While the religious leaders of Israel assert the efficiency of God in unqualified terms, they lay no foundation for that high predestinarianism which maintains the Divine sovereignty and leaves only a semblance of freedom to man. The theology of the OT is not deterministic, as 'the accepted Muhammadan theology is undoubtedly determin- istic' (H. P. Smith, The Bible and Islam, 1896, p. 137). All the prophets and prophetic writers, among whom J and E may be included, accentuate moral obligation ; they regard virtuous and vicious acts as originating in the human will ; their whole teaching is based on the conviction that men and nations deserve rewards or punishments, and .are in a real sense the authors of their own destiny. The figure of the clay and the potter (Jer 18^ Is 64^ Ro 9^'), which clearly recognizes ' a divinity that shapes our ends,' says nothing of the prin- ciples according to which these ends are shaped (A. B. Davidson, Theol. of OT, 1904, p. 131), and all apparently' predestinarian language is meant to be moralized.
' Nor does any one doubt that it is an effect intended by God, when, at a certain stage in sin, His revelation makes the heart harder. God's word can never return unto Him void. Whtre it is hindered from bles«ing, it must curse. Light must make
weak eyes weaker ; nourishing food must ag^avate the viru- lence of disease. That is a necessary moral ordinance — in other words, one willed by God from eternity' (H. Schultz, op. cit. ii. 207).
Moses' experience of the hardening effect of Divine truth in the case of Pharaoh was one which almost all prophets have shared with him. There is biting satire, but not predestinarian •doctrine, in the command which Isaiah (6'") puts into the mouth of God : ' Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears dull, and besmear their eyes, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and their heart understand, and they turn again and be healed.' This prophet's language is quoted with approval by our Lord in Mk 4'-, Lk 8'" ; and with an important modi- fication in Mt IS^''- 15.
' It is conceivable that Jesus might use Isