.
And it is easily seen that such miracles were a more natural expression of His errand, which was to repair and purify the existing system of things, and to remove our moral disease and dearth, than any exercise of creative power would have been, however it might have dazzled the spectators.
Now, the same remark applies to the miracles of Moses, to the coming of God in judgment, as to His revelation of Himself in grace; and therefore we need not be surprised to hear that natural phenomena are not unknown which offer a sort of dim hint or foreshadowing of the terrible ten plagues. Either cryptogamic vegetation or the earth borne down from upper Africa is still seen to redden the river, usually dark, but not so as to destroy the fish. Frogs and vermin and stinging insects are the pest of modern travellers. Cattle plagues make ravage there, and hideous diseases of the skin are still as common as when the Lord promised to reward the obedience of Israel to sanitary law by putting upon them none of "the evil diseases of Egypt" which they knew (Deu_7:15).[11] The locust is still dreaded. But some of the other visitations were more direful because not only their intensity but even their existence was almost unprecedented: hail in Egypt was only not quite unknown; and such veiling of the sun as occurs for a few minutes during the storms of sand in the desert ought scarcely to be quoted as even a suggestion of the prolonged horror of the ninth plague.
Now, this accords exactly with the moral effect which was to be produced. The rescued people were not to think of God as one who strikes down into nature from outside, with strange and unwonted powers, superseding utterly its familiar forces. They were to think of Him as the Author of all; and of the common troubles of mortality as being indeed the effects of sin, yet ever controlled and governed by Him, let loose at His will, and capable of mounting to unimagined heights if His restraints be removed from them. By the east wind He brought the locusts, and removed them by the south-west wind. By a storm He divided the sea. The common things of life are in His hands, often for tremendous results. And this is one of the chief lessons of the narrative for us. Let the mind range over the list of the nine which stop short of absolute destruction, and reflect upon the vital importance of immunities for which we are scarcely grateful.
The purity of water is now felt to be among the foremost necessities of life. It is one which asks nothing from us except to refrain from polluting what comes from heaven so limpid. And yet we are half satisfied to go on habitually inflicting on ourselves a plague more foul and noxious than any occasional turning of our rivers into blood. The two plagues which dealt with minute forms of life may well remind us of the vast part which we are now aware that the smallest organisms play in the economy of life, as the agents of the Creator. Who gives thanks aright for the cheap blessing of the unstained light of heaven?
But we are insensible to the every-day teaching of this narrative: we turn our rivers into fluid poison; we spread all around us deleterious influences, which breed by minute forms of parasitical life the germs of cruel disease; we load the atmosphere with fumes which slay our cattle with periodical distempers, and are deadlier to vegetation than the hail-storm or the locust; we charge it with carbon so dense that multitudes have forgotten that the sky is blue, and on our Metropolis comes down at frequent intervals the darkness of the ninth plague, and all the time we fail to see that God, Who enacts and enforces every law of nature, does really plague us whenever these outraged laws avenge themselves. The miraculous use of nature in special emergencies is such as to show the Hand which regularly wields its powers.
At the same time there is no more excuse for the rationalism which would reduce the calamities of Egypt to a coincidence, than for explaining away the manna which fed a nation during its wanderings by the drug which is gathered, in scanty morsels, upon the acacia tree. The awful severity of the judgments, the series which they formed, their advent and removal at the menace and the prayer of Moses, are considerations which make such a theory absurd. The older scepticism, which supposed Moses to have taken advantage of some epidemic, to have learned in the wilderness the fords of the Red Sea,[12] to have discovered water, when the caravan was perishing of thirst, by his knowledge of the habits of wild beasts, and finally to have dazzled the nation at Horeb with some kind of fireworks, is itself almost a miracle in its violation of the laws of mind. The concurrence of countless favourable accidents and strange resources of leadership is like the chance arrangement of a printer's type to make a poem.
