If God can harden Pharaoh's heart, why didn't he change the hearts of His people's enemies?

[goout]

There are multiple points in the Bible where people are warned not to harden their hearts (making the people the subjects and their hearts the object). They don’t warn people not to have God harden their hearts (making God appear to be the subject).

It’s only in Exodus where we get the phrase where God hardens a heart. Believers have to twist the language so that even though the text is abundantly clear, we are supposed to believe the exact opposite of the text.

Mike, we are not fundamentalists. Context, context, context.

 

[midori]

Imagine that God’s grace is like a pitcher of water. We have the option of making our hearts like a stone or a sponge, by either rejecting God or cooperating with God. God will pour out all the grace he can-- but if we’ve turned ourselves into rocks, it’s not going to do us any good, because it will shed right off of us.

But sometimes, God does change people’s hearts— but he does it far more subtly. For example, the story of Esther. Esther put her life in danger by approaching the king unbidden—

10 Then she instructed him to say to Mordecai, 11 “All the king’s officials and the people of the royal provinces know that for any man or woman who approaches the king in the inner court without being summoned the king has but one law: that they be put to death unless the king extends the gold scepter to them and spares their lives. But thirty days have passed since I was called to go to the king.”

12 When Esther’s words were reported to Mordecai, 13 he sent back this answer: “Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. 14 For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”

15 Then Esther sent this reply to Mordecai: 16 “Go, gather together all the Jews who are in Susa, and fast for me. Do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my attendants will fast as you do. When this is done, I will go to the king, even though it is against the law. And if I perish, I perish.”

So, as we know, he was pleased with her and allowed her to live— and all the moving parts worked together, and it all worked out in the end, and her people were spared. But it required much communal prayer and fasting.

 

[PennyinCanada]

There are many scenes and events written down in the Old Testament that point forward in time to Christ. Are you familiar with this?

Some events point to Christ’s coming the first time. I believe this story is pointing still forward in time to Christ’s second coming. God knows the beginning and the end of human history and he reveals to us in scripture that He does.

Moses is a type of Christ. The parting of the Red Sea and the Israelites crossing the sea on dry ground is like when Christ comes in glory and separates the sheep from the goats, and announces that the sheep will come with him to the reward that have been prepared from the beginning of time. To the ‘Promised Land’. Heaven.

Today we see leaders of the world with hardened hearts toward Christians. We see all kinds of unusual weather events and we wonder what is going on. “Climate change”. The most telling I think is that the first born of Pharoah died the night before the liberation of the Israelites, and today we have first born babies being killed by abortion. We are walking in a time that seems to parallel the time of Pharaoh and Moses.

 

[John_Martin]

Hmm…
How did “God” harden Pharaoh’s heart?
The same way “He” delivered the Israelites from Egypt.
The LORD never does anything directly by himself, but always through the doing of a temporal creature, whether His Angel or His Servant (In this case, Moses). The LORD did not float into Pharaoh’s soul and blind him to reality so that he would be “Hardened”.
No, the LORD convinced Moses, via his Angel in the Burning Bush, to act.
So, a renegade Egyptian Pretender (Moses) who was also despised by the Israelites (because he had enjoyed the riches of Egypt while they were enslaved), this renegade waltzed into the palace and shouted, “Thus says ‘I AM’ (the LORD), Let My People Go!” We all know how hard the heart of current Presidents and Dictators become when people try to tell them what to do, and how they do the exact opposite.

Send in a “demander” and a ruler’s heart is hardened. But who is actually hardening the President’s heart, or the dictators’ hearts?

Now, the LORD also, himself, claimed he was going to deliver Israel from Egypt, but Moses and an all night strong wind from the east did all the work. The LORD did it all, but the LORD did none of it. The LORD hardened the Pharaoh’s and the Egyptians’ hearts, but the LORD did not harden anyone’s heart.

John Martin

 

[Lucretius]

Here’s an article you might want to read: The Amalekite massacre as a failure of Israel’s obligation | Just Thomism

Remember though, God hardening Pharoah’s heart can mean that God encouraged Pharoah to do what he wanted to do anyway.