Why Did God Harden Pharaoh's Heart?

OT2100-Week Two-Plagues Response

The Bible tells us God is sovereign and all throughout its contents we see the scriptures confirm the sovereignty of God. There have been many discussions on the selectivity of God pointing to the doctrine of predestination, the doctrine of predetermination, and the doctrine of election. But God makes it clear that He “will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy” (Ex. 33:19 KJV). After carefully searching the scriptures and comparing Old Testament writings with the New Testament writings Victor P. Hamilton (2015) concludes, “In each case God uses the hardening redemptively. He hardened Pharaoh. The result? The Israelites were delivered from Egypt. He has hardened

Vernon McGee. J. Vernon McGee comments on Romans 9:18 (KJV), “Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth” were enlightening.

J. Vernon McGee (2016) stated, “When the Scriptures say that God hardened Pharaoh's heart, it means that God forced Pharaoh to make the decision that was in his heart. God forced him to do the thing he wanted to do. There never will be a person in hell who did not choose to be there, my friend. You are the one who makes your own decision” (p.1).

Upon further investigation and doing a word study on the Hebrew meaning of the English word hardening, we would see that there were three usages of this word by Moses. The first Hebrew word, “kabed” and it means “to be heavy” as with the heart of Pharaoh. The second Hebrew word, “hazaq” means “to be strong, hard” and the third Hebrew word is “qasa” meaning “to be hard, difficult, and severe” (Hamilton, 2015,

The Hebrew word hazaq can imply in English that one is “bullheaded” and the Hebrew word qasa could imply the severity of one’s hardening. From the graph in our textbook, we see at least six instances that Pharaoh’s heart was the subject of the Hebrew words kabed and hazaq (Ex. 7:14, 9:7; 7:13, 7:22, 9:19, and 9:35), (Hamilton, 2015, p.163).

According to Victor P. Hamilton (2015), “Can this be fortuitous? Or is the Scripture implying that Pharaoh, now so impervious to God, has forfeited his right to choose consciously and independently? My freedom be abrogated? At lease for a while Pharaoh had control over his own choice, but never did he exercise control over the consequences of his choice” (p. 164).

Apostle Paul writes about the foolishness of one who has deceived himself and continues to desire to live a perverted life. Apostle Paul said,” And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;” (Rom. 1:28