There is a common notion that the ten plagues followed each other with breathless speed, and were completed within a few weeks. But nothing in the narrative asserts or even hints this, and what we do know is in the opposite direction. The seventh plague was wrought in February, for the barley was in the ear and the flax in blossom (Exo_9:31); and the feast of passover was kept on the fourteenth day of the month Abib, so that the destruction of the firstborn was in the middle of April, and there was an interval of about two months between the last four plagues. Now, the same interval throughout would bring back the first plague to September or October. But the natural discoloration of the river, mentioned above, is in the middle of the year, when the river begins to rise; and this, it may possibly be inferred, is the natural period at which to fix the first plague. They would then range over a period of about nine months. During the interval between them, the promises and treacheries of the king excited alternate hope and rage in Israel; the scribes of their own race (once the vassals of their tyrants, but already estranged by their own oppression) began to take rank as officers among the Jews, and to exhibit the rudimentary promise of national order and government; and the growing fears of their enemies fostered that triumphant sense of mastery, out of which national hope and pride are born. When the time came for their departure, it was possible to transmit orders throughout all their tribes, and they came out of Egypt by their armies, which would have been utterly impossible a few months before. It was with them, as it is with every man that breathes: the delay of God's grace was itself a grace; and the slowly ripening fruit grew mellower than if it had been forced into a speedier maturity.
THE FIRST PLAGUE.
Exo_7:14-25.
It was perhaps when the Nile was rising, and Pharaoh was coming to the bank, in pomp of state, to make official observation of its progress, on which the welfare of the kingdom depended, and to do homage before its divinity, that the messenger of another Deity confronted him, with a formal declaration of war. It was a strange contrast. The wicked was in great prosperity, neither was he plagued like another man. Upon his head, if this were Menephtah, was the golden symbol of his own divinity. Around him was an obsequious court. And yet there was moving in his heart some unconfessed sense of awe, when confronted once more by the aged shepherd and his brother, who had claimed a commission from above, and had certainly met his challenge, and made a short end of the rival snakes of his own seers. Once he had asked "Who is Jehovah?" and had sent His ambassadors to their tasks again with insult. But now he needs to harden his heart, in order not to yield to their strange and persistent demands. He remembers how they had spoken to him already, "Thus saith the Lord, Israel is My son, My firstborn, and I have said unto thee, Let My son go that he may serve Me; and thou hast refused to let him go: behold, I will slay thy son, thy firstborn" (Exo_4:22, R.V.). Did this awful warning come back to him, when the worn, solemn and inflexible face of Moses again met him? Did he divine the connection between this ultimate penalty and what is now announced--the turning of the pride and refreshment of Egypt into blood? Or was it partly because each plague, however dire, seemed to fall short of the tremendous threat, that he hoped to find the power of Moses more limited than his warnings? "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil."
And might he, at the last, be hardened to pursue the people because, by their own showing, the keenest arrow in their quiver was now sped? Whatever his feelings were, it is certain that the brothers come and go, and inflict their plagues unrestrained; that no insult or violence is attempted, and we can see the truth of the words "I have made thee as a god unto Pharaoh."
It is in clear allusion to his vaunt, "I know not Jehovah," that Moses and Aaron now repeat the demand for release, and say, "Hitherto thou hast not hearkened: behold, in this thou shalt know that I am Jehovah." What follows, when attentively read, makes it plain that the blow falls upon "the waters that are in the river," and those that have been drawn from it into canals for artificial irrigation, into reservoirs like the lakes Moeris and Mareotis, and even into vessels for immediate use.
But we are expressly told that it was possible to obtain water by digging wells. Therefore there is no point whatever in the cavil that if Moses turned all the water into blood, none was left for the operations of the magicians. But no comparison whatever existed between their petty performances and the immense and direful work of vengeance which rolled down a putrid mass of corrupt waters through the land, spoiling the great stores of water by which later drought should be relieved, destroying the fish, that important part of the food of the nation, for which Israel afterwards lusted, and sowing the seeds of other plagues, by the pollution of that balmy air in which so many of our own suffering countrymen still find relief, but which was now infected and loathsome. Even Pharaoh must have felt that his gods might do better for him than this, and that it would be much more to the point just then to undo his plague than to increase it--to turn back the blood to water than contribute a few drops more. If this was their best effort, he was already helpless in the hand of his assailant, who, by the uplifting of his rod, and the bold avowal in advance of responsibility for so great a calamity, had formally defied him. But Pharaoh dared not accept the challenge: it was effort enough for him to "set his heart" against surrender to the portent, and he sullenly turned back into the palace from the spot where Moses met him.
Two details remain to be observed. The seven days which were fulfilled do not measure the interval between this plague and the next, but the period of its infliction. And this information is not given us concerning any other, until we come to the three days of darkness.[13] It is important here, because the natural discoloration lasts for three weeks, and mythical tendencies would rather exaggerate than shorten the term.
