When reading today's passage, a natural question arises: why does God "harden" Pharaoh's heart...
When reading today's passage, a natural question arises: why does God "harden" Pharaoh's heart (v. 3)? Of course, "hardens" here does not mean "makes cruel," but "makes firm," that is, unyielding. Yet even with this understanding, this unyieldingness creates problems for both the Hebrews and the Egyptians, including Pharaoh himself. But all things are possible for God; why, then, did He not soften Pharaoh's heart?
The answer to this question must be sought in the description of the Egyptian plagues. In today's story, what especially stands out is the way Pharaoh was affected by the actions of the Egyptian magicians, who by their enchantments were able, at first glance, to do the same thing as the God of Moses (vv. 11-13, 22). Here, clearly, we see the inability of human reason, damaged by the fall, to penetrate into the depth of phenomena and see their spiritual first causes. Rational thought and logic see only the surface of things. Science can say much about the structure of the universe and its individual elements, but it knows nothing about either purpose or first causes; questions such as "why?" and "what is the meaning of this?" should not be addressed to science. Only the one who created things knows their meaning, whether that one is God or a human being. And only the one who created them knows the real causes of what happens to them. Rational thought, logic, and science investigate only the consequences of these real, original causes. And Pharaoh, like every person, found himself captive to his limited reason. He saw only one thing: staffs that had turned into serpents (vv. 10-11). And water that had turned into blood (vv. 20-22).
The point here is not even that in the case of the water that became blood, the causes were in fact entirely different in each case: the actions of the Egyptian magicians were an ordinary magical trick, while God's action can be regarded as a sign given by God through a natural phenomenon. The point is that God's action naturally entered into His plan and was therefore part of His providence, while the actions of the magicians did not go beyond the bounds of ordinary, natural human possibilities, even if their abilities may have somewhat exceeded those of the average person.
But even in a situation where God's action strongly resembles the work of human hands, the one to whom a sign from God is given is always also given a hint, which, if only one pays attention to it, can become the key to understanding the situation. So it was in the case of the staffs turning into serpents, when the serpent into which Moses' staff had turned swallowed the serpents into which the staffs of the Egyptian magicians had turned (v. 12).
But God is unobtrusive: this is only a hint, and it can be missed if the heart is stubborn. The human person is free, and God does not deprive him of the freedom He Himself has given. He gives signs and points them out to the one who wants to see. But He does not force anyone.
