Page 45 - Pentateuch - Student Textbook

17. 13:15: “Pharaoh stubbornly refused.”
18. 14:4: “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart.”
19. 14:8: “The Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh.”
20. 14:17: “I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians.”

The picture is one of God calling to Pharaoh repeatedly through the first five plagues. Only Pharaoh’s
repeated stubbornness closes the door on God’s grace. We rightly note other aspects of God’s call to
Pharaoh. At one time he responds, asking Moses to pray for him (8:28). His own magicians after a time
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attribute the plagues to “the finger of God” (8:19). He admits to sinning (9:27; 10:16). We also note
how God patiently increases the pressure, not jumping immediately to the final blow. The passage
“holds in tension God’s divine sovereignty and humankind’s moral freedom.”
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We are confronted here with one of the mysteries of God. He is sovereign over the entire world and its
inhabitants. Humans are responsible for their decisions. We do not know how to bring these two truths
together. Emphasize God’s sovereignty too much, and we can hardly blame humans for their choices.
Emphasize human responsibility too much, and God fades into the background. The scriptures insist that
both sides are true. The mystery of “compatibilism” is traceable to the mystery of God, to what we do
not know about God. So we must be careful not to state things too heavily on either side. We must
simply note how God’s sovereignty and human responsibility work themselves out in Scripture and leave
it at that. Perhaps the mystery will be solved when we are in eternity face-to-face with our Lord.
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God’s exodus plan is an expansion of anything we read in Genesis. He is now working with thousands of
people. While we can assume his work in the events of each person’s life (just like Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob, and Joseph), we are witnessing his work for an entire
nation. He teaches them through the plagues about his
greatness. He also starts to teach them directly through
instruction. His first “lecture,” backed up by the “lab”
experience of the tenth plague, is instruction on Passover.
(See other legal instructions about the Passover in Lev. 23:5-
8; Num. 28:16-25; Deut. 16:1-8; as well as the historical
observance of Passover in Num. 9:1-14; Josh 5:10-12; 2 Kings
23:21-23; 2 Chron. 30:1-27; 35:1-19; Ezra 6:19-22.)

The instructions are simple. YHWH will go throughout the
land of Egypt and kill the firstborn son of everyone in the Fig. 26: Slaying a lamb
land, including the cattle (11:1-10). To avoid such a huge loss,
the Israelites and anyone else were to sacrifice a lamb at

48 Jesus refers to this phrase in Luke 11:20. He has been accused of driving out demons by Beelzebub. He
points out the impossibility of the accusation. Only the power of God could do such a thing. Both the Old
and New Testaments reserve certain activities for God. Already we know God is the one who makes
someone deaf, mute, or blind (4:11, cf. Deut. 32:39). When Jesus began working miracles,
knowledgeable men recognized the exclusive work of God (John 3:2). So while we want to have a proper
fear of Satan and all he can do, God’s is greater. Satan is limited as to what he can know or do. His
miracles tend to be trickery, although very believable (2 Thess. 2:9).
49 Hamilton, Handbook, 166.
50 Much of this paragraph comes from an excellent article by D.A. Carson, “Reflections on Assurance” in
Still Sovereign, ed. Schreiner and Ware (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2000), pp. 269-273.

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