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Arcoon Effox
* God hardening the heart of Pharaoh, preventing him from freeing the Jews, then punishing his people for it 10 times
Actually, elsewhere in Exodus, it says Pharaoh was actually hardening his own heart.
Exodus says
both things, and the few instances that it doesn't say God was directly responsible could be explained based on perspective.
First, in verses 4:21 & 7:3, God tells Moses that he's going to harden Pharaoh's heart (specifically so that he can
"multiply His signs and wonders"), and in verses 7:13 & 9:12, God actively hardens Pharaoh's heart.
In verse 10:1, Moses is again told by God that He was going to harden Pharaoh's heart, and does so in verse 10:20. (This time we even get a reminder that he has done so seven verses later.) Later, verse 11:10 again has God influencing Pharaoh's decisions.
Once again in verse 14:4, God say's he'll be hardening Pharaoh's heart so that he'll chase after the fleeing Israelites, that way he can make a spectacle of how awesome he is to the Egyptians, follows through with this in verse 14:8. Later, in verse 14:18, he hardens the hearts of
the entire Egyptian force pursuing them in addition to Pharaoh, making them give chase through the divided waters explicitly for the purpose of "gaining glory" by killing them all.
On the other side of things, verse 8:15 has Pharaoh hardening his own heart after the Plague of Frogs abated, and again in verse 8:32 after the Plague of Flies.
Verse 9:34 is interesting in that it says that Pharaoh "sinned once more" by hardening his heart after the flaming hail stopped coming down. If doing so was sinful, does that mean God was causing him to sin those times earlier when he was manipulating his thoughts...?
Getting to what I said about perspective, I read an interesting idea which revolves around the where the point of view is in the narration. Basically, whenever God describes what is going on, God says that he has hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and describes it as his own action. Whenever Pharaoh is said to harden his heart, the description comes within the narration of what Pharaoh did or what Moses saw, not the divine description. As such, if God did indeed harden Pharaoh’s heart, we would not see it happening other than by observing that Pharaoh appeared to harden his heart and reject Moses's request.
Mea quidem sententia
...I suspect (though I have no evidence) that this was redacted to make God look like he's not at fault for hardening Pharaoh's heart.
I dunno; it has no qualms with saying that God was responsible all those other times...
Mea quidem sententia
Edit: See, it's strange that even Paul would write that God hardened Pharaoh's heart and did it for his own purpose. Considering he was a "Hebrew of Hebrews", I would expect him to not miss that important detail about Pharaoh hardening his own heart. Of course, he might have been selective to push forward his own agenda.
Verses like Exodus 4:21, 7:3 & 14:4 make it blatantly obvious that God is hardening Pharaoh's heart for his own gain, so that he can show the Egyptians that he's the Top
Dog God by "retaliating" against them for not doing what he wants.