In this week’s parasha we read about Moses’ first attempt to convince Pharaoh to let Am Yisrael go free. It did not go as planned. In an attempt to encourage Moses, God tells him that He will help, but that first He will harden Pharaoh’s heart. This phrase “hardening of the heart” occurs twenty times in various forms throughout the book of Shmot. During the first five plagues, the Torah says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. After this, the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart is attributed to an act of God. ”…But the Lord had stiffened the heart of Pharaoh so that he would not let the Israelites go from his land.”1 Many Jewish thinkers have been troubled by the implications of this Divine intervention.
Was the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart a violation of his free will? And if God hardened Pharaoh’s heart in order to keep Am Yisrael as slaves, can Pharaoh be held responsible or their suffering? What does it actually mean that God will harden Pharaoh’s heart? And is there a difference between this and when the Torah tells us Pharaoh did so himself?
The Rambam addresses these questions in his work Shemona Perakim. He states clearly that this is a case of God taking away free will. Pharaoh sinned against Israel by killing their newborn boys and enslaving them, therefore he is deserving of punishment. However, it is only after the opportunity of the first five plagues that God punishes Pharaoh by taking away his ability to do teshuva.
The Abarbanel challenges the Rambam’s position, citing theMishnah Avot2 “Repent even one day before your death…” He asks – would Hashem make an evildoer “continue to do evil”?3
Abarbanel’s own explanation focuses on when exactly the Torah notes the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. It always occurs right after a plague has stopped. Pharaoh is given a breathing space between each plague and Moses’ request to let Israel go. This gave him a chance to listen, or to rationalize the plagues as natural events and justify his refusal. Some commentators indeed understood the plagues as natural events.4 And if one wants, we can see signs of similar events in our days as well5. Perhaps through this we can understand Pharaoh’s reluctance to ascribe his suffering to an almighty God.
One could say that in the Rambam’s view, Pharoah could not be blamed for the latter half of the exodus story. By maintaining Pharaoh’s free will, the Abarbanel holds him fully responsible for the injustice done to Am Yisrael.
Umberto Cassuto was a professor of Bible Studies at the Hebrew University. He explains that early Hebrew language expresses every phenomenon as a direct act of God. Since everything comes from a single Source, all action can be attributed to the agency of the Divine. The book of Samuel expressed Hannah’s struggle to become pregnant as “God has closed her womb.”6 The Torah describes unintentional murder saying “…it came about by an act of God…”7
The alternative to attributing all events to God’s direct intervention is the analysis of all the detailed actions which lead up to a certain situation. This quickly results in an infinite number of choices and compounding factors. We lack the ability to grasp everything occurring around us. All the more so everything which has created the situation in which we find ourselves. Consequently it is natural to ignore all intermediaries and draw all events back to the Source of life. The text doesn’t mean to tell us that God limited Pharoah’s will. ”God will harden Pharaoh’s heart” is equivalent to “Pharaoh will harden his own heart.” God is just as active or in active, even when the text refers to God as agent. The meaning of the two verses is the same and therefore they are used interchangeably in the Torah.8
No matter which path we take in answering the difficulty of the seeming limitation placed on Phoraoh’s will, we can derive a personal lesson from the story. In a sense, Pharaoh becomes a “no-man” by refusing to release Israel. We are all subject to habits and the more times we say no to something, the easier it is to say “no” the next time.
It is also important to recall the societal relationships in this story. Slavery is the norm. Pharaoh is God in Egyptian society. Releasing the Jews would be a recognition that there are more powerful gods than himself. Not only would he lose face amongst the Egyptians, but also admit that a mightier god was assisting an enslaved people. These considerations reinforce Pharaoh’s stubbornness, making it practically impossible to agree to Moses’ demand.
God influenced Pharaoh’s judgement by inciting stubbornness in him. He was in the habit of saying no. Furthermore, the entire context of his life pushed him to do so. We can learn from this “failure of free will.” We must be aware of what influences our decisions. Identifying powers of influence from habit and contexts which affect us psychologically and emotionally can help us make healthy decisions in our everyday life.
1. Shmot 10:20
2. Avot 2:10
3. Abarbanel 7:3
4. See Rashbam, Shmot 14:21 and Ralbag, Commentary to Genesis, 6-9
5. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4022871.stm
6. 1 Samuel 1:5
7. Shmot 21:13
8. A commentary on the book of Exodus p. 66
