in the exodus story, why did god "harden" the pharaoh's heart.?

Question

so he could personally kill the firstborn? read the bible.. he did kill them all personally.

not only newborn babies. inocent animals too which had nothing to do with egypt. if pharaoh was a firstborn, which i think he is, he should be dead...

talk about changing the definition of free will. some mercdiful god you have. who made the prophecy anyway? he planned it all along.

he said somewhere that "i will pass over" blah blah. i'll read the bible again.

i'll murder your kidnapper's daughter then so you can survive..

also he pretty much gave them all a free ticket to hell.. "for all have sinned" "all" not all adults.

the ends justify the means. he made people prophecy about this so he can have a reason to kill children.

Answer 1

Pretty much -- the biblegod intentionally meddled with the "free will" he's supposed to hold as sacrosanct, just so he could show off to the masses and get his rocks off butchering innocent, newborn babies....

Answer 2

God did not harden the pharaoh's heart! God gave us all free will, so that we might not be enslaved, but made in His image and voluntarily reciprocate His love!

And God does not do anything to prove Himself right, or phrophecies right or whatever... If this is so, he would not have sent His servant, Moses, to ask the Pharaoh to submit and let God's people go. He gave him a choice, and he chose to turn away from God, thus God sent the angel of death to all firstborns.

God promised His people a land overflowing with milk and honey, and he had to free them from slavery, therefore he sent Moses. Before each of the seven plagues, he sent Moses to give the Pharaoh a chance (free will) to do as God asked, but the Pharaoh chose not to, all seven times. He chose it, God did not make it so.

If you follow God, God says you will be the head and not the tail, on top and not below; therefore God has to act out in a way that would cause the Pharoah to release them, even if it meant taking the first borns of the non-believers.

Answer 3

He did this because He needed to to have His will done. God always has a perfect plan, and, uses all things for it- this includes evil, and evil things. The Bible even speaks of God using dark angels. He will always change bad around for good. He allows things for us to see examples, to grow.
The Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart so that the plan of freeing the slaves, to show people His power and might, compassion and authority, would be put into motion. If Pharoah's heart was not hardened, then, much of Exodus would not have gone the way it did, and we would not know God's Power and Love like we do.

Answer 4

Jehovah did not actually harden the heart of Pharaoh so that Pharaoh lost his free will in the matter.His heart hardened because of the message declared to him by Moses and Aaron.It was was caused him to react in hard stubbornness and anger.But since the message Moses and Aaron declared was really Jehovah's message,the account says Jehovah hardened his heart.The repeated extension of God's mercy to him by the lifting of plague after plague did not soften the Eyptian ruler,but as is usual in the case of bullies and tyrants this forebearance only made Pharaoh more intolerable,brought to the fore all the more his bullying characteristics.

Answer 5

I seriously doubt that the Exodus was the way the Bible says it was. Egypt was kind enough to take in the Jews 400 years earlier, and the Jews probably weren't gracious guests and were eventually became unwelcome. Before leaving, their religion was reshaped by some of the Egyptian beliefs. What we see today in Judaism is different from what Judaism was before they came to Egypt.

Answer 6

First, God did not purposely harden Pharoh's heart. Think about your reaction if a child constantly kicks the back of your seat on an airplane. You say that teh child made you get mad. Actually, your anger is in reaction to what the child did. In the same way, when teh Bible says that "God hardened Pharoh's heart", it was God's actions that made Pharoh himself harden his heart.

Answer 7

God gives us a free will to chose Him. Many people are given chance after chance after chance to do so, but they refuse. This was the case with Pharoh, God send moses time after time telling him "let my people go". Pharoh refused again and again. So he began to send plagues one after another as a sign to let him know that God was no playing around. The funny thing is Pharoh could have let the Isralites leave even before the first plague, but he did not. He could have let them go after the 2nd plague but he did not.

During this whole story, It was not God's people who were affected by the plagues, but the Egyptians. Also, to know the back ground of these plagues, you have to know that these plagues corresponded with the different god's the egyptians worshipped.

Answer 8

The angel of death killed them,not God personally.He hardened pharaohs heart so that the prophecy of the prophets would come to pass and that the israelites would be free after 400yrs of bondage.

Answer 9

That he, God, might receive the greatest amount of glory. It is not a good thing to question the motives of God. He posses all power and has the power to give you life and to take it away. Read the Bible---it is all there.

Answer 10

If he hadn't hardened Pharoah's heart, the movie version of the Ten Commandments would have only been two hours instead of six.