Again, it is contended that only with the fourth plague did Israel begin to enjoy exemption, because then only is their immunity recorded.[14] But it is strange indeed to suppose that they were involved in punishments the design of which was their relief; and in fact their exemption is implied in the statement that the Egyptians (only) had to dig wells. It is to be understood that large stores of water would everywhere be laid up, because the Nile water, however delicious, carries much sediment which must be allowed to settle down. They would not be forced, therefore, to fall back upon the polluted common sources for a supply.
And now let us contrast this miracle with the first of the New Testament. One spoiled the happiness of the guilty; the other rescued the overclouded joy of the friends of Jesus, not turning water into blood but into wine; declaring at one stroke all the difference between the law which worketh wrath, and the gospel of the grace of God. The first was impressive and public, as the revelation upon Sinai; the other appealed far more to the heart than to the imagination, and befitted well the kingdom that was not with observation, the King who grew up like a tender plant, and did not strive nor cry, the redeeming influence which was at first unobtrusive as the least of all seeds, but became a tree, and the shelter of the fowls of heaven.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] It is true that the word means any large reptile, as when "God created great whales"; but doubtless our English version is correct. It was certainly a serpent which he had recently fled from, and then taken by the tail (iv. 4). And unless we suppose the magicians to have wrought a genuine miracle, no other creature can be suggested, equally convenient for their sleight of hand.
[11] To this day, amid squalid surroundings for which nominal Christians are responsible, the immunity of the Jewish race from such suffering is conspicuous, and at least a remarkable coincidence.
[12] But indeed this notion is not yet dead. "A high wind left the shallow sea so low that it became possible to ford it. Moses eagerly accepted the suggestion, and made the venture with success," etc.--Wellhausen, "Israel," in Encyc. Brit.
[13] x. 22. The accurate Kalisch is therefore wrong in speaking of "The duration of the first plague, a statement not made with regard to any of the subsequent inflictions."--Commentary in loco.
[14] Speaker's Commentary, i., p. 242; Kalisch on Exo_8:18; Kiel, i. 484.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain Exo_7:3. I will harden Pharaoh’s heart.]—Elsewhere also is the…
CRITICAL NOTES.—
Exo_7:3. I will harden Pharaoh’s heart.]—Elsewhere also is the act of hardening Pharaoh’s heart attributed to Jehovah, as in Exo_4:21; Exo_9:12; Exo_10:1; Exo_10:23; Exo_10:27; Exo_11:1; Exo_19:4; Exo_19:8; so that although Pharaoh is in several places said to have hardened his own heart—e.g., in Exo_8:15; Exo_8:32; Exo_9:34; yet we cannot well deny the existence of a difficulty. The ground of the difficulty consists in the glorious truth of the absolute holiness of God, in virtue of which he so exclusively loves what is right and good, and so sincerely and intensely hates all evil, that he separates himself from sin, wholly, everywhere, always; frowns upon it, forbids it, denounces it; is not the author of it, and never can be. His highest praise, with those who are nearest to Him and know Him best, is that He is holy—thrice holy. Hence the difficulty created by any statement, coming to us as authoritative, which seems to attribute the causation of sin to HIM. Our best way out of the difficulty, as it presents itself in this account of Pharaoh, may be said to depend upon the settlement of a single question—Was the hardening process essentially sinful on Pharaoh’s part? If not, Jehovah may have positively and directly caused it; if it was, then only in an accommodated, and, in fact, a figurative, sense, can Jehovah have effected it. 1) We can conceive of a hardening of heart which involves no sin in its subject—as when a surgeon hardens his heart against such an influx of feeling as would unfit him for his stern but righteous and even benevolent duties. Was the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart of this nature! Did it consist solely in such an accession of firmness, of courage, as—without being in itself bad—allowed him to act out to the full the badness that was otherwise in him, such as his despotic cruelty, his self glorification, etc.? If we could thus conclude, the difficulty would be at an end. We could then say: The badness was Pharaoh’s own; but the courage to act it out—a quality morally indifferent—was directly given him by God for ends high and holy, which he would secure through means of the fully developed wickedness of this wicked king. Something may be said in favour of this solution. a.) As truly as life is from God, so truly are health, strength, courage from him. b.) Many evil purposes fail of accomplishment solely through failure of life, of health, of physical courage to go through with them. A man