The Bible says that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. Read Exodus 10:1-2. The Christian message is that God is compassionate and loving, and He sent Jesus to die for our sins so that we can live in heaven forever. God is slow to anger and abounding in love. Every once in a while we come across a passage of Scripture that seems out of character to the God of grace, love, and mercy. In Exodus 7:3, God told Moses that he was going to harden Pharaoh’s heart. As God sends plague after plague, God hardens Pharaoh’s heart more and more, as recorded in Exodus 7:13; 8:15; 8:32. In Exodus 10, God tells Moses why. “I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his servants so that I may show these signs of mine among them,” so that the Hebrew people might share these signs of God with the generations that will follow. Here we are, 3,400 years later, writing and reading about what God did to convince Pharaoh to let the Hebrew people go. In September, fifteen of us went to Egypt to see the grand pyramids and temples that were built by the Pharaohs. On the walls of these ancient buildings are the stories and religious practices of the people. The Egyptians were a people of faith. They believed in many gods, judgment, and an afterlife. On judgement day, a person had to give an account of his or her life based on the moral code of Maat, the goddess of truth. Then the person’s heart was placed on a scale. The other side of the scale was a feather. If the heart weighed more than the feather, the person would be denied entrance into “heaven.” Sin made the heart heavy. A hardened heart was a sinful heart, therefore tipping the scales against him. A Pharaoh spent his or her entire life adhering to the moral code of Maat in order to have a heart free of sin. Pharaoh was not just the leader of the government, but also the leader of the religion and its practices. A Pharaoh was considered the most holy person in Egypt. Can you see what is happening in the story? Each time Pharaoh denies freedom to the captives, he is sinning, and his heart becomes heavier. Pharaoh is risking his own eternal life. The last plague, the plague of the firstborn, breaks Pharaoh. He tells Moses to take the people and go. Although there is no mention of the heaviness of his heart, we do have insight into Pharaoh’s heart when he asks Moses to bless him. This request for blessing is an admission that the God of the Hebrews is a mighty and powerful God, and Pharaoh wants to receive the blessing of the Hebrew God. Today we simply ask God to forgive us for our sins, follow Jesus, and try to be more like Jesus each day.

Prayer: God of plagues and promises, when our hearts are hardened or heavy, send your Holy Spirit to turn our hearts to you. Bless us, O God, so that we might see that you are slow to anger and abounding in love. Amen.