God, Moses, and Free Will

[PhuturePriest]

So in my bible class today it was brought to our attention that God actively hardens the Pharaoh's heart, leading to his son's death. Is there a good exegesis that explains this disturbing passage?

[Peace]

Sorry. I don't have anything concrete. I had always wondered about that too. It seems that Romans 9 touches on that a little, so you might want to look there. I always thought that the idea of God "giving them over to their passions" in Romans 1 also seemed like a similar concept.

I had always thought about it with a bit of a Molinistic perspective, I guess. Perhaps God knows that Pharaoh would never declare him Lord under any circumstances, and so He hardens his heart so that he can use Pharaoh for some other purpose (such as manifesting his power, etc.)

But that is all bro-theology . . .

Please let us know if you get a good answer.

[LittleWaySoul]

Yeah I've wondered this too actually. Maybe @Amppax could help? I think he's pretty good with OT stuff if I'm not mistaken. 

[Guest]

Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary:

Ver. 3. I shall harden, &c.; not by being the efficient cause of his hardness of heart, but by permitting it; and by withdrawing grace from him, in punishment of his malice; which alone was the proper cause of his being hardened. (Challoner) --- He took occasion even from the miracles to become more obdurate. (Haydock) --- Yet Pharao was less impious than Calvin, for he takes the sin to himself, chap. ix. 27. (Tirinus)

[Amppax]

I would look at Dr. Matthew Ramage's "Dark Passages." Also take a look at his personal web page. I'll take a look and see if I have anything on this specifically. Jimmy Akin might have written something on this passage. 

Also, LWS, I know Dr. B talked about this in at least one class I had with him, but for the life of me I can't remember what he said. Also, I appreciate the vote of confidence, but biblical studies isn't my strength, it's probably my weakest area. 

[Guest]

Excellent hint from Amppax re Jimmy Akin, who is an A1+ source of much excellent information.   The excerpt below is not directly related to Moses and God's hardening of heart of pharaoh. It does give, however, some tools for understanding the "hardening of heart" text and in line with what I quoted from Haydock's Commentary.  Tools too for perhaps understanding other parts of Scripture as well.

Here is a much longer article by Jimmy Akin on "God, Evil and Metaphor" in which there is only a very brief mention of the hardening of pharaoh's heart right at the end.  The article does give more good tools for understanding Scripture. http://www.catholic.com/magazine/articles/god-evil-and-metaphor

Jimmy Akin's Secret Information Club too is an excellent resource (link is on Jimmy Akin.com)

Quote

 

http://jimmyakin.com/2014/08/did-god-deceive-jeremiah.html

You duped me, O LORD, and I let myself be duped;
you were too strong for me, and you triumphed.
All the day I am an object of laughter;
everyone mocks me [Jer. 20:7].

“Duped”?

Okay, let’s start by noting that “duped” is a tin-eared translation. The word is too colloquial and comes of as jarring in this context.

How does the verse read in other translations? Here it is in the RSV:CE:

O Lord, thou hast deceived me,
and I was deceived;
thou art stronger than I,
and thou hast prevailed.
I have become a laughingstock all the day;
every one mocks me.

Hm. It doesn’t have the jarring lurch into the colloquial, but it still has carries the implication of God actively doing something evil by deceiving someone.

 

The Language of Direct Attribution

Now, the Old Testament does have a mode of language in which—sometimes—everything that happens is attributed directly to God.

This happens, for example, when 2 Samuel 24:1 says God moved David to take a census that he shouldn’t have, whereas 1 Chronicles 21:1 says the devil moved him to do it.

2 Samuel is using the language of direct attribution, where the bad thing that happened (David’s census) is attributed directly to God, whereas 1 Chronicles uses a more refined mode of language that recognizes the bad thing that happened was prompted by the devil, with the implication that God allowed it.

Quote

 

The language of direct attribution is an ancient way of showing the fact that everything happens under God’s providence, but this mode of language does not distinguish between things that God intends and actively causes and those things that he merely allows.

When this mode of language is in use, bad things are spoken of in a way that directly attributes them to God.

In reality, God is all-holy and does not do anything evil. He tolerates evil with a view toward bringing good out of it. Thus the Catechism states:

The fact that God permits physical and even moral evil is a mystery that God illuminates by his Son Jesus Christ who died and rose to vanquish evil. Faith gives us the certainty that God would not permit an evil if he did not cause a good to come from that very evil, by ways that we shall fully know only in eternal life [CCC 324].

 

 

But, particularly in the Old Testament, they didn’t always make this kind of distinction and had a way of speaking that attributed everything—good or bad—directly to divine agency.

Is that’s what is happening in Jeremiah 20:7? Did Jeremiah get into the role of prophet not knowing what would happen to him and the suffering he would experience, so now he is using that mode of language?

That would be one way of solving the problem, but there are others . . .