may in heart be a murderer, and yet simply because he turns coward he may not take away life. Had Pharaoh thus failed, Israel would have more easily escaped, and the power of God been less signally displayed. But God was not minded that the king should so fail, and, therefore, gave him courage to work out all the evil that was in him. c.) The Hebrew terms employed to express the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart denote, primarily, physical qualities: as chá-zaq, “hold fast,” “be firm,” (“strong,” 2Sa_10:11, “strengthened,” Jdg_3:12, “be of good courage,” 2Sa_10:12); kâ-bhêdh, “heavy,” (1Sa_4:18; 1Sa_5:11; Exo_17:12; “slow,” Exo_4:10); qá-shah, “dry, hard, harsh,” (“roughly,” Gen_44:7; Gen_44:30, “sorrowful,” 1Sa_1:15). These considerations appear to us to have so much weight that they ought in no case to be overlooked, even although they may need to be supplemented. Nevertheless, we are free to confess an absence of entire confidence in them. Were “firmness” of heart, in the sense of “courage” all, no more might require to be said; but it would be rather venturous to affirm that, in biblical style, either “heaviness” or “harshness” of HEART can be taken as free from moral evil. Hence it may be well to ask
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(2.) Whether the divine causation may not to some extent have been indirect and figurative—amounting to permission and occasion, rather than positive cause? And, in point of fact, this cannot be denied. The respite which Jehovah gave to the Egyptian king became an OCCASION of the further hardening of the heart of the latter. (See ch. Exo_8:15; Exo_9:34). Here we get a glimpse into the divine procedure much fitted to satisfy. Having struck a blow, Jehovah pauses, he does so again and again. Is this unworthy of him? Yet Pharaoh makes these divine pauses an occasion of deeper sin. We cannot blame God for this; and yet had blow followed blow in quicker succession Pharaoh might have sooner yielded. Just here then Jehovah shews His holy freedom. He does as it pleases Him; never pleasing to do wrong, yet pleasing, for reasons which as yet we may not always comprehend, to permit the human wrong that He may overrule it for His own glory and His people’s weal. We conclude then that only thus did God harden Pharaoh’s heart: He gave him the physical courage to do his worst; and He gave him—not the disposition but—the permission, the opportunity, the occasion, in the process of reaching his worst, to turn good into evil, and add sin to sin. This Is what God DID; this In clear foresight of how Pharaoh would act, is what God MEANT TO DO; this is what God, for Moses’ guidance FORETOLD a His intention.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Exo_7:3-7
MORAL OBSTINACY; OR, PHARAOH THE TYPE OF AN IMPENITENT SINNER
I. That the impenitent, like Pharaoh, reject the Divine command. Moses and Aaron had made known to the Egyptian king the will and command of God in reference to the freedom of Israel. But he refused to comply with that command. In this respect he is a type of the impenitent sinner. God has revealed his will to men in His book. He has commanded men everywhere to repent, and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. This the sinner refuses to do. He continues in sin. Heeds not the law of God.
1. Pharaoh rejected the Divine command with contempt. He inquired, “Who is the Lord that I should obey Him?” So many impenitent sinners contemptuously reject the Divine claim to their life and service. They intimate that they have no wish to enter upon the gloom of a religious life. They declare themselves happier amid the sport and passion of the world. They are in good social position, and do not wish to think of anything beyond the present. They treat the messengers of God who come to teach them better, with scorn, and reject all their offers of salvation. How often have we treated the spirit of God with contempt.
2. Pharaoh rejected the Divine command in a spirit of proud self-sufficiency. He thought of himself as the King of Egypt, as having at command vast resources of men and money, of luxury and pleasure. He imagined himself able to defy Jehovah, and that no one would be able to injure him. And, in this respect, Pharaoh is a type of many impenitent sinners. They pride themselves on their fancied security. They think that their temporal prosperity will shield them from future terror. Pride haughtily dismisses the conviction of the Holy Spirit.
II. That the impenitent, like Pharaoh, though rejecting the Divine commands become obstinate in disposition. We find throughout this narrative that the longer Pharaoh resisted the Divine command, the more determined became his resistance. And so is it with the impenitent sinner. He rejects the command of the scriptures, the ministry of the pulpit, the solicitations of friends, and the strivings of the Divine Spirit, and every time he does so, he becomes more obdurate in soul. He gets less susceptible of heavenly influence, until ultimately he is given up to the hardness of his heart. This is a terrible condition to be in.
