When Wicked Leaders Run Away: Rabbinic Sources on Free Will, Repentance and Hard Hearts

(2) You shall repeat all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall speak to Pharaoh to let the Israelites depart from his land. (3) But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, that I may multiply My signs and marvels in the land of Egypt. (4) When Pharaoh does not heed you, I will lay My hand upon Egypt and deliver My ranks, My people the Israelites, from the land of Egypt with extraordinary chastisements. (5) And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch out My hand over Egypt and bring out the Israelites from their midst.”

And here is the answer to the question that everyone asks: If God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, what then was his (Pharaoh's) sin?

There are two answers, which both hold true: First, Pharaoh, in his wickedness, had unjustifiably treated the Jews terribly, so he was punished with the withdrawal of the path of repentance, and there are many verses regarding this in the Torah and the Writings, and he was punished by his original deeds.

Secondly, only the second half of the [ten] plagues were brought upon Egypt due to Pharaoh’s transgressions, as the Torah states, And Pharaoh’s heart was strengthened, (Shemot 7:13, 26; 8:15), and Pharaoh hardened his own heart heart (ibid. 8:28, 9:7).

Another explanation: For I have hardened his heart - Rabbi Yochanan said: Does this not provide heretics with an opportunity to open their mouths to say that he had no means of repenting, as it say "For I have hardened his heart".

Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish said to him: Let the mouths of the heretics be stopped up. Rather, (Mishlei 3:34) If it concerns the scorners, he scorns them. When the Holy One Blessed be He warns a man once, twice, thrice and he doesn't repent, and G-d will close his heart against repentance so that He should not exact vengeance from him for his sins. So to with the wicked Pharaoh, since Hashem sent five times to him and he took no notice, G-d then said: "You have stiffened your neck and hardened your heart; well, I will add impurity to your impurity".

ואני אקשה את לב פרעה, “I will toughen the heart of Pharaoh.” Most people question G’d’s right to exact punishment from Pharaoh if He had first robbed him of the freedom of will which is an inalienable right of every human being created in the image of the Creator. The answer to this question is quite simple. Pharaoh was not punished for disobeying G’d’s command but for the relish with which he maltreated G’d’s people. He was punished for the excess cruelty he displayed. This was not due to G’d’s interfering with his free will, but to a flaw in his character as a human being.

People who display this degree of inhumanity of man to man, are denied the opportunity to return to G’d in penitence. This is described in Ethics of our fathers as עברה גוררת עברה (aveirah gavereth aveirah), the commission of deliberate sins brings in its wake the commission of more sins and yet more sins. There are numerous verses in Scripture confirming this principle.

Furthermore, if you will examine the text of the ten plagues you will observe that G’d did not interfere with Pharaoh’s decision making brain or heart until after the fifth plague. The wording of the first five plagues describes that Pharaoh’s obstinacy in resisting G’d and Moses up until then was entirely spontaneous, not reinforced by any attempt of G’d to coerce his behaviour.

During the last five plagues, when Pharaoh had initially indicated a preparedness to comply with G’d’ request and to let the people go, at least for a vacation of a religious nature, he reneged on his promises as soon as the plague had been called off by Moses. Some commentators simply see in the words ואני אקשה את לבו, not an interference with Pharaoh’s free will, but a device that enabled him to endure the plagues without collapsing. This, as a corollary, made him feel that he was strong enough to withstand anything G’d would try and do to him.

ואני אקשה, seeing that G’d is interested in the sinner’s repentance rather than his death (as we know from Ezekiel 33,11 חי אני, נאום ה', אם אחפוץ במות הרשע כי אם בשובו מדרכו וחיה, “by My life, I do not want the death of the wicked but that he return from his wicked path and live”), G’d told Moses that He would bring on numerous plagues, all in order to increase the chances that Pharaoh would finally see the light and become a genuine penitent. He hoped that by demonstrating His greatness and His power this would eventually cause the Egyptians to recognise all this.

At the same time, G’d also spelled out a similar thought in 9,16 but aimed at the Israelites, when He said: “that the only reason He had not yet killed Pharaoh was so that in the course of more plagues you, the Jewish people, would come to recognise both G’d’s greatness and His patience.“ He also wanted the Jewish people to learn how to both love and revere Him when they witnessed and thought about the meaning of all these plagues.

