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In this study of Torah reading וָאֵרָא Va’era (“I appeared,” Exodus 6:2–9:35), Pharaoh’s unyielding heart despite God’s plagues on Mitzraim (Egypt) foreshadows humanity’s futile rebellion against the authority of the Creator, as echoed in Revelation. Pharaoh’s “hardened” heart yields briefly with his son’s death, which challenged both his lineage and Egypt’s deities.
Pharaoh’s obstinacy is part of a prophetic role for Israel to bear witness to the global importance of God’s names El Shaddai and YHWH. That role, which reaches its fullness in Yeshua the Messiah (Jesus the Christ), has come with persecution toward those who uphold the righteousness and sovereignty of the Creator.
“Where will you be stricken again, As you continue in your rebellion? The whole head is sick And the whole heart is faint.”
Isaiah 1:5 NASB95
In Torah reading וָאֵרָא Va’era (“I appeared,” Exodus 6:2–9:35), we see how Pharoah’s stubborn refusal to repent and relent to God plays out for him and his people. Isaiah starts his writing with the question “how many times must you be struck?” One can hear the same question echoed in the closing chapters of Revelation in the last days. There will still be people who refuse to repent and submit to God’s will despite God’s overwhelming displays of his miraculous power.
When God makes it crystal clear who’s really in charge, where the real source of strength is, and which side is actually the losing side on this, there will still be those who would rather utterly lose and be crushed than to humbly admit they were wrong and live.
We wonder why God decided that He needed to inflict all 10 of these plagues on Egypt to get His point across? Wouldn’t the 10th plague alone have sufficed?
The 10th one because that that really drove the point home, because it hit right at the big house, right at the Great House of Pharaoh and took out the firstborn of Pharaoh. Pharaoh didn’t just lose his son. When you’re talking about a dynasty, the death of the Crown Prince strikes at the lineage of that dynasty. Because, depending on what time period or what dynasty you are looking at, you take out the Crown Prince, there might not be another. There has been many times and many, monarchies that have faced such a crisis and it didn’t fare well for them.
This is exactly what Satan tried to do when He inspired the mobs to demand the crucifixion of Messiah Yeshua (Christ Jesus).
This was also the topic of one of Yeshua’s most famous parables about the vineyard owner who sends servant after servant to try to collect his rent from his tenants and the tenants abuse them in various ways, even killing them and finally the tenants also kill the landlord’s son and heir. They thought, “This is our big chance to truly take ownership over the vineyard,” but the point of Yeshua’s parable is teach the people that it is futile to fight against God.
Pharaoh asked, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey him?” (Ex. 5:2) Pharaoh is getting an introduction to who the Lord is. He got 10 of them, as God knocked down each of the false deities of Egypt.
God is teaching Pharaoh and the Egyptians that the entire earth is under God’s control, and we are just tenants. Some of us may be managers of a particular spot on the earth, we may lease it for a time, but God is the owner.
Are we hardening and strengthening our hearts against the plans of heaven? Or are we hardening and strengthening our hearts to follow through with the plans of heaven? Are we against Him or are we for Him?
There are two Hebrew words we will need to consider as we study the issue of Pharoah’s hardened heart. One is כָּבֵד kavod, which is usually translated as heavy, glory or stubborn. The other is חָזַק khazaq/chazak, which means strength or courage.
Some biblical linguists see the two words as interchangeable.
The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart is an old problem, one that is more theological than linguistic. The verb חָזַק is used twelve times in the narrative (Ex 4–14), mostly with the Lord as the agent, but four times in the passive or stative sense (“Pharaoh’s heart was hardened”). Also, the verb כָּבֵד is used five times, both with the Lord as the agent, with Pharaoh as the agent, and in the passive sense. The verb קָשָׁה is used once with the Lord as the agent. There is no discernible difference here in the usage of these words. It is clear that Pharaoh was an unrepentant sinner at the start ([Exodus 5]). It is perhaps enough to point this out and remark that all of God’s hardening of an obstinate sinner was judicial and done that God’s deliverance should be the more memorable. And this, too, was in God’s plan (Ex 9:16), though it is also inexplicably true that Pharaoh sinned freely and was therefore terribly guilty (cf. Acts 4:25–28).
R. Laird Harris, Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament. Chicago: Moody Press, 1980. Paragraph 5671.
That said, the combination of stubbornness and courage can be a good thing or it can be a very bad thing. If one displays stubbornness and courage in walking in God’s ways, this is a good thing, but if one is stubborn and courageous in doing evil, this is a very bad thing.
But instead of going too far in allegorizing this story or turning everything in this particular passage into a metaphor, it’s important to remember that we are reading here really happened to a real superpower at a real time in history.1 This is not just an epic story that with a good moral at the end of it.
Revelation 16 tells us that similar events will happen again in the future, when the Day of the LORD comes. If we are here to witness those plagues in those days, will be stubborn for and have courage in the Lord or not?
God tells the children of Israel, “I saw you, I heard you, I’m going to redeem you, I will take you out of this house of bondage.”
The truth is not up for a vote. One does not discern the truth through polls, surveys, etc. We see that easily in the account of Eliyahu when he stood alone against the 400 priests of Ba’al (1Kings 18). They had the masses on their side. They even had the government on their side. But the truth often goes against the grain.
You recall what we read last week when Moses and Aaron showed themselves to the elder of Israel with signs and miracles and then met with Pharaoh for the first time, how did Pharaoh and his government respond? They told the Israelites that they had to gather their own straw to make their bricks but still maintain the same daily quota of bricks.
