Why wasn't God "almighty" enough to change Pharaoh the first time around?

Answer 1

cause he didnt like pharoh and he wanted to teach him a lesson

Answer 2

God said to Moses that Pharaoh will refuse to listen. Pharaoh's heart becamed hardened, at every plague God sent, seriously, what's so scary about some frogs, bugs, blood in the river, darkness, sores on your skin, etc.., Pharaoh had Moses pray to make it all go away, Moses did and it all went back to normal, but when the plague of the firstborn took place, Pharaoh lost his son. The Isrealites sacrificed lambs and put the blood around their doors, when God passed through Egypt that night, He passed over the houses whose doors had blood on them, and He killed all the firstborns of all the people and all the livestock, the only places that didn't have a death was those with blood around their doors. Exodus 12:30 Pharaoh and all his officials and all the Egyptians got up during the night, and there was loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead. That made Pharaoh change his mind, he sent the Isrealites away.

Answer 3

Yes he was. Thanks for asking.

A better question might have been "why didn't God change Pharaoh the first time around". Becasuse God was not only interested in getting the Jews out of Egypt, but also in getting Egypt oout of the Jews. After 400 years in that culture, the Jews had began to quesion God and his power. They had begun to accept Egyptians ideas (like women were inferior), culture (like slavery), diet (like leech and garlic), etc. God had to get those ideas out of the people.

Each of the 10 plagues was a direct attack out of the 10 main gods of the Egyptians. He was leaving no change that the Jews could continue to believe in the Egyptian dieties. The final one he took down was Pharaoh himself. at the parting of the sea.

Could he have made Pharaoh release the people the first time he was asked? Yes. But then the freedom would have appeared to have been from Pharaoh, not from God. In His infinite wisdom, God knew exactly how many times and plagues it would take to free the people both physically and mental from Egypt.

Answer 4

You're assuming that He wasn't. How do you know that he wasn't?

A short analogy: When wax gets close to the fire, it melts. It's just the nature of wax to melt when it gets close to the fire. Perhaps Pharaoh's heart hardened because God came to close to him. You should check in the Hebrew to see if God hardened Pharaoh's heart directly, or if the verb "hardened" is in the permissive tense of the word concerning the phrases, ". . . and God hardened Pharaoh's heart."

In the end, one could look at it from another point of view. What if God did it to recompense Egypt for the 430 years of slavery that the Israelites endured? Also, to show Himself mighty in the eyes of the Israelites would be another possibility. The reason for this may be to provide an example for the Hebrews, and later on leave them without excuse if they failed (which, they did, according to the story) to follow God's law.

Perhaps the entire reason is some combination of all three. Who can tell?

Answer 5

God used the pharaoh's rigidity to demonstrate his power over the Egyptian gods in the 10 plagues. When those gods were shown to fail, the pharaoh gave in.

Answer 6

Well, if it was the other way around -- if, according to the story, God had just made Pharoah do what he wanted from the start -- I'd bet you'd be asking, "Why did God violate Pharoah's will? What sort of dictator is he?!"

In any case, the story as I understand it, based on what I know of Christianity:

God wants people to want to follow him -- not simply to enslave them. There's no love and no relationship if people are simply enslaved. He also does not want to violate people's choices.

So Pharoah was offered a choice, a few times, to repent of enslaving the Israelites. Each time, however, Pharoah refused to repent and refused to acknowledge God; his attitude remained impetuous and selfish. He was unwilling to treat the Israelites as human beings and continued to treat them like animals and objects to be exploited.

Eventually, the text says that God began to "harden Pharoah's heart" so that he would continue to refuse God. While this sounds like a violation (and would have been, if God had done it at the very beginning), at this stage, any obedience Pharoah would have made to God's command would not have been out of love of God but out of fear of punishment.

IOW, in order to avoid future plagues, he would have just done "lip service" to God.

Regardless of what you've seen of Christianity and how it's been abused by some people, the basic theology is that God wants people to love him and then obey, not obey out of fear. Obedience of the latter type is still self-centered and does not create any sort of relationship between that person and God. God wants a relationship.

In this case, Pharoah would have been obeying God just to save his own skin; but in his heart, he still despised God. Thus, God ensured (by hardening Pharoah's heart against the stated request of Moses) that Pharoah's true feelings would be exposed; and that he wouldn't be acquiescing just in order to escape punishment.

I don't really know if you wanted a serious answer or not; but that's the angle I would pursue if you want to understand the position you are questioning. Hope it helps.

Answer 7

Just like the rest of us Pharaoh had the opportunity to choose. He abused that opportunity just like a lot of us do. God heard His children crying to be free and He brought them out of Egypt.

Answer 8

Pharaoh had to use his free will. But then God changed his mind about that when he chose something other than God and destroyed him, despite his whole free will thing.

Answer 9

His heart was hardened for a reason, the problem is not what God is or is unable to do...but that many people are upset that His will is done. The scripture plainly explains why things happened as they did, just because one does not like the answer does not negate the answer.

Answer 10

If you read the relevent passages you will see that God hardened Pharaoh's heart. The more Pharoah resisted God's will, the more his heart was hardened, the more he resisted. Finally it broke Him.

God's will is that we will seek to do His will, on earth as it is in Heaven.

Answer 11

God was the one who hardened Pharaoh's heart to begin with.

God did this to show his power to Pharaoh, since he would not believe any other way.