“Pharaoh sent urgently for Moses and
Aaron and said:
I have sinned against the Lord your God
and against you.
Now forgive my sin, I implore you, just
this once, and entreat
The Lord your God to turn this deadly thing
away from me.
When Moses left Pharaoh’s presence he
prayed to the Lord,
and the Lord changed the wind into a west
wind, very strong,
which carried the locusts away and swept
them into the Sea
of Reeds. There was not one locust left
in the whole of Egypt.
But the Lord made Pharaoh stubborn, and
he did not
let the Israelites go…” --Exodus
10: 16-20
Boy this Bible reading is kind of
tough stuff. I am working my way through Exodus now and coming to the very
familiar story of Moses and Pharaoh, I was quite surprised to bump into this
verse –a phrase repeated a few times in this story. What does it mean? Why would God make Pharaoh “stubborn?” If, as we are told, God is love –how does
making Pharaoh stubborn reveal God’s love?
It is easy to see how it plays out for the Hebrews who receive their
freedom and 40 years of wandering. But consider
the stubborn Pharaoh (and all of Egypt); what does he receive? Boils, frogs, locust
and the death of his first-born son. Why
does God make the Pharaoh stubborn?
If we assume that God doesn’t
literally make Pharaoh stubborn, then we are still left with the question: Why
is it in the story? Repeatedly? Starting with God’s assurance to Moses:
“I
myself shall make Pharaoh stubborn…” (cf. 7:3)
Even if we assume this is just a
story that is trying to explain how the Hebrew people came out of Egypt, we
still have to wonder why the ancient author would have chosen to tell it in
this way? What is the author telling us about God? And, what is the spiritual
or moral lesson that is being imparted?
If Pharaoh is simply an allegorical figure (a symbol of enslavement to
sin –for example), we still are left with the fact that God seems to willfully
stop Pharaoh from changing his ways.
What does that mean?
To my 21st century mind,
it seems unfair of God to make Pharaoh stubborn. It seems
unloving. And so, we might ask, what did it say to the ancient reader? Was there
a lesson in Pharaoh’s stubbornness that transcended narrative logic? Or was it
a lesson about God’s authority? Was it an assertion that God can make someone
do something against their own best interest? Or was it a lesson about how God’s
ways are not man’s ways?
I don’t know. But it is perplexing
and seems to hold a paradox of some kind at its core.
If we assume that Holy Scripture is
Holy and truly the Word of God then the issue becomes even more complex. Why would God say such things about
Himself? What is He trying to teach us
about Himself and His ways…? And –of course—we may have to ask ourselves whether
questions of fairness are meaningful when it comes to God. And His
ways.