We have seen governments in our modern times oppress people who disagree with them in a similar way. Governments in so called “free” countries such as Canada and the USA threatened their own citizens by taking their jobs, cutting them off from their bank accounts, their insurance, etc. They will come after your livelihood, and even your family if you don’t comply.
And the threats are even more apparent in counties such as Iran where they throw Christian converts into prison and execute them. Believers in Nigeria who are suffering assaults by ISIS offshoots.
Are we willing to be stubborn and courageous for God’s sake or will we get rattled and decide that doing what is right in the face of government harassment is too much of a hassle, too much of a sacrifice and give in and give up?
What’s in a name?: Meaning of ‘El Shaddai’
God spoke further to Moses and said to him, “I am the LORD; and I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as God Almighty, but by My name, LORD, I did not make Myself known to them. I also established My covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they sojourned.”
Exodus 6:2–4 NAS95
This name that is translated as LORD in most English translations of the Bible is called the Tetragrammaton, or God’s special name “of four letters.” Both Jewish and Christian scholars have a variety of opinions on how to pronounce this name, or whether it should be pronounced at all, but it basically means “I am who I am” or “I will be who I will be.” But God tells Moses that his ancestors knew Him as “El Shaddai,” often translated as “God All-Mighty.”
There were periods in history when the name “Kaiser” or “Caesar” struck fear into the heart of anyone who said it, but now those titles mean nothing to us, there’s no fear from them anymore.
There was a Pharaoh who knew Yosef (and knew his God) and prospered under His grace. But this new Pharaoh that Moshe encountered, who did not know Yosef or Yosef’s God, had to learn that when he heard the name of the Lord, no matter which rendition of the name of the Lord was, that he had to pay attention. This Pharaoh is now coming to learn what is meant by “I am the Elohim of Avraham, I am the Elohim of Yitzhak, I am the Elohim of Yaakov,” that’s also the name of the Lord.
There are those who care more about how to properly pronounce God’s name or whether to even pronounce it at all than about God’s status and reputation. When God told the children of Israel that His name was blasphemed among the nations because of them, it wasn’t because they mispronounced His name but because their actions damaged His reputation.
God says at the end of Deuteronomy that the nations will be watching how the people of Israel act and conduct themselves and that they will look at God’s correction and discipline as evidence that He doesn’t have the power to save them. But God said in Ezekiel 36 that even has He sends them into exile to punish them, He will bring them back for His own sake, but not to stroke His ego, but for the sake of salvation of the world.
Israel needed to depend upon the Lord and His promises and God keeps His promises in spite of in spite of the people and their unrighteousness. Even with all that, the Lord is going to act to bring Israel back into the land.
I come from a faith tradition that has blown off a large parts of the prophecies related to Israel. They believe that what happened in Israel in 1948 had nothing to do with God at all. They dismiss the establishment of the State of Israel as merely the actions of a bunch of Communists who got together and decided to build a bunch of communes in the Holy Land and call it Israel. Communism is not righteous, it’s not holy.
On the other hand, other traditions have come up that state that if you keep Shabbat perfectly, then God’s going to bring the Messiah back and restore the land.
“Though I have set a limit to ‘the end,’ that it will happen in its time regardless of whether they will do teshuvah or not … the scion of David (Mashiach) will come if they keep just one Shabbat, because the Shabbat is equivalent to all the mitzvot.”
Shemot Rabba 25:12; Yerushalmi, Ta’anit 1:1
But the prophets don’t mention that either.
The LORD is known for hearing the groaning of His people and remembering His covenant with Avraham and Yaakov, who knew God as “El Shaddai.”
“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 NAS95
Various meanings for אֵל שַׁדָּי El Shaddai over the centuries:
- Septuagint (LXX): παντοκράτωρ pantokratowr, “all powerful.”
- Babylonian Talmud, Hagigah 12a: ש sheh (“who”) and די die (“enough”) = “the One Who is (self-)sufficient”
- From שדד shadad (“to destroy”): “my destroyer”
- From Akkadian šadu (“mountain”):“God/El of the mountain.”
- The gentile prophet Bilaam knew God by the title of El-Shaddai as well.
El Shaddai wants believers to walk before Him and be mature, as God is perfect, but as we read in Ezekiel our “perfection” is not worth much because at our root, our hearts are rotten without God.
James 1 tells us that the problems we face in life are tests allowed by God to help us persevere and to grow in knowledge and wisdom. They also help us become more courageous and stubborn to follow His will rather than our own. These challenges can lead to spiritual maturity.
Perfection is not about never making a mistake. The path to “perfection” given to us in the Torah includes things like restitution and sacrifice. It’s about being willing to allow God to make us whole and to also be willing to restore and make our neighbor whole when we have hurt them.
Pharaoh was not willing to allow the trials and problems he was facing to perfect him in following God. Instead, Pharaoh watched how his people were suffering under the various plagues. At one point, you can see a breakdown moment where Pharaoh finally admits that he has sinned. But after the problem goes away, the gets strengthened in his stubbornness and pride. He’s like the alcoholic who has a moment of clarity and sees how his drinking is affecting his wife and kids but once he sobers up for just a moment, he goes right back to the bottle and repeats the cycle of abuse.
Summary: Tammy
- This article answering a question about the historical validity of the “Patterns of Evidence” film series offers an overview of some findings that underscore that the Exodus was a real event that happened in ancient Egypt’s history. ↩︎
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