NOTES for Exo 10:1-29
There is a logic of its own in a person’s relationship with God, and if someone again and again pushes away the hand God extends to him, this cannot remain without consequences. At first sight, such a situation may not seem entirely clear: after all, God can simply leave alone someone who wants nothing to do with Him. But what if circumstances have placed that person, who wants no knowledge of God, in a position where the fulfillment of God’s purpose depends on his decision? God’s providence is realized in a world of free people, and in a fallen world a person exercising his freedom does not always take God’s plans into account. Then God has to act firmly. Pharaoh’s intransigence, in a certain sense, compels God to be equally unyielding toward him. The sign will therefore no longer be Pharaoh’s recognition of God’s authority, but God’s fulfillment of His plan against Pharaoh’s will (vv. 1–2). Pharaoh himself will come face to face not with God’s love, but with God’s power. And that power will be such that its manifest superiority will be clear to each and every person (v. 7). Such power has to be reckoned with. Yet reckoning with it does not mean accepting it. Even a magician or a materialist is sometimes prepared to acknowledge that the world contains forces greater than human power, whether the might of science or the power of magic. But even if such a materialist senses someone’s will behind that force, a will far surpassing the human will, he will not necessarily acknowledge it as superior to himself, for the stronger does not always have the right to rule the weaker. Nature, of course, is different: by the law of nature the stronger has the right to rule the weaker. But people rarely accept this state of affairs as the norm, even if in words they acknowledge nature as the highest and ultimate reality. And so, when a person encounters God’s power without finding God behind it, he tries to bargain with that power or with the one he thinks stands behind it, just as Pharaoh tries to bargain with Moses (vv. 8–11, 24–27). It might seem that this would be the moment to try to establish contact with Pharaoh and soften his heart. In reality, however, such bargaining implies neither genuine communion nor even a true encounter with God. It leaves no room for acknowledging God’s authority; on the contrary, its purpose is to buy God off and be rid of the God of Moses, to do something that will finally make Him leave both Egypt and Pharaoh himself alone, and to achieve this at the lowest possible cost. That is why Pharaoh is so concerned to obtain guarantees that those he releases for the feast will return. But bargaining has no place in a relationship with God.