Who Hardens The Heart?

A friend asked if I'd comment on those Bible passages that talk about Pharaoh's hardened heart:

Did God harden Pharaoh's heart, or did Pharaoh harden his own heart (or both)? The Bible seems unclear about this. If God hardened Pharaoh's heart, how could Pharaoh be blamed for his actions?

There are 17 verses in the book of Exodus that speak of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. In three of them, Pharaoh hardens his own heart. For example:

Exodus 8:32:
But Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also, and he did not let the people go.

In five verses, the text leaves unspecified who does the hardening. For example:

Exodus 7:13:
Yet Pharaoh's was hardened, and he did not listen to them, as the Lord had said.

In nine verses, God hardens Pharaoh's heart. For example:

Exodus 11:10:
Moses and Aaron performed all these wonders before Pharaoh; yet the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not let the sons of Israel go out of his land.

The texts clearly and unambiguously say that (1) God hardened Pharaoh's heart, (2) Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and (3) Pharaoh hardened his own heart. The question is how to relate these statements to one another.

As careful Bible scholars have long pointed out, the texts themselves never draw a causal connection between what God does to Pharaoh and what Pharaoh does to himself. The texts just say both. We never see a statement like, "Because God determined beforehand to harden Pharaoh's heart, therefore Pharaoh necessarily hardened his own heart." Nor does any text say, "Because Pharaoh hardened his own heart, therefore God confirmed him in that decision and hardened it just the way Pharaoh wanted." The second option seems more palatable, because the first sounds an awful lot like "God forced Pharaoh to sin." That can't be right, can it?

The Hebrew text may help us understand this better. The phrase "harden the heart" does not mean "compel to sin." There are three different Hebrew words used in these texts in Exodus, and all appear to be synonymous in context and used interchangeably. The most common is chazaq (found in 12 of the 17 hardening passages), and its primary meaning is "to strengthen, to be or to grow strong or firm." Often this strengthening is a good thing. For example, this word is used three times in Joshua 1:6-9 where God tells Joshua to be strong and courageous:

6 "Be strong (chazaq) and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their forefathers to give them. 7 Be strong (chazaq) and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you...9 Have I not commanded you? Be strong (chazaq) and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go."

In Joshua's case, I believe he wanted to do the right thing but required chazaq (strength, toughness, hardness) to go ahead and do it. With Pharaoh it's the opposite: he wanted to do the wrong thing but may have lacked the chazaq to carry it out. If Pharaoh had let the Israelites go, it would not have been out of justice and wisdom and fairness and goodwill but out of mere cowardice. (Who wants to endure a bunch of plagues?) But God hardened, toughened, strengthened, emboldened him - and he hardened, toughened, strengthened, emboldened himself - to do what he really wanted to do in the first place, which was to be a jerk to the Israelites.

By analogy, we might think it would be good if every time a man wanted to commit adultery God made him impotent and unable to carry out what his will desired. But that is not what God usually does. God gives the adulterous man chazaq - hardens him - and he sins. God never forces a man to cheat on his wife, but often he empowers a man to do what his evil will would choose.

Does this make God responsible for a person's sin? No. See what you think of the following true story.

A seminary professor of mine once served a church where the previous pastor - I'll call him Adolph - had committed adultery and wrecked everything. It turns out Adolph had done the same thing in two churches he had pastored earlier. (Don't they do background checks?) The last anyone heard, Adolph moved to Ohio where he was now selling computer components. My professor said if you confront Adolph and ask him, "What went wrong? Why did you fall into the same wretched trap three times?" he answers, "I fell because God is a liar. God says, 'No temptation has seized you except what is common to man, but God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear, but will provide you a way out' (1 Corinthians 10:13). I wasn't able to bear it. So God is a liar." And he will not pursue the conversation further.

What an evil son of hell.

I believe that Pharaoh and Adolph are equally responsible for their sins. "Hardening the heart" does not mean "hijacking the will." God did provide Adolph a way out, but he chose not to take it. I have never seen a text in Scripture that says that God forced a man to do something he didn't want to do. If Pharaoh had been a different kind of man, then he might have used the chazaq God gave him to do right by the Israelites no matter what the cost. Abraham Lincoln was a hard man too - but he used his chazaq to sign the Emancipation Proclamation.

In Scripture we find that a readiness to do the divine will meets with glad assistance from God. Those who desire goodness get it. Jesus said, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled" (Matthew 5:6), not: "Regardless of whether people hunger and thirst for righteousness, God may, in his sovereignty, harden their wills so that they succumb to wickedness." Jesus also said, "If anyone is willing to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own" (John 7:17), not: "If anyone is willing to do God's will, he will nonetheless find his quest for truth hopeless if God chooses to harden his heart." No Scripture anywhere shows God responding to a person who says, "I long to do your will" with, "Too bad - I am going to force you to disobey me."

But God often gives willful sinners what they want most: the ability to sin without the burden of conscience. Shakespeare's MacBeth, wanting to kill Malcom, prayed to the universe saying,

Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires.
The eye wink at the hand, yet let that be
Which the eye fears, when it is done, to see.

He was asking, "Just let me do this wickedness without interference from the fire of truth or the light of conscience; let me enjoy the result of my sin without having to think of the corruption that brought it about." The Roman poet Juvenal called petitions like these "enormous prayers which heaven in anger grants."

I would love to leave the matter there, but there remains the difficulty of reconciling the ideas offered above with St. Paul's treatment of Pharaoh's hardened heart in Romans 9:17-21. There Paul writes:

17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” 18 Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden. 19 One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?” 20 But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to him who formed it,‘Why did you make me like this?’” 21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?

There does not seem to be any wiggle room in that passage that allows for human freedom, does there? God shapes Pharaoh's heart like a potter shapes a lump of clay, and in the context of the metaphor it is hard to imagine the clay saying, "Mr. Potter, please shape me this way," and the potter responding, "Sure, I'd be happy to. Your will be done." Paul anticipates the very natural question my friend posted above: "If God hardened Pharaoh's heart, how could Pharaoh be blamed for his actions?" See verse 19: "One of you will say to me: 'Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?'". This strikes me as such a good question that I cannot help but feel some frustration that Paul bats it away with "Who are you, o man, to talk back to God?" (verse 20). Is the person really "talking back to God," or, like my friend, seeking a true understanding of God's ways with men?

My answer to this difficulty is to say that in the context of Romans 9 Paul presupposes a corrupt human will. While in another context Jesus may speak of a good man ("The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him" - Matthew 12:35), in Paul's argument there are no good men: "There are none righteous, no not one...All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:10,23). Here, man's will is neither morally neutral (seeing if it will be softened into obedience or hardened into rebellion), nor morally good (hoping God will not twist it into something bad), but morally depraved from the start. God's hardening then is not a matter of taking a good will and corrupting it but giving strength to a will that already opposes him. Perhaps this explains why, in verse 18, Paul does not set in opposition to the word "harden" its natural opposite "soften" but rather "have mercy on." All those who bow the knee to God are not, in the final analysis, good people whom God has rewarded, but sinners to whom he has shown mercy. May God be merciful to us sinners.