1. An obstinate disposition is opposed to the good of the soul itself. It prevents the shining of heavenly light upon the soul. It renders cold the emotions that once were fervent. It destroys all the vitality of the moral nature. Obstinacy will ruin the soul eternally.
2. An obstinate disposition is antagonistic to the purposes of redemption. The object of redemption, of the Church and all its agencies, is the salvation of the souls of men. This is frustrated by moral obstinacy. Men say that they have not the power to be saved. The hinderance is not in any heavenly decree, it is in their own unwillingness to give up sin.
3. An obstinate disposition is insensible to all the appeals of heaven.
III. That the impenitent, like Pharaoh, obstinate in disposition, invite the Divine anger.
1. This anger is manifested in the exhibition of Divine power. “That I may lay my hand upon Egypt.” When God lays his hand upon a nation who can predict the result. The plagues of Egypt are but the sequel of this. The hand that created and upholds the world, can inflict terrible woe upon the impenitent.
2. This anger is manifested by causing the tyrant to liberate his slaves. Pharaoh now loses all his profitable slaves. This would be a terrible blow to his covetous spirit. He would have to acknowledge Jehovah as conqueror. The impenitent have ultimately to give up their wicked pleasures.
3. This anger is manifested by the destruction of the king and his army. Pharaoh and his hosts were drowned in the raging billows of the Red Sea. So the finally impenitent will be lost in the eternal fires of hell. LESSONS:—
1. That God sends many ministries to invite us to obey his commands.
2. That our truest wisdom and safety consist in a penitent condition of soul.
3. That the final doom of impenitence is the abiding wrath of God.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Exo_7:3. A hardened heart:—
1. Permitted by God.
2. Effected by sin.
3. Cruel to the slave.
4. Unmoved by signs.
5. Smitten by heaven.
God instructs Moses and Aaron as to what they shall do; but He adds, “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart.” I explained to you on a former occasion, that God is often said in Scripture to do things directly, when the context shows that He did them indirectly. To be the occasion of a thing, is totally distinct from being the cause of a thing. I build an hospital for the cure of the sick; but in the course of its erection, a scaffolding gives way, and a workman is killed. The hospital was not the cause, but the occasion of that death Jesus came into the World, not to send peace, but a sword. He came directly to send peace; but He came indirectly and incidentally to send war. The gospel is not the cause of war, but the occasion of it. And so when God said, “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart,” it implied, “I will show such signs, and bring to his conscience such motives that if he is not moved, melted, and subdued, the reaction of that influence will end in his being hardened more and more.” Nothing can be so absurd as to say that God showed to Pharaoh reasons for repentance, which He prevented him by physical power from accepting.—Dr. Cumming.
Signs:—
1. Multipled.
2. Penal.
3. Rejected.
Exo_7:4. “But Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you:”—
1. Because he is proud, and will reject a lowly shepherd.
2. Because he is cruel, and will not free the slave.
3. Because he is obstinate, and will not yield to Spiritual influence.
God knows those who will not hearken to His word:—
1. To tell His servants about them.
2. To send judgments upon them.
3. To entice them by loving discipline.
“My people:”—
1. Because God knows them.
2. Because He saves them.
3. Because He redeems them.
4. Because He guards their welfare.
“My people:”—
1. Therefore He will hear their prayers.
2. Therefore He will relieve their sorrows.
3. Therefore He will free their souls.
4. Therefore He will vindicate their rights.
A KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
Exo_7:5. “And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch forth mine hand upon Egypt.”
I. That the worst of men will one day have to recognize the reality of the Divine Existence.—“And the Egyptians shall know,” &c.—
1. Men of bad moral character shall know this. Men whose lives are now spent in utter disregard of the Divine Being shall one day awake to the fact of His awful existence. This awakening will be the end of their pleasure; the commencement of a new and unalterable life. In hell the wicked will know that God is the Lord.
2. Men of sceptical dispositions shall know this. Some men profess to disbelieve in the existence of God. They call it a philosophical absurdity. They say in their hearts that there is not. The wish is father to the thought. In another life the sceptic will know that God is the Lord.
