“But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, that I may multiply My signs and marvels in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 7:3).

Like others before and after him, Abraham Ibn Ezra (Spain, 1089-1164) asks: “Many have wondered and asked, if God hardened his heart, how was he guilty and how did he sin?” If Pharaoh did not have free will, what was the moral basis for his punishment?

R. Joseph Albo (Spain, 1380-1444) tried to answer this question:

There are those who repent from fear of the punishment they receive, like a slave who pleads when his master beats him, and when his master withholds the rod of his anger, he continues to rebel as he did before, as it was with Pharaoh, who said, “The Lord is in the right…” (Exodus 9:27) when the plague was upon him…
And in this way we can explain what the Bible means in saying that God hardens the heart of the evil or stiffens their necks and prevents them from repenting… this is so that the fear of the penalty will be removed from their heart and they will be left to their character and choice without duress. It can then be seen whether their repentance resulted from free choice. And since Pharaoh turned to evil when the plague was ended, God said “I hardened his heart,” that is, I removed the fear from his heart that he acquired due to the plague, and left him with his character and choice…(Sefer Ha-Ikkarim 4:25).

In other words, According to Albo, by hardening Pharaoh’s heart, God did not deprive him of free will, but rather granted him the strength of character he required to express his true will.

Samuel David Luzzatto (Italy, 1800-1865) adopted a different, rationalist approach:

The acts that are attributed to God in the Bible are strange acts whose cause we are unable to understand, like the hardening of Pharaoh’s will after he had witnessed several signs and miracles, which is strange and odd, and is therefore attributed to God.

In other words, the description merely reflects our normal tendency to attribute unexplainable phenomena to God.

As opposed to these approaches, which try to restore Pharaoh’s freedom of choice, despite the apparent plain meaning of the text, Dr. Pnina Feller suggests that we try to understand the narrative in the context of Egyptian culture:

The heart represents a person’s character, his conscience and morality. Egyptian culture praises determination. This quality is expressed in such idioms as “strong hearted,” “heavy hearted” and “hard hearted,” which generally express a positive attribute like reserve, decisiveness and determination…
The Biblical author was surely acquainted with these conceptual motifs. He challenges them by describing the heaviness of Pharaoh’s heart, its strengthening and hardening. He intends to emphasize Pharaoh’s many sins in this world…He deprives Pharaoh of his Divine heart and portrays him as a flesh-and-blood king. The author reverses the meanings of the collocations that describe the heart that supports and aids the dead person in his final judgment…By choosing the collocations “strong hearted,” “hard hearted” and “heavy hearted” to describe the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, the Biblical author emphasizes the exacting of judgement for Pharaoh’s deeds in this world. The author employs expressions and descriptions taken from Egyptian culture, while filtering them so that they accord with Biblical ideology (Pnina Galpaz-Feller, Exodus – Reality or Illusion, (Hebrew) 80-85).

In other words, the use of expressions like “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart” forms part of a theological debate with the Egyptian worldview.

1. The freedom to choose between right and wrong is a defining human characteristic, and forms the moral basis for the Jewish doctrine of reward and punishment. Do the any of the above approaches provide a satisfactory explanation of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart?

2. In his commentary, Rashi writes: “It is better for Me that his heart be hardened so that My signs be increased and you will recognize My greatness.” This seems to reflect the plain meaning of the words: “that I may multiply My signs and marvels.” Is it possible that God deprived Pharaoh of his free will in order to use him as a vehicle for punishing Egypt and for proving His power to Israel? Does such an approach mean that we can attribute all of the world’s evils to God?

3. Albo’s explanation appears to imply that viewing the doctrine of reward and punishment simply as a carrot-and-stick system may negate the possibility of free will that grounds the doctrine. Does Albo provide a possible answer to this problem?

4. As opposed to Albo, Feller’s approach may help us understand the significance of the motifs of the Exodus narrative in their original context. Which approach is more useful is helping us to confront our current theological questions?