More data on the Hardening of Pharaoh's Heart

I was debating predestination and referred to God hardening Pharaoh's heart in response to Pharaoh first choosing to do that himself. I was prepared to show that from the verses you referenced but noticed this:

"Pharaoh hardened his own heart without any help from God (Exodus 7.13"

The problem is that the verse says this:

13) And he hardened Pharaoh's heart, that he hearkened not unto them; as the LORD had said.

I'm not sure how to argue that Pharaoh did it first with that and when it is also preceded by

3) And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt.

4) But Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you, that I may lay my hand upon Egypt, and bring forth mine armies, and my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments.

I could argue that verse 3 is based on God's foreknowledge of what will happen but the response would be that Pharaoh will not hearken in vs. 4 because of what God says he will do in verse 3.

Not sure how to proceed.

Thanks

XYZ

Not all of the Hebrew fonts will likely transfer, so I have snapshotted them and attached them as jpegs… I hope this helps, friend…glenn

"4:20–23. hardening Pharaoh’s heart. This section contains the first reference to the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart—a motif that occurs twenty times over the next ten chapters (during the plagues and up to the crossing of the sea). Several different verbs are used, and Pharaoh sometimes hardens his own heart, while other times it is hardened by the Lord. The concept has parallels to similar Egyptian expressions that convey perseverance, stubbornness, persistence and an unyielding nature. These can be good qualities or bad, depending on what type of behavior or attitude one is persisting in. [Matthews, V. h., Chavalas, M. W., & Walton, J. H. (2000). The IVP Bible background commentary : Old Testament (electronic ed.) (Ex 4:23). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.]

Here’s the entry and footnotes from The Jewish Publication Society’s commentary on Exodus (ed. Sarna)—awesome work, btw:

“will stiffen his heart The motif of the stiffening, or hardening, of Pharaoh's heart runs through the entire Exodus story; it appears exactly twenty times. Half of the references are to an essential attribute of the man's character [Ex 7.13, 14, 22; 8.11, 15, 28; 9.7, 34, 35; 13.15] half are attributed to divine causality [4.21; 7.3; 9.12; 10.1, 20, 27; 11:10; 14.4, 8, 17]. In the biblical conception, the psychological faculties are considered to be concentrated in the heart. Regarded as the seat of the intellectual, moral, and spiritual life of the individual, this organ is the determinant of behavior. The "hardening of the heart" thus expresses a state of arrogant moral degeneracy, unresponsive to reason and incapable of compassion. Pharaoh's personal culpability is beyond question.

"It is to be noted that in the first five plagues Pharaoh's obduracy is self-willed. It is only thereafter that it is attributed to divine causality. This is the biblical way of asserting that the king's intransigence has by then become habitual and irreversible; his character has become his destiny. He is deprived of the possibility of relenting and is irresistibly impelled to his self-wrought doom." [ They translate 7.13 as “Yet Pharaoh’s heart stiffened and he did not heed them, as the Lord has said”]

[I have attached a jpeg of the verse in the interlinear, so you can see that there IS no divine agency mentioned in that verse. It was just a natural ‘grew stubborn’ as an expression of the guy’s response.]