II. That they will be brought to a recognition of the Divine Existence by severe judgments.—
1. Some men will listen to the voice of reason. The Egyptians would not. They would not learn the reality of the Divine existence from the mouth of Moses. They would not be gently led to behold the Great Parent of the universe. They are like men to-day. They will not give heed to the messengers that proclaim the Being of God. They reject them. They neglect the Bible. They interpret nature on atheistic principles.
2. Such will learn the existence of God by judgment. Some men will never learn anything while life goes well with them; they will only study heavenly themes when they are in sorrow and perplexity. They will one day be visited with overwhelming judgments, which will demonstrate the existence, and moral government of God, but which will be no time for repentance.
III. That the existence of God is a guarantee for the safety of the good. “And bring the children from among them.” As truly as God exists shall all good men be finally brought out from moral and temporal bondage into the Canaan of peace and quiet.
OBEDIENCE TO GOD
Exo_7:6.
I. It must be rendered by the servants of God. “Moses and Aaron.” All men who are called to moral service by God must obey Him:
1. Because He gives them their commands.
2. Became He gives them the power to do so.
3. Because He rewards obedience.
II. It must be co-extensive with their mission.
1. It must be entire.
2. It must be cheerful.
3. It must be holy.
III. It will render their mission effective.
1. Because it will lead to the best mode of service.
2. Because God will delight to honour it. The Divine commands:—
1. Rightfully given.
2. To be faithfully executed.
3. To be diligently obeyed. To be supremely regarded.
Exo_7:7. The bearing of a man’s age upon his work.
We are here informed that Moses was at this time eighty years of age, and that Aaron was eighty-three. Their ages would have an important bearing toward the work of these two men.
I. Their ages would indicate that they were not likely to be misled by the enthusiasm of youth. The Israelites would probably not have placed much confidence in the statement of a very young man had he gone to them with the message of their freedom. They would have doubted his word. They would have imagined him a wild dreamer, or a mistaken enthusiast. Hence the maturer years of Moses and Aaron would prevent such an interpretation being put upon their prophecy. The world is slow to take young men into its confidence. It soon smiles at their visions, and laughs at their enthusiastic hopes.
II. Their ages would be likely to command the respect of those with whom they had to do. Had they been more youthful they would have awakened the merriment of Pharaoh. Egypt’s king would not have given up his slaves at the request of two boys. Heaven is always judicious in the selection of its messengers. The Church ought to be likewise. It should look even for incidental qualifications, as well as the primary and the moral. Youthhood would not have had much influence with the slaves of Israel. The world wants men of tried energy and long experience to achieve its moral emancipation; men in whom hot passion has calmed into a settled force.
III. Their ages would be an incentive to fidelity, as they had spent the younger part of life, and would be forcefully reminded of the future. After men pass the meridian of life, they begin to regard life as a stern and solemn reality, if they have any pious sentiment within them at all. The past has gone like a dream. The brief future is before them. They wish it to be characterized by fidelity.
At this time, we are told, Moses was eighty years of age, and Aaron eighty-three. This was not old age. Moses lived to be one hundred and twenty. He was, therefore, now just at the close of the meridian of life. I mentioned also before, that there is no evidence in the Bible that man’s life has been shortened since Moses’ death; and that, as far as we can gather from Divine interposition, one hundred and twenty is the proper age of man. The 90th Psalm describes an abnormal state of life in the wilderness. There Moses himself complains that their life was shortened to threescore and ten, by the existing severity and pressure of their circumstances, not by the ordinance of God. And it remains a problem, whether, if men were not less oppressed by anxious cares and thoughts, ambition, vainglory, and pride, and wrath, they would not live to a much greater age; and whether it be not true, that in proportion as Christianity gains in its sanctifying influence on the soul, the whole social and physical system will but be correspondingly elevated and ameliorated also.—Dr. Cumming.
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY THE
REV. WM. ADAMSON
Insensibility! Exo_7:3. “As hard as a stone,” says the adage.—Yet the hardest stones submit to be smoothed and rounded under the soft friction of water. Ask the myriads of stones on the seashore what has become of all their angles, once so sharp, and of the roughness and uncouthness of their whole appearance.—“Water wrought with us, and none resisted.”—The very stones cry out against the obstinate disposition, which is insensible to all the appeals of heaven.
You may as well bid the mountain pines
To wag their high tops, and make no noise,
When they are fretted by the gusts of heaven,
As seek to soften that sinner’s heart.
