[5] The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them.”
Part of God's engagement with Pharaoh is to demonstrate that He is the Lord of all Lord's and King of all Kings. There seems to be a bigger purpose than simply humbling this tyrant king... He is to be an abject lesson in the futility of resisting the will of God, Who knows every choice we'll make before we even are aware there is a choice to be made and has already calculated the end game where our "king" (self will) is checkmated, so to speak.
It seems then that when God has decided to determine an outcome, He knows precisely how to manipulate our free will to achieve the end result He has already determined in eternity past. Think of our arrogance in resisting the Will of the Almighty God. Before we were able even to comprehened time, He established The beginning and the end and we think that somehow we are able to circumvent that? The chess board of our lives always ends up the way He wants it to be and we no doubt freely choose it, being able to do otherwise and so jtt seems to me the only choice we have is what sort of vessel do we want to be in God's plan... One of wrath or one of mercy? I suspect, Pharaoh, through his own free will resistance to God, was reformulated into a vessel of wrath to achieve God's purposes.
This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” 3 So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 4 But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.
5 Then the word of the Lord came to me. 6 He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel. 7 If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, 8 and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. 9 And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, 10 and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it.
Jeremiah 18:1-10
Imagine humanity is a lump of clay, but some of the clay becomes undesirable and harder to work with due to it spending too much time in the sun, making it harder to mold. The bishops, knights, rooks etc. require more detail and beauty and have a lot more freedom to move across the board in the hands of the chess master, but forming such useful and intricate pieces from hardened lumps of clay is too difficult and so the potter, in order to save the more malleable clay that was not hardened by the sun, divides the clay into two categories, the soft and the hard. The hardened clay is all made into pawns, but the more malleable clay is molded into the more valuable pieces with more exquisite detail.
Now think of us all like the clay, the more we resist the will of God by rejecting His light that He shines on us (analogous to the hardening clay in the sun), the harder it will be for Him to mold us into pieces He can more effectively use to accomplish His will (the more we submit to God's will, the more likely He is to form is into bishops or rooks, giving us more freedom to move around the chess board of His will), however I think we can take this analogy further. God would be examining our hearts, knowing our innermost desires and how we would respond in every circumstance (Psalm 139), so it seems to me He is even forming the "human pieces" of even the enemies chess board!
God molding Pharaoh into a king and giving him over to Satan for this particular game, because of his self hardened heart would demonstrate the utter helplessness of any who would oppose His Will. It seems that the Lord is interested in "capturing the Pharaoh piece" (1 Timothy 2:4), but knowing he will never submit, God uses him to advance His pieces forward strategically.
8 Before the spies lay down for the night, she went up on the roof 9 and said to them, “I know that the Lord has given you this land and that a great fear of you has fallen on us, so that all who live in this country are melting in fear because of you. 10 We have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea[a] for you when you came out of Egypt, and what you did to Sihon and Og, the two kings of the Amorites east of the Jordan, whom you completely destroyed. 11 When we heard of it, our hearts melted in fear and everyone’s courage failed because of you, for the Lord your God is God in heaven above and on the earth below.
Joshua 2:8-11
For the Scriptures say that God told Pharaoh, “I have appointed you for the very purpose of displaying my power in you and to spread my fame throughout the earth.”
Romans 9:17
Imagine a scenario where Satan challenges God to a game of “human chess”, but the very pieces that Satan can use have been molded and handed to him by God! The only opposition the devil can raise against God, is the opposition that God molded into the pieces He determined based on their free will rejection and character traits! It's utterly hopeless for the devil and his minions as the Person they are playing against is the Creator of all of the pieces, knowing them all intrically and intimately.
The only choice we have then is if we want to be molded into a chess piece for God's use of His determination or molded into a chess piece, still of His determination and given to Satan in a battle that he is inevitably going to lose where we will be destroyed…
Pharaoh's only choice then is whether he wants to be a vessel of mercy or a vessel of wrath and God, knowing that he will never repent through His omniscience, shapes him into the piece He wants him to be and plays the game all the way to checkmate…
The Lord of Heaven’s Armies has spoken— who can change his plans? When his hand is raised, who can stop him?”
Isaiah 14:7
20 In a large house there are articles not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay; some are for special purposes and some for common use. 21 Those who cleanse themselves from the latter will be instruments for special purposes, made holy, useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work.
2 Timothy 2:20-21
6] Moses and Aaron did so; they did just as the Lord commanded them.
Moses and Aaron are in full obedience to Yahweh, representing Him to Pharaoh, not as a battle between the forces of man, but of the one true God (represented by Moses) versus the gods of Egypt (represented by Pharaoh).
[7] Now Moses was eighty years old, and Aaron eighty-three years old, when they spoke to Pharaoh. [8] Then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, [9] “When Pharaoh says to you, ‘Prove yourselves by working a miracle,’ then you shall say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and cast it down before Pharaoh, that it may become a serpent.’”
The first showdown will begin with Moses and Aaron demonstrating their God’s ability to transform ordinary matter into a living organism.
[10] So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord commanded. Aaron cast down his staff before Pharaoh and his servants, and it became a serpent.
As the Lord said, the staff turned into a serpent in front of Pharaoh at the casting down of Aaron. A miracle has been demonstrated, something that should convince anyone of the power of the God Moses and Aaron serve, but what is Pharaoh's response?
[11] Then Pharaoh summoned the wise men and the sorcerers, and they, the magicians of Egypt, also did the same by their secret arts.
So it seems at the moment a stalemate has occurred. On the surface it would appear the gods of Egypt are able to keep up with Moses and Aaron’s God and while it is all slights of hand from the Egyptian sorcerers, there would be no way from the outside to say who is more powerful as both sides could accuse the other of true power of trickery.
[12] For each man cast down his staff, and they became serpents. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs.
Now it's starting to become a little more interesting! The God of the Hebrews snake overpowered the snake of the gods of Egypt. It's clearly a power play by Yahweh, showing His superiority over the false gods of Egypt (the reality is however as we know, that He alone is the Creator of both snakes in the demonstration).
[13] Still Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the Lord had said.
Go back and reflect on theory 1. What is the point of this entire exercise if a super natural hardening is at work? While it is possible that God in His omniscience saw that Pharaoh would never freely believe and judicially hardened his heart and is now using him as a vessel of wrath, I don't think we need to necessarily adopt this view as the text does give another option more consistent with the whole of scripture (God desiring all to be saved).
Think of a sports team of top athletes suddenly defeated by a group of underdog nobodies. Would these elite athletes be so quick to acknowledge that the other team may be better players than them? More than likely they would be angry and attribute the other team as winning to pure luck as to maintain their sense of superiority and anyone who boasted that the other team got the better of them would be met with anger, with an even greater push to defend the honor of their talents.
Likewise when Yahweh's snake overpowered the gods of Egypt’s snake, Pharaoh, like the elite team of athletes would be more prone to attribute the loss to dumb luck rather than actual greater power or skill.
God knows that He could easily overwhelm Pharaoh and humiliate him in this contest by unleashing all of the plagues at once to break his spirit, but instead seems to prefer in His Will to provoke Pharaoh incrementally, almost as an act of mercy to give him a chance to do the right thing and lay down his pride.
God can see the world where He crushes Pharaoh as well as the world where He stoops down to his level and begins to gradually tease out the stubborn arrogance in his heart to maximize His glory, while giving mercy and time to repent in patience. Think of it this way.
Suppose Pharaoh is the local arm wrestling champion and a new challenger arrives. This challenger could pin his arm down to the table in an instant, but instead let's Pharaoh struggle, smiling while he winces in pain to keep his arm from giving in and then swiftly slams his arm to claim the victory. Humiliated and pride stricken, needing to feel like he is the best, Pharaoh refuses to accept the reality his opponent is better than him and begins to imagine how he's a better sprinter to maintain his ego. He is hardened to the idea there may be someone stronger than him, but he wasn't hardened until the display of power by his opponent which brought his humiliation. I believe this makes way more sense of the text, between Yahweh and Pharaoh, a battle to show who is the real Sovereign than God hardening Pharaoh's heart and then showing how strong He is, just because...
To be continued...
