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The God that spoke to the Pharaoh of Joseph was the same God Who spoke to the Pharaoh of Moses, who we meet in the Torah reading וארא Va’era (“I appeared,” Exodus 6:2–9:35). God does not change or grow, but He expects us to grow and change for the better. When we do, He is pleased. When we don’t, He is not pleased.
God showed great favor to the “Pharaoh who knew Joseph” because this Pharaoh accepted the warnings given to him by God and by Joseph. He and his people were blessed because of his humility and wisdom.
On the other hand, the “Pharaoh who did not know Joseph” had no excuse to forget the lessons of his predecessor. The Pharaoh who Moses confronts showed a pattern of arrogance and hardheartedness for many years before Moses came along. Pharaoh could have relented and truly repented, but he did not. So he (and his people) suffered because of his arrogance and selfishness.
Similarly, the chief priests wouldn’t relent from their jealousy against Yeshua the Messiah (Jesus the Christ), yet Paul turned did turn away from his equally zealous persecution of believers.
The way that God revealed Himself to Abraham, Issac and Jacob is not the same way He revealed Himself to Moses and Aharon, as recorded in the Torah reading וארא Va’era (“I appeared,” Exodus 6:2–9:35). God gave Moses and the children of Israel the laws of Torah, but He did not give the entire Torah to the patriarchs. God did not put upon the patriarchs the same duties and obligations that He placed on Moses, Aharon and the children of Israel in that generation.
The way that God revealed Himself to Pharoah through Moses was also not the same way that He had revealed Himself to the Pharaoh “who knew Joseph.”
This is what happens when people grow up. The more they grow, the more they learn and the more that is expected of them.
God chose Abraham because he was intuitively righteous, as he was only a few generation away from Noah, but after 400 years in Egypt, the children of Israel were further away from the righteous history of Noah and the Patriarchs. God had to give them a lot of instruction that He didn’t need to give the Patriarchs.
Did God forget about His people’s suffering?
“Furthermore I have heard the groaning of the sons of Israel, because the Egyptians are holding them in bondage, and I have remembered My covenant.”
Exodus 6:5 NASB
God is not a man, that He forgets. When it says that God “remembered” the covenant, this simply means that God sees that the time is ripe for Him to fulfill His Promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and liberate the children of Israel from Egypt. God only needs a few faithful people to accomplish a great feat in history.
Then the LORD said to Moses, “See, I make you as God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. “You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall speak to Pharaoh that he let the sons of Israel go out of his land.”
Exodus 7:1–2 NASB
The God that spoke to the Pharaoh of Joseph is the same God who spoke to the Pharaoh of Moses. In both cases, God’s name became known among the Egyptians.
Who hardened whose heart?
God tells Moses that he will impose His will on Pharaoh. We see that Moses exercises the power that God gave him with humility. This is why the Torah calls Moses the most humble man who ever lived. Both Moses and Yeshua (Jesus) had the power of God within them. What would you do if you had such power? You witness all the misery, hatred, wars, injustice and persecution with your own eyes?
Human reasoning would say that it would be selfish not to intervene to prevent injustice and to save human lives. It’s human nature to say, “This is wrong and I can fix it.” But that is not a humble choice. The humble choice is to ask God what He would want us to do and to act accordingly.
Pharaoh hardened his own heart against Moses and Aharon up to the time of the fifth plague. After that, we are told that God hardens Pharaoh’s heart. Pharaoh could have relented on his own up to that point, but he did not.
Where we end our lives is what matters to God (Ezekiel 18). If we were righteous when we were young but we decide to reject God in our old age and we die rejecting God, God accepts that and rejects us, too.
If we live our youth in wickedness but we repented and live a more righteous life and we die of old age in righteousness, God accepts that and accepts us, too. This is God’s justice. He does not hold our past against us. He looks at how we end our life more than how we have started in life.
When Moses first approached Pharaoh with God’s power, Pharaoh said I don’t know this God, but after several plagues, Pharaoh had seen enough of God’s power that he knew that God was more powerful than his own magicians and necromancers. God is showing Pharaoh that He is not merely God in Israel but also God in the land of Egypt.
When Pharaoh put two and two together and realized that God’s presence was in Egypt, he offered Moses the option for the children of Israel to make their sacrifices and worship God in the land of Egypt.
Thereupon, Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron, and he said, “Go, sacrifice to your God in the land.” But Moses said, “It is improper to do that, for we will sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians to God our Lord. Will we sacrifice the deity of the Egyptians before their eyes, and they will not stone us?”
Exodus 8:21-22, Judaica Press Translation
Once the boils came, the necromancers were discarded and never again approached Moses and Aharon on Pharaoh’s behalf. They saw that God had showed His power and authority over all the “gods” and spirits that they paid worship towards so their power and authority was no longer relevant.
And the necromancers could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boils were upon the necromancers and upon all Egypt. But the Lord strengthened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not hearken to them, as the Lord spoke to Moses.
Exodus 9:11-12, Judaica Press Translation
With the first three plagues, God introduces Himself to Pharoah and Egypt. With the second three plages, God reveals to Pharoah and the people of Egypt that He is not merely the God of a far distant land. He is present in Egypt. He is with them. With the last three plagues, God shows Pharoah and the Egyptians that there is no God like Him. He has no peers.
Messiah Yeshua is accused of working miracles via demons
Let’s look at this through the example of Yeshua’s confrontation with the demon in Luke 11:14-26 and the reaction of His political enemies, where they accuse Him of using demonic power to exercise authority over the demons.