 

The Language of Subjective Feeling

Scripture has another mode of language in which a person speaks his feelings without necessarily implying that what he says is to be taken literally. He may be expressing his feelings using hyperbole (i.e., exaggeration to make a point).

A jubilant example of this occurs in Psalm 108:2, where the psalmist cries:

Awake, harp and lyre; I will awaken the dawn!

This means that the psalmist is really jubilant and wants to go on and on praising God with song.

It need not literally mean that he will stay up all night praising God. (Indeed, I don’t have any evidence that Psalm 108 was used exclusively in all-night prayer services.)

It certainly does not mean that the psalmist will sing so long and so loud that he will literally awaken the sun from its slumber and cause it to come up.

We thus might suppose that Jeremiah is doing something similar, only with a negative emotion instead of a positive one.

Perhaps he didn’t realize what he was getting into by becoming a prophet and now he feels like he was deceived. On this theory, he would just be “venting” to get it out of his system, without it being literally the case that God tricked him.

And there is another way of looking at the text . . .

 

Look Closely at the Verb and the Context

The verb being translated as “dupe/deceive” is pathah, and while it can mean these things, it also has other meanings, and in this context it may well have one of those.

Writing in the Word Biblical Commentary (vol. 26, Jeremiah 1-25), Joel Drinkard writes:

The verb pathah is variously translated as “deceive, seduce, persuade.” . . .

[D]espite the common English translation of pathah as deceive (KJV, RSV), the context does not indicate that Yahweh has in any way deceived Jeremiah: from his call experience on, Yahweh has warned Jeremiah of the opposition he would encounter.

The context rather suggests the meaning of persuasion. Clines and Gunn suggest that the word pathah deals especially with attempts, not necessarily success, in persuading, hence the title of their article, “You Tried to Persuade Me.…”

However, in this passage, the context makes clear that Yahweh was quite successful: Yahweh persuaded and Jeremiah was fully, completely persuaded. Yahweh’s persuasion overpowered (khazaq) Jeremiah, and Yahweh overcame (yakol) [comment on 20:7, bibliographic references omitted].

An example of where God warned Jeremiah about the trials he would face as a prophet is found right at the beginning of the book, in Jeremiah 1:18-19:

And I, behold, I make you this day a fortified city, an iron pillar, and bronze walls, against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, its princes, its priests, and the people of the land. They will fight against you; but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, says the Lord, to deliver you.”

So while it could be that the text is using the language of direct attribution or the language of subjective feeling, we don’t have to go that far. It is also possible—and, in view of God’s warnings to Jeremiah, perhaps even probable—that the verb is just being used in the sense of “persuade” rather than “deceive” or (cringe!) “dupe.”

 

PRIVATE VOWS

http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/topic/132845-home-mass-private-vows/

 

Pharaoh is warned (see Exodus Chapter 5) by Moses as God instructs.  Pharaoh does not heed the warning but hardens his heart against the warning from God which Moses conveys to him - and God permits him to do so.  All in line with our Doctrine of Divine Providence (see CCC).

Edited September 14, 2016 by BarbaraTherese

[Gabriela]

I've never heard a Catholic explanation of this, but I've heard a Jewish one that wouldn't satisfy you. Since it didn't satisfy me either, I've thought about it quite a bit and I pay attention to explanations of it whenever I hear them. So, here's what I've gleaned from general talk about this case from all the places I can't remember:

We really don't know what "hardened his heart" means, concretely speaking. Oftentimes our hearts are already filled with hate (like, towards the Hebrews or their leaders) and God just abstains from influencing that in any way, allowing us to act on our hate. It's possible that what "hardened his heart" means is that God simply restored Pharaoh to the state just described. We know that Pharaoh hated the Hebrews and was all around not the bestest of guys. But, a bunch of stuff had happened to make Pharaoh afraid of harming or even simply restraining the Hebrews he hated. That fear may have tempered his acting out his hatred. Or in other words, if he hadn't been so afraid, the hatred in his heart would have manifested in a positively grandiose manner. So God's role here may not have been to make Pharaoh hateful or violent, but to take away his fear, thus "hardening his heart in the hatred already in it", so that he would act as he did, so that God could act as He did, which was so wondrous that we still remember and celebrate it today.  

Does that help at all?

[CountrySteve21]

http://www.ignatius.com/IProducts/135291/exodus.aspx

Look up verse 4:21 on the Google preview.

 

 

[LittleWaySoul]

10 hours ago, Amppax said:

I would look at Dr. Matthew Ramage's "Dark Passages." Also take a look at his personal web page. I'll take a look and see if I have anything on this specifically. Jimmy Akin might have written something on this passage. 

Also, LWS, I know Dr. B talked about this in at least one class I had with him, but for the life of me I can't remember what he said. Also, I appreciate the vote of confidence, but biblical studies isn't my strength, it's probably my weakest area. 

Ha, same here. I wish I knew Scripture better.