The Hardening of Pharaoh’s Heart and Predestination

And he hardened Pharaoh’s heart, that he hearkened not unto them; as the Lord had said. And the Lord said unto Moses, Pharaoh’s heart is hardened, he refuseth to let the people go.

Exodus 7:13-14 (KJV)

And the magicians of Egypt did so with their enchantments: and Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, neither did he hearken unto them; as the Lord had said. And Pharaoh turned and went into his house, neither did he set his heart to this also.

Exodus 7:22-23 (KJV)

But when Pharaoh saw that there was respite, he hardened his heart, and hearkened not unto them; as the Lord had said.

Exodus 8:15 (KJV)

Then the magicians said unto Pharaoh, This is the finger of God: and Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he hearkened not unto them; as the Lord had said.

Exodus 8:19 (KJV)

Those who espouse a strict view of predestination use the above passages to claim that God prohibited Pharaoh from releasing the Israelites through the hardening of the Egyptian king’s heart. It is believed by these scholars and theologians that were God not to have acted upon Pharaoh, he would have permitted the departure of his slaves. Of course, this understanding is justified as it afforded the Israelites the signs and wonders they needed to have faith in both their God and Moses as His emissary. But as we know, God does not will the existence of evil or desire evil actions to transpire. Yes, God in His infinite goodness is able to make from any evil a good result or outcome, but evil is not the necessary prerequisite from which good is sustained or invented. Although it is a common belief today, we do not actually need to know evil or of it to comprehend the good. Good is existent and evil is merely theoretical. I do believe God permits evil as a result of our having been given free choice, and that He will often use the evils we create to His ends, but to say that God wills evil is to fundamentally misunderstand the nature and personality of God.

When we speak of God in the Old Testament, we are speaking largely of Christ. When we say it was the Lord or God hardening Pharaoh’s heart, we are speaking of Jesus and thus must harmonize our understanding of Christ as He was present in both Testaments. The Christ that hardens the heart is reminiscent to the Christ who kills the fig tree. I have already discussed this passage before,¹ but in brief I argue that the tree was defective in one way or another, which prevented it from being sustained through the energies of God, and thus unable to perform its teleological function. Thus, Christ, in seeing that the energies of God were being used to improper ends, both evil and the prolongation of defective (sinful) existence, He as the Logos cut the tree off from Himself and expired, henceforth becoming a warning of what will befall us should we fail to repent and fail to use that which God bestows us improperly.

In a similar vein to the fig tree, I do not believe that Christ acted upon Pharaoh and preordained his actions as such. Of course, Christ in His perfect knowledge knew how events were going to unfold, yet He surely did not wish for these events to occur as they did. We know from Romans chapter 1, specifically 24-32 that God will give certain people up to their afflictions. Where no repentance is desired or sought, instead of God continuing to wrestle with said people, He in His love and respect for their personhood removes the barriers upon which the sinful person has been struggling against. When we sin, we are fighting against God directly, it is a struggle on our part to overcome God and eventually, God will accede to our demands. This is what I believe was happening within the soul of Pharaoh. Pharaoh was never going to release the Israelites; he would sooner slay them. God in His mercy sought to restrain the desires of Pharaoh, to bring him salvation through obedience to God through Moses. Yet he resisted God, and with every denial the Lord took one further step away from Him, until he broke. Even in his broken state, Pharaoh did not repent and remained a slave to his own sinful desires and inclinations. Thus, Pharaoh was not a man hardened by God, but rather the man as he was revealed to be once God ceased His attempts to save Him. Pharaoh with his darkened nous became no better than the fig tree, and his actions prior to and after his “hardening heart” would have been the same, only his later actions were ill-informed and irrational given the deterioration of his mental, emotional and spiritual state.

Pharaoh was not born uniquely evil, and he was not born pre-damned. Throughout his life, he was given the choice to abide by the principles of God and nature or to reject them, and by the time of the Exodus we can see that he had fully rejected God. We in Orthodoxy to not believe in the concept of original guilt. This term is in the West often referred to as original sin, but from what I have studied, original sin and ancestral sin as it has been referred to in the East is the same concept. Every human is born estranged from God with a proclivity to sin, however from the womb to early childhood they are incapable of sin. Thus no one is born damned. If we are to believe that there are those who are predestined to fall, then Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was insufficient to save all. Christ through the cross has saved all, but if we reject Him His sacrifice is forfeited to us. Thus, it is theologically true to say that Christ has died for all and for many, all in that humanity as a whole (through Christ being of our nature) is able to be saved and many because there are those who will choose to reject Him. If we believe there are those who are predestined to fall and are innately sinful, our anthropology adopts a bleak outlook. If we believe in such a total depravity, then our views on abominations like abortion necessarily change. After all, a child that from the womb sinful is more worthy of death than it is life, and although those who believe in predestination will (usually) not affirm this, it does not take much of a leap to see how a secularized society informed on Calvinistic principles would degrade in such a manner. Taken a step further, we see groups like the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, and the trend of voluntary sterilization. Therefore, it is necessary to affirm the innate innocence of the human at its conception, and thus its life is infinitely more valuable than those of us who have been given the opportunity and have sinned.

1https://godkingandnation.wordpress.com/2023/04/23/why-jesus-killed-the-fig-tree/