The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart

Is it fair for God to harden Pharaoh’s heart, so that Pharaoh has no choice but to act cruelly — and then gets punished for it anyway?

God says plainly that He will harden Pharaoh’s heart so that Pharaoh will not let the people go. But the Hebrew text is more layered than that single English phrase suggests. Three different Hebrew words are used across the narrative to describe this hardening:

• chazaq, meaning to harden or strengthen
• qashah, meaning to be hard, severe, or fierce
• kabad, meaning heavy, weighty, or burdensome

Follow the links and you’ll see each word covers a wide range of possible translations. All three verbs are used for God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, but they are also used, just as often, for Pharaoh hardening his own heart.

That overlap is the key to the passage. Going through the examples, the pattern that emerges is this: God hardened Pharaoh’s heart not to force him into evil against his will, but so that Pharaoh would not simply give up the moment he saw God at work — so that he would have the strength to keep resisting God, which, as it turns out, he did again and again on his own.

Pharaoh’s own agency in this is clearest during the devastating plague of hail, where he first admitted that he had sinned — and then, the moment the hail stopped, sinned again and hardened his own heart.