6/19/2023 0 Comments Cold cold heart hardened by youThe plagues, as terrible as they were, actually demonstrate God’s mercy in not completely destroying Egypt, which would have been a perfectly just penalty. Therefore, God’s hardening Pharaoh’s heart was not unjust, and His bringing additional plagues against Egypt was not unjust. Since the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23), and Pharaoh and Egypt had horribly sinned against God, it would have been just if God had completely annihilated Egypt. Pharaoh and Egypt had brought these judgments on themselves with 400 years of slavery and mass murder. It could be that, as a result of Pharaoh’s hard-heartedness, God hardened Pharaoh’s heart even further, allowing for the last few plagues and bringing God’s full glory into view (Exodus 9:12 10:20, 27). Pharaoh chose to bring further judgment on himself and his nation by hardening his own heart against God’s commands. As the plagues continued, God gave Pharaoh increasingly severe warnings of the final judgment to come. It seems that God and Pharaoh were both active in one way or another in the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. ![]() ![]() “But this time also Pharaoh hardened his heart” (Exodus 8:32). Second, on least a couple occasions, Pharaoh hardened his own heart against letting the Israelites go: “But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart” (Exodus 8:15). The pharaoh God hardened was an evil man, and the nation he ruled agreed with, or at least did not oppose, his evil actions. ![]() A previous pharaoh-possibly even the pharaoh in question-ordered that male Israelite babies be killed at birth (Exodus 1:16). The Egyptian pharaohs had enslaved the Israelites for 400 years. He was a brutal dictator overseeing the terrible abuse and oppression of the Israelites, who likely numbered over 1.5 million people at that time. First, Pharaoh was not an innocent or godly man.
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