Sent: Monday, August 30, 2010 9:06 AM
To: Jeremiah Pacey
Hi Jere,
I’ve been reading about Moses and the Pharaoh (Exodus 5-14 – Jeremiah) and I am troubled. Did God lie? He’s says he’s holy, and I do believe Him — but, God told Moses to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites to go into the desert 3 DAYS to worship Him. What he really meant was, “We’re leaving Egypt and not coming back”. Was this a lie? Certainly God manipulated Pharaoh (He hardened his heart) several times. Maybe Pharaoh and the Egyptians had it coming. Maybe God wanted to make a point — big time. But did he lie? Thanks for thinking about this before the lightning bolts scorch my butt for daring to question this.
Perplexed & Troubled
Hi Perplexed & Troubled
I am very sorry that this is a day later than I had promised… my wife was not feeling well and so my evening ended up overloaded with my kids.
As for daring to ask questions – fear not! God is not angered by our questions or daring to think the unthinkable, it’s when we choose to persist in asking questions He has already answered that we get into trouble.
In answer to what I perceive to be your over-arching concern: Is God a liar and a trickster?
Short answer: Nope.
Long Answer: (deep breath)
Was God lying when He said He only wanted the Israelites to worship Him for 3 days and then they’d come back? No. He was proving a point. Pharaoh was unwilling to bow to God in a small way. This was an opportunity for Pharaoh to quit while he was ahead and no one was hurt, but Pharaoh wouldn’t because he was the worst kind of dictator and iron fisted ruler. Pharaoh was more than a political title – it was a religious one. The Pharaoh was god incarnate on Earth in the eyes of the Egyptians. So we are dealing with more than an instance of God telling some guy “this is what we’re gonna do” he’s telling a guy who thinks he is god “I’m God, you’re not, and this is what we’re gonna do”.
Pharaoh was a bully with a deep-rooted god complex. Look at Pharaoh’s response to them not working for 1 day while Moses & Aaron make their request - Pharaoh ramps it up makes them work harder and under more adverse conditions. He is not just building pyramids and monuments he is seeking to break these people and make them see him as god – no more of this YAHWEH foolishness. If Pharaoh let them go for just 3 days he would no longer be God in the eyes of the Hebrews, in the eyes of Egypt & even in his own eyes… and he would not accept that.
In fact, if the 10 Plagues were indeed direct attacks on the powers of the different members of the Egyptian pantheon - then look and marvel at the arrogance of Pharaoh. He refused to yield and give God authority until the final plague (death of the 1st born son) which was the one that attacked his position directly. Pharaoh held himself higher than every other god in Egypt and only relented in the face of one who was inarguably more powerful than him.
Now as for the whole “God manipulated Pharaoh by hardening his heart” idea; go back and look at the story again and read it thinking about Pharaoh’s actions in light of what I wrote above. God did not manipulate Pharaoh in the sense of forcing him to do something he would normally not have done. Pharaoh in this story is shown to be the kind of unreasoning and unyielding tyrant who needed little or no provocation to go down the road he went down. Remember it all started with a simple request for a 3 day weekend & Pharaoh’s response that stopping for 1 day was far too much! God did not have to manipulate Pharaoh, Pharaoh already had a predilection for stupid choices!
Now as a further explanation, in the OT Jewish mindset nothing, absolutely nothing, I mean not a single tiny thing, NOTHING happened apart from God’s will. (In Job, even Satan can only do what God wills.) To the Hebrews telling and hearing this story, everything happened and happens and will happen only because it is God’s will. So the statement “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart” is less a statement of God’s maliciousness and manipulation and more a declaration of God’s power and Pharaoh’s utter impotence. Even when Pharaoh was at what he thought was his most powerful and defiant, shaking his fist and railing against YAHWEH, even then YAHWEH was still in total control; even then Pharaoh had all the authority and power over God that a mewling newborn has over his parents: he can kick and scream all he wants but he can’t go anywhere until they pick him up and carry him. As proof of this look at the end of the story: the Hebrews are gone away, set free by Pharaoh himself, and as soon as God has left the room (so to speak) Pharaoh reverts back to his bully mindset and decides to send out his armies to attack unarmed families walking through the desert. (At this time the Hebrews still wouldn’t have had a chance to develop any sort of military or anything but the most minimal sort of defences. This likely would not have included anything but the most rudimentary weapons – remember they were slaves in Egypt and you didn’t hand a slave a sword – especially right after you set them free, and definitely not ones that were leaving on the terms and in the numbers that the Hebrews were leaving Egypt.) Pharaoh was unwilling to submit himself to God or even the idea of someone with more power and authority than himself and his refusal to accept a lesser place before God is what killed Him.
God is not a manipulator or a liar. He did not force Pharaoh into doing anything Pharaoh was unwilling or incapable of doing. God sought to deal with Pharaoh decently, but Pharaoh refused to accept any higher authority than himself. So God simply proved Himself to be God… in spite of Pharaoh’s beliefs about his own position in the universe. It is a rightfully troubling story. It should not be troubling because of how we perceive God’s behaviour, but because of what it tells us about how far our own foolishness can take us if we refuse to yield to the “One Who is Higher than You and I”.
Please send back your thoughts, especially if you don’t feel like I answered your questions or I have given you even more troublesome questions!
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This was blogged as my daughter and I watched “The Road Warrior”… Pharaoh would have been wise to take The Humungus’ advice to “just walk a-way”