Now, going back to this series of confrontations between Moses and Pharoah, Pharoah was the “god” of Egypt but when Moses came along, he needed to acknowledge that someone stronger had come. In Yeshua’s day, the Pharisees had the power, but Yeshua was stronger. When we confront a power stronger than us, we have to relent.
What did Pharoah trust? His own strength. What did the Pharisees trust? Their own strength. Was that sufficient for them? Is that sufficient for us? So when you have a struggle in your life, if it’s stronger than you, and you can’t defeat it, you need to relent.
Apostle Paul and Pharaoh of Moshe: Lessons in humility
What do I mean by relent? Let’s look at another example in the life of the Shaul of Tarsus, who is more well known as the apostle Paul.
“Saul was in hearty agreement with putting him to death. And on that day a great persecution began against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles. Some devout men buried Stephen, and made loud lamentation over him. But Saul began ravaging the church, entering house after house, and dragging off men and women, he would put them in prison. Therefore, those who had been scattered went about preaching the word.”
Acts 8:1–4 NASB
Shaul was arresting and persecuting the believers in Yeshua, the ones who weren’t caught up in his dragnet fled Jerusalem and spread the message of Yeshua wherever they traveled. Shaul was fighting against God, but didn’t know it, yet.
“But the high priest rose up, along with all his associates (that is the sect of the Sadducees), and they were filled with jealousy. They laid hands on the apostles and put them in a public jail.”
Acts 5:17–18 NASB
The High Priest and his “associates” were Sadducees and they had some believers in Yeshua thrown in prison. They heavily persecuted the believers in Yeshua, but an angel intervened to save them. Paul and his teacher Gamaliel were Pharisees. In general, the Pharisees had more of a “wait and see” attitude regarding the spread of the message of Yeshua.
But when they heard this, they were cut to the quick and intended to kill them. But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the Law, respected by all the people, stood up in the Council and gave orders to put the men outside for a short time. And he said to them, “Men of Israel, take care what you propose to do with these men. “For some time ago Theudas rose up, claiming to be somebody, and a group of about four hundred men joined up with him. But he was killed, and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing. “After this man, Judas of Galilee rose up in the days of the census and drew away some people after him; he too perished, and all those who followed him were scattered. “So in the present case, I say to you, stay away from these men and let them alone, for if this plan or action is of men, it will be overthrown; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them; or else you may even be found fighting against God.”
Acts 5:33–39 NASB
Yet, Saul, the Pharisee, actually “switched sides” politically by asking the High Priest, a Sadducee, for permission to go all the way to Damascus to persecute Yeshua’s believers, because the Pharisees, under the guidance of Gamaliel, could not, or would not, grant Shaul their blessing to persecute the believers in Yeshua. That is how serious Saul was about trying to stamp out the teachings of Yeshua.
“Now Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest, and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.”
Acts 9:1–2 NASB
Saul reached the point where he had gone too far and Yeshua intervenes and blinds him. Yeshua supernaturally humbled him and showed Saul the error of his ways. Shaul was humbled and got the message and accepted Yeshua as the Messiah.
We see here that God is also humbling Pharoah, but Pharoah does not humble himself before Moses, at all.
“So Pharaoh sent and summoned Moses and Aaron and said to them, “I have sinned this time. The Lord is the righteous One, and I and my people are the guilty ones”…[Moses said] ”But you and your servants I know that you still do not fear the Lord God.”
Exodus 9:27,30 Judiaca Press Translation
Pharaoh also refused to humble himself initially, but God did not supernaturally intervene to change the course of Pharaoh’s life the way He did for Saul.
One big difference is that Saul thought he was doing God’s will. Saul was wrong, but he was sincere. Pharaoh, on the other hand, was not doing God’s will and had no interest in doing God’s will because he considered himself a god and felt no reason to answer to anyone for his decisions.
The Pharoah who Moses confronts had shown a pattern of arrogance and hardheartedness for many years before Moses came along. His predecessor had commanded that all the Hebrew infant boys been thrown into the Nile. He was too much of a coward to do it himself so he first commanded the midwives to do it. When they refused, he commanded all the people of Egypt to do it and they complied, turning the Nile red with their blood.
The current Pharaoh was no better as he had not condemned the acts of his predecessor but continued them. He had been murdering Hebrew slaves to the point of genocide for many years leading up to this point in history. The character of Pharoah did not change though out this process, although he had a couple of moments of remorse. The remorse was not permanent. It was the remorse of a criminal who got caught. They are sorry they got caught, they aren’t really sorry for whatever they did.
God of plagues or God of the ‘small voice’?
The massive plagues that came on Egypt, were from God, but God was not in them. The power of God is not in the struggle; it’s that He causes the struggle.
God is in the still, small voice. If we are in an uphill battle, God is in the still small voice, not in the battle. The answer comes when we humble ourselves. We don’t have to run away or flee to hear that voice.
Pharaoh could have relented, but he did not, and he suffered for it. Saul, however, relented, and he was the better for it. Pharaoh was not seeking the still small voice, he was seeking power and control. The midwives, who spared the Hebrew boys they met from death, listened to the still small voice and quietly refused to comply with evil. God is the one who fills our conscience when we fill our minds with His Torah.
God is consistent. The Torah is the foundation of our conscience. Our conscience must be informed by the Torah. If the Torah tells us something is right, that is right. If the Torah tells us something is wrong, it is wrong. The Torah are like the glasses we wear to see the world accurately, so that our conscience is set and from there, we can explore the rest of the Bible and learn how to apply it correctly to our modern lives.
Summary: Tammy
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