Exodus 4:21

All those wonders. Once more God appeared to Moses, either before he left Midian or on the way to Egypt. Upon this occasion God imparted to Moses information concerning what he must expect in Egypt. The expression “all those wonders” does not refer alone to the three signs mentioned in vs. 2-9, but to all the miracles he was to perform in the presence of Pharaoh.

Harden his heart. In Christ’s parable of the sower and the seed there was no difference between the seed scattered in one kind of soil and that sown in the others, or yet in the manner in which it was sown. Everything depended upon the reception given the seed by each type of soil. In like manner, the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart was in no way an act of God, but rather a deliberate choice on his own part (see Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 268). By repeated warnings and displays of divine power God sent light designed to point out to Pharaoh the error of his ways, to soften and subdue his heart, and to lead him to cooperate with His will (see Desire of Ages, p. 322). But each successive manifestation of divine power left him more determined to do as he pleased. Refusing to be corrected, he despised and rejected the light, until he became insensitive to it, and the light was finally withdrawn. It was thus his own resistance to the light that hardened his heart. Even the heathen recognized the fact that it was Pharaoh and the Egyptians themselves who hardened their hearts, and not God (1 Samuel 6:6).

Commentators have differed widely in their understanding of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, here attributed to God. There are altogether ten such statements. Eight of them (Exodus 4:21; 9:12; 10:20, 27; 11:10; 14:4,8, 17) use the word chazaq, which means that the Lord would make Pharaoh’s heart “firm” so that it would not move, and that his feelings toward Israel would not change. In Exodus 7:3 another Hebrew word, qashah, is used, which implies that the Lord would make Pharaoh’s heart “hard” or “unfeeling.” In Exodus 10:1 a third word, kabed, is used, meaning that God had made Pharaoh’s heart “heavy,” or insensible to divine influence. That the different words are used more or less interchangeably becomes evident from a study of the context.

There are also ten statements to the effect that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. Four of them (Exodus 7:13, 22; 8:19; 9:35) use the word chazaq, “to make firm,” five (Exodus 7:14; 8:15, 32; 9:7, 34) the word kabed, “to make heavy,” and one (Exodus 13:15) the word qashah, “to make hard.” The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart was evident first of all in the fact that he paid no attention to the demand of the Lord to let Israel go. His refusal was not restricted to the plagues the Egyptian magicians were able to imitate, but included those which the magicians themselves acknowledged to be “the finger of God” (Exodus 8:19). It continued also after the fourth and fifth plagues, which fell upon the Egyptians but not upon the Israelites, a fact of which the king was informed (Exodus 9:7). The hardening of his heart was demonstrated even more clearly when he broke his promise to let Israel go on condition that Moses and Aaron would remove the plague, and when he was forced to confess that he had sinned (Exodus 9:27). Thus when Moses was told, before reaching Egypt, that the Lord would harden Pharaoh’s heart (Exodus 4:21), God referred to the continued refusal of the king to obey Him and release the Israelites.

God takes no pleasure in the suffering and death of the wicked, but rather desires that all men repent and be saved (Ezekiel 33:11; 1 Timothy 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9), and causes His sun to shine upon the evil and the good (Matthew 5:45). But as the sun affects different materials in different ways, according to their own nature — it melts wax and hardens clay, for instance — so the influence of the Spirit of God upon the hearts of men produces different effects according to the condition of the heart. The repentant sinner allows God’s Spirit to lead him to conversion and salvation, but the impenitent hardens his heart more and more. The very same manifestation of the mercy of God leads in the case of the one to salvation and life, and in that of the other to judgment and death — to each according to his own choice.