Yahweh instructs Moses as how to proceed to work towards freeing the Hebrews from 400 years of enslavement in Egypt. Note that Yahweh announces to Moses that the Lord will harden Pharaoh’s heart so that the king will not let the Hebrews go free. This fascinates me and I do not quite know what to make of it. On one hand we have free will, and it would seem that God would not use De’s immense powers of mental telepathy to sway us one way or the other, but here he clearly admits that he will use telepathy to make Pharaoh obstinate. Does Pharaoh have free will at that point, and is hie responsible for the choices that he makes? These are mysteries for which I have no answer, nor expect to uncover them.
I would conclude that we generally exercise free will in the choices we make, and God might send us an impression or a hunch but it would not be taking over our mind, so we become living robots, doing and thinking only as God command for us to do.
It may also be that Yahweh hardens Pharaoh’s heart further because Pharaoh had already chosen to keep the Hebrews down, and God is just adding to the king’s hubris so that his falling down later will be even more humiliating, and Pharaoh’s refusal to let the people go also allows God to demonstrate his power over an earthly ruler, that is, the plagues that the Lord unleashes upon the kingdom of Egypt. It could be that the plagues need to be felt so that the evil visited upon the Hebrew people will thus be avenged, a sense of divine justice being righted. I would add that God might deliver justice against the wicked in this world as well as in the next, and blessings might be felt here as well as in the next world by the children of light.
Here are these verses from The New American Bible: “Yet I will make Pharaoh so obstinate that, despite the many signs and wonders that I will work in the land of Egypt, he will not listen to you. Therefore I will lay my hand upon Egypt and by great acts of judgement I will bring the hosts of my people, the Israelites, out of the land of Egypt, so that the Egyptians may learn that I am the Lord, as I stretch out my hand against Egypt and lead the Israelites out of their midst.”
Two more observations: not that God is human-like in that he has a hand to lay upon Egypt, so God is very human-like, I assume, in body type, or we are god-like in that sense, so I assume that we are dived into two gender, be we spirit or human, from birth.
Here are these same biblical versus from the Holy Bible (KJV): “And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt. But Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you, that I will lay my hand upon Egypt, and bring forth mine armies, and my people the children of Israel, out o the land of Egypt by great judgments. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch forth my hand upon Egypt, and bring out the children of Israel from among them.”
Note that God refers to the Hebrews as my people. Now all people on earth are God’s people, but the Hebrews are a favorite of God’s, nonetheless. Because he favors them, he will also burden them more than other peoples, expecting more from them. Yahweh refers to them as the children of Israel, as my people, so this to me is like God implicitly or explicitly referring to the faithful humans, as his children of light, a concept I much employ.
It could be too that Yahweh is not depriving Pharaoh of free will, but ls making him stubborn to set the national stage so that the Egyptian people representing all other peoples on earth, secular and pagan, from around the world: God is personally witnessing to them that Yahweh is the Lord of all the world, and these other people need his blessings and love too.
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