—Shakespeare.
Hardened Heart! Exo_7:3. A scholar once inquired of his teacher whether it was not wicked to punish Pharaoh and Judas for what God knew they would do. A bright thought struck the perplexed teacher: “When you were born, your papa looked at you and loved you, but he knew that bye and bye you would sin, and have to be punished: he did not make you naughty, but he knew that you would be.”—God did not make Pharaoh sin, but he had to punish him for it. From righteous retribution for obdurate impenitence there is no escape.
Aye! when thou hast drained a swallow’s milk, and
Seen rocks bear olive nuts, the sand pomegranates yield:
A harder task to try thy vaunted force remains—
To shield a wicked man from retributions pains.—Oriental.
Remorse! Exo_7:4. In the early part of this century Pomare reigned as king in the islands of Tahiti and Eimeo. Many of his subjects were enraged at his recognition of Christ. Among them was a man called Upufara, who was regarded as the chief of the kings foes. He had often heard of the true God, but would not believe in him. One night he had a dream, in which he saw an immense oven with a very great fire, and in the midst of it a large fish, twisting itself in agony, and trying to get out, yet though in the fire, not consumed but still living. Such will be the guilty conscience,—the fires of remorse will scorch it and make it writhe in pang and anguish, without destroying its sensitiveness. In another life, and to his cost, the sceptic will know that God is the Lord, as scorched within
The fury round his torrid temples flaps
Her fiery wings, and breathes upon his lips
And parched tongue the withered blasts of hell
—Pollah.
Visitations! Exo_7:5. A man was confined in a cell with seven windows, and the only furniture a pallet of straw. Each morning he found a loaf of bread and a jug of water by his side. He was relieved from the fear of starvation; but when his eyes sought the windows, he counted one less. The fearful truth flashed upon him that the floor and wall of his cell were being pressed together slowly and surely, and that he would be crushed to death. The sinner like Pharaoh is inclosed in the earth-cell of impenitency, and the hour approaches when his last hope will be crushed and mangled in the ever-narrowing entombment. He will then learn how real is the moral government of God—only too late to repent—
As when a fire has raged, the smokes that rise
In useless lamentations drape the skies.
—Alger.
Obedient Service! Exo_7:6. In evil times it fares best with them that are most careful about duty, least concerned about safety. Many a general, whilst discharging his duty in the battle, has borne a charmed life. Moses was preserved whilst pursuing the path of Providence. The author of “From Dawn to Dark in Italy,” contrasts the constant harassing perils of Montalto, a timid, compromising Lutheran, with the freedom from persecution of Old Clarice, a fruitseller at Naples. The one was continually in tumult and danger—the other kept on the even course of her Christian profession in the very jaws of the lion for thirty years. Many a hunted Protestant found shelter in her house excavated from the precipitous rock. Many a wave of bitter papal persecution Swept over Naples, but old Clarice, who never sheltered herself beneath any compliances, seemed to prosper in her very fearlessness. The bold policy is not always the worst, and Moses was no loser by the unflinching courage with which he confronted Pharaoh in obedience to the Divine command. Luther lived, whilst-some who temporized were lost. And of John Knox who lived to a good old age, it was said, “Here lies one who never feared the face of man.”
So we would bravely live for Thee,
And Thy bold and faithful servants, Saviour,
we would henceforth be.
—Havegal.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 harden Pharaoh's heart
harden Pharaoh's heart
Here "heart" refers to Pharaoh. His stubborn attitude is spoken of as if his heart was hard. See how you translated this in Exodus 4:21. AT: "will cause Pharaoh to be stubborn" (See: Synecdoche and Metaphor)
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many signs ... many wonders
The words "signs" and "wonders" mean basically the same thing. God uses them to emphasize the greatness of what he will do in Egypt. (See: Doublet)
put my hand on ... reach out with my hand on
The words "my hand" represent God's great power. AT: "use my power against ... show my powerful acts against" (See: Metonymy)
translationWords
Pharaoh
heart
sign
miracle
Egypt
people of God
Israel
punish
know
Yahweh
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 7:3 The Lord would use miraculous signs and wonders…
7:3 The Lord would use miraculous signs and wonders to convince Pharaoh, just as he had promised to use signs to convince the Israelites that they should follow Moses (3:12; 4:5, 8, 9).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.