There can be no question that without G’d stiffening Pharaoh’s attitude from time to time, he would have collapsed much sooner and would have sent the Israelites on their desired journey. However, this would not have been the result of his repentance and humbling himself before the Lord, involving genuine regret about his previous errors, but the result of his impotence to withstand the pressure applied to him. He would have acted out of terror of what the next plague would do to him and to his country. If we needed confirmation of this, all we have to do is look at what his servants said to him when Moses threatened with the plague of locust. They said to him: “how long will you be obstinate, do you not see that Egypt will go down the drain?!”

There was not a single word of regret of past errors, no word of recognition that G’d could have killed them all long before this and that He must therefore be very patient, and kind, but mere terror forced them to utter these words. (10,7)

Keeping all this in mind, it is foolish to ask how G’d could punish Pharaoh after he Himself had interfered with his decision-making process by “stiffening his heart,” ואני אקשה את לב פרעה, I will stiffen the heart of Pharaoh, etc.” not in order to punish him but in order to finally trigger repentance in his heart. The operative clause is “in order that I can demonstrate all these miracles of Mine in his midst” (10,1), the purpose being to bring about his humbling himself in repentance and genuine contrition. If that wish of G’d would indeed materialise, the Jewish people also would tell of G’d’s greatness, (למען ספר את שמי, having observed at first hand how the mightiest secular power on earth turned into G’d fearing human beings.) They would tell their children and children’s children the lesson they had learned that G’d’s apparent cruelty is actually an act of loving kindness as it results in His creatures coming to love and to revere Him.

The basic lesson in ethics we derive from all this is that when suffering an affliction we must first and foremost examine our past actions to find out where we went wrong, and try to find out what these afflictions are intended to trigger in our memory so that we can improve our conduct both vis-à-vis G’d and our fellow man.

ואני אקשה את לב פרעה, “and I will harden the heart of Pharaoh.” Many people ask that if G’d’ hardened Pharaoh’s heart so that he refused to release the Israelites how could G’d justify bringing the plagues upon him and the Egyptians seeing these people had acted under duress? Such plagues would represent caprice, undeserved violence by the Creator against people who were not guilty. How can we reconcile this with our concept of a fair and just G’d? Punishing Pharaoh for divinely inspired obstinacy and refusal to change his ways seems unfair.

The answer is, of course, that Pharaoh had already been a confirmed sinner, having committed other sins which accounted for his forfeiting the right to do Teshuvah, repentance. If his only sin had been that he refused to let the Israelites go, and G’d had indeed made his heart stubborn on that score alone, punishing him would indeed have been doing violence to his rights as a human being.

Pharaoh’s original sin versus the Jewish people has been spelled out in Exodus 3,5 where he used the natural (or unnatural) increase of the births amongst the Jewish people as a pretext to “outsmart” them and to kill their babies. Seeing that he had displayed his wickedness for all to see without having been interfered with by G’d, the time had now come when his punishment was that he was deprived of his free choice.

Had G’d allowed Pharaoh and his people to become penitents He could not even have punished them for what they had done up until now. We have proof of this from the story of Jonah and Nineveh. G’d accepted the repentance of the people of Nineveh and they completely escaped punishment. This is why G’d had to find a stratagem to prevent the Egyptians from becoming penitents at this stage.

According to this Midrash the words which G’d spoke to Moses in our verse where He said: “I will harden the heart of Pharaoh,” refer to the last five plagues. We observe that several times when the plagues were really hurting the Egyptians Pharaoh weakened and made promises and offered compromises to Moses until in the end he reneged.

The reason he reneged was that G’d hardened his heart although without such interference he would have given in much sooner. G’d had provided an additional rationale for all this when He said (9,16) “in order for My name to become a household word all over the earth.” This is analogous to Ezekiel 38,23 והתגדלתי והתקדשתי ונודעתי לעיני גוים רבים, “Thus will I be exalted and sanctified and become known in the eyes of many nations, etc.”

You should know that the obstinacy of Pharaoh had already been hinted at to Moses at the very beginning of his career as a prophet at the burning bush when G’d had shown him a bush which burned without being consumed. G’d had compared the multiple troubles and plagues to fire, and Pharaoh and the wicked Egyptians as the bush of thorns which refused to submit to the fire (plagues).

This had been G’d’s way of alerting Moses to the remarkable obstinacy which would be displayed by Pharaoh plus the fact that this would be just as unnatural as the spectacle he was observing at the time.