Pharaoh's Heart

I've been looking over the latest edition of edition of the New American Commentary: Exodus by Douglas K. Stuart. This is going to be one of the better volumes of the series, no doubt about it. There are many exegetical conundrums in Exodus. One of which is the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, which is found several times in the book [4:21; 9:12; 10:20, 27 just to name a few]. In his Excursus on this matter Stuart wrote in part:

His [Yahweh's] purpose in preventing Pharaoh from giving in too easily and too early was, as
will be seen in subsequent parts of the narrative, to allow himself fully to demonstrate his sovereignty over Pharaoh, the Egyptians, the land of Egypt itself, and the gods to which Pharaoh and the Egyptians trusted. . .The Egyptian Pharaoh was supposed to be a pure person, a divine manifestation of the gods,a nd one whose sovereignty over the people was credentialized in part by the purity of his 'ib [Egyptian for 'heart'] . The idea that Yahweh could do whatever he wanted with Pharaoh's heart, and specifically could "harden" it, therefore, was both an evidence of Yahweh's control of all things including the mightiest monarch of the day and also evidence that Yahweh had done what the Egyptians thought the "gods" would usually do--weigh the heart and decide whether the owner was worthy of eternal life or not. In effect, then, each time Yahweh is decribed as hardening Pharaoh's heart, the alert reader is reminded that Yahweh had, as it were, weighed Pharaoh and found him wanting . . . In terms of the classical theological-philosophical issue of free will versus determination, none of the references to the hardening of Pharaoh's heart is decisive. That is because God's causing Pharaoh to be stubborn is simply not presented in the narrative as a general permanent phenomenon (eternal election or rejection) but rather as an ad hoc action of God, temporary in nature . . . and limited to the special purpose of humiliating the Egyptians and their false religion [149-50].

A cogent discussion of a topic that bothers many folks in church when this subject comes up. By the way, Stuart is best known by many seminary students as the co-author with Gordon Fee of How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth. His work on Exodus, just released by Broadman and Holman, will be well worth the purchase for anyone preaching and teaching in Exodus. I may have more quotes from the commentary later on.