If God gave everyone free will then how come in Exodus 14, God told Moses that he will make the King stubborn?
2006-09-01 09:06:47 · 28 answers · asked by Anonymous in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
The King james Version is what I work with, and it says that God "hardened Pharoah's Heart." Pharoah was already a cruel and tyranical ruler over the Jewish people in Egypt. he was already predispositioned to hold them in slavery and hard labor, because he feared them (they grew to be a large people within his realm). He already didn't want to let them go for these reasons. He was using their slave labor to build his treasure cities.
God "hardened" Pharoah's heart by showing him signs and wonders (supernatural workings of power) through His emissary, Moses. This was not a manipulation of Pharoah's free will, it was a solidifying of his will. Pharoah did not accept the messages brought to him by Moses, he rejected the working of miracles that was done before him, saying essentially that it is not uncommon to see such things, by bringing out his magicians that performed similar feats.
Each time he rejected the message of God, each time he denied the reality of the signs and wonders, Pharoah's heart became more hardened against the truth, and the more blind he became to seeing the truth. This eventually worked to his destruction. There are other examples of when people hardened their hearts against God in the Bible, this is just one. It always leads to destruction. And it continues to happen every day.
You would ask, "why did God do this to Pharoah, knowing that his heart would become hard?" He did this because He loves His people Israel, and because He wanted to set them free. God used Pharoah's own ungodly heart against him to release His people from slavery, and to bless them with the riches of the heathen (the Egyptians).
2006-09-01 09:31:22 · answer #1 · answered by firebyknight 4 · 1⤊ 1⤋
Okay, let's try a little biblical history here.
The Bible wasn't written by one person. Some people seem to think that one day, God came down from heaven and dictated the entire Bible to a single scribe, and it instantly became the TRUE WORD OF GOD. But it didn't happen that way. Each book had a different author (mostly). Each was written from that authors point-of-view, so naturally certain things written in one book are going to disagree with certain details from another book. Likewise, Moses didn't just sit down and write Exodus one day. It started out as an oral history, and was was only written down much later. So, naturally, when Moses and God are conversing alone on the mountain, since the writer of Exodus wasn't there to witness the event, he might have taken a little artistic license.
2006-09-01 09:19:27 · answer #2 · answered by yossarius 4 · 2⤊ 1⤋
If you are referring to the plagues, and God saying he would harden Pharoh's heart so that he would not let the people of Israel go it was so that He could prove not only to the Isralites, but to the Egyptians as well, that He was the one true God. If He hadn't continued until He got past the "miracles" that the magicians could duplicate then they never would have believed. That's in Exodus 7-11 by the way. Then in Exodus 14 it says specifically in verse 18.... "and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord". Hope that helps you understand. Have a blessed day!
2006-09-01 09:17:48 · answer #3 · answered by heartforhelping 3 · 2⤊ 1⤋
Here's the game. If you believe something in the Old Testemant, keep it. If not, the excuse to ignore it is "Jesus offered a new covenant." Clever, huh? The bible was compiled in the 4th century after Jesus supposedly lived and died, and I think the only reason the memebers of that council included the OT was so that they could point to the profecy Jesus suposedly fulfilled. Of course, where the name got changed from immanual to jesus i don't know? They even changed the order of the original Jewish text so that the profecies would be at the end leading into the NT.
2006-09-01 09:24:30 · answer #4 · answered by neil s 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
The only reason for God to have told Moses the future about the Israeli nation, that it would be stubborn is to prove to Moses and through the books of the Old Testament, the only reason why man can not live without God and that we have and will always be dependent on God, himself, as Jesus tells Satan, "Man can not live by bread alone." Also, about God giving man free will is to also prove to man, that he still God in all of Man's messes, like the war in Iraq.
2006-09-01 09:15:37 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 2⤋
Hi Kaitlyn,
when God said that he would harden Pharoah's heart, keep in mind that God knows our hearts. He knows our words before he formed them. So when he sent Moses to Pharoah he knew Pharoah's response already. Phaorah had already chosen to harden his own heart- and God knew that with each time Moses asked Pharoah to let the people go that Pharoah's heart got harder and harder. So Pharoah did have free will - it's just that in God's omniscience he understood that Pharoah's heart had become so hard.
Hope that helps,
Nickster
2006-09-01 10:54:28 · answer #6 · answered by Nickster 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Jehovah was telling Moses that he would let the heart of the Pharaoh become obstinate so that he could show his power in behave of his people and that He indeed was God. If you remember the story of Jericho, Rahab mementioned that they,the inhabitants of Jericho knew of what Jehovah had done to the Egyptians at the Red Sea, and this is why Rahab trusted in the God of the Israelites and why she was saved and blessed with being in the lineage of Jesus. Don't you just love how people without Godly wisdom try to write a book in here to prove God false.
2006-09-01 09:24:57 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 2⤋
God didn't say He would make the King BE stubborn. This means that He probably made the King, as in CREATED him, with a stubborn personality. He didn't make the king be stubborn, as in force Him to be stubborn.
2006-09-01 09:13:09 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 2⤋
Thats one of the great things about God. He can use someones own personal characteristics for them or against them. If the King was not susceptable to stubborness in the first place, God would have worked another way.
2006-09-01 09:12:14 · answer #9 · answered by zero 3 · 2⤊ 1⤋
the heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord" that's what the bible says. Good question. why did Judas betray Jesus? God's main objective was to free the children of Israel from Egypt. so Hard hearted the king had to go.
2006-09-01 09:11:20 · answer #10 · answered by April N 3 · 0⤊ 2⤋