The Hardening of Pharoah's Heart

An Excerpt from Pentstuch Haftorahs by Dr. J. H. Hertz

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This deals with Pharoah hardening his heart.  

21: harden his heart. Or, make his heart strong; i.e. stubborn. This does not mean that God on purpose made Pharaoh sinful. For God to make it impossible for a man to obey Him, and then punish him for his disobedience, would be both unjust and contrary to the fundamental Jewish belief in Freedom of the Will. The phrase most often translated 'hardening of the heart' occurs nineteen times; ten times it is said that Pharaoh hardened his heart; and nine times the hardening of Pharaoh's heart is ascribed to God. There thus seem to be two sides to this hardening. Whe the Divine command came to Pharoah, 'Set the slaves free,' and his reply was, 'I will not,'; each repetition of Pharaoh's persistent obstinacy made it less likely that he would eventually listen to the word of God. For such is the law of conscience: every time the voice of conscience is disobeyed, it becomes duller and feebler, and the heart grows harder. Man cannot remain 'neutral' in the presence of Duty or of any direct command of God. He either obeys the Divine command, and it becomes unto him a blessing; or he defies God, and such command then becomes unto him a curse. 'It is part of the Divinely ordered scheme of things that if a man delibertately chooses evil, it proceeds to enslave him; it blinds and stupefies him, making for him repentance well-nigh impossible.' (Rabbi Raihm)   Thus, every successive refusal on the part of Moses froze up his better nature more and more, until it seemed as if God had hardened his heart. But this is only because Pharaoh had first hardened it himself, and continued to do so. The Omniscient God knew beforehand whither his obstinacy would lead Pharoah, and prepared Moses for initial failure by  warning him that Pharaoh's herat would become 'hardened.'   The modern mind, whilst agreeing that all things are ultimately controlled by God's will, does not attribute resluts to the immediate action of God. Not so the Biblical idiom. Events, whether physical or moral, which are the inevitable result of the Divine ordering of the universe, are spoken of as  the direct work of God (Dillmann, Driver, Jacob). See also note on Isa. vi, 9, p. 303.  

22. Israel is My son. This expression is here applied for the first time to Israel as a nation. first born. Implying the universal fatherhood of God. The other nations, too, are God's children; and in Abraham's seed, spiritually the first-born among them, all the families of the earth are to be blessed (Gen. xii, 3).  

23. thou hast refused. Better, 'and if thou refuest...I shall slay.'  

24. at the lodging-place. The verse can also be translated: 'On the way, he tarried in a lodging-place.' Moses was still distrusting himself in regard to his mission, hesitating, tarrying in the inn. This brings down the Divine displeasure upon him (Wogue).   sought to kill him. An antropomorphic way of saying that Moses fell suddenly into a serious illness. Many commentators connect this sudden illness of Moses with his postponing, for some reason, the circumcision of his son. Toradition ascribes the omission to the influence of Jethro and Zipporah, who may have desired the circumcision postponed to the 13th year, as was customary among the Bedouin tribes. However, in the previous verse Moses had warned Pharaoh that disobedience of God's will carried dire punishment with it; and he himself should, therefore, on no account have permitted any postponement of  a duty incumbent upon him.