Hear the word of God:
Then the Lord said to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh, and say to him, 'Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. For if you refuse to let them go and still hold them, the hand of the Lord will strike with a deadly pestilence your livestock in the field: the horses, the donkeys, the camels, the herds, and the flocks. But the Lord will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt, so that nothing shall die of all that belongs to the Israelites.'"
The Lord set a time, saying, "Tomorrow the Lord will do this thing in the land." And on the next day the Lord did so; all the livestock of the Egyptians died, but of the livestock of the Israelites not one died. Pharaoh inquired and found that not one of the livestock of the Israelites was dead. But the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he would not let the people go.
Exodus 9:1-7 – NRSV
This is the fifth of the ten mighty plagues sent as warnings to the Pharaoh. It may be that Pharaoh had come to see this as a contest between the gods: his gods and the God of Israel. It seemed that he was confident that his gods, being more numerous and native to the land, would surely win such a battle. Yet even though it seems that the domain of each of the Egyptian gods is assaulted one by one, plague by plague, Pharaoh hardens his heart. Is this because he perceives himself to be a god also, and he still feels alive and powerful? Does he perceive himself as having a right to power? Does he fail to see that using power requires him to be right? Or is he just hard-headed?
Pharaoh hardens his own heart. Until the sixth plague, that is. Then on the sixth, the eighth, and the ninth plague, the narrator tells us that God participates in the hardening. Does that mean that God tinkered with the internal workings of Pharaoh’s mind? It might be, but I don’t think so. I think it means that God continued to pursue his course in freeing the Israelites even though he knew that this would deepen the resistance that was building in the mind of Pharaoh. If Pharaoh is going to fire his will like a brick in a kiln, then God is going to continue the pressure until that will is shattered. If necessary, God will shatter that hardened will with the awareness that it is the God, the Creator of the Universe, that Pharaoh resists.
Surely we are never so stubborn. Surely we never continue in a course just to prove that we are right. Surely we never keep doing something just to prove that we have the power to do it. Surely we never harden our own heart in opposition to the will or the purposes of our great God.
Yet we do, don’t we? Even though our intentions may have been good, we sometimes make this mistake. I think that, whenever we find ourselves strengthening our resolve, especially whenever it involves an exercise of power, we have to ask ourselves, “Am I acting within the current movement of God within the world, or, am I acting according to my own perceptions of how things ought to be?” "Am I resolved, or resistant?" If we find ourselves continuing to hit a brick wall, then perhaps we need to try to figure out who put the bricks there.
Blessings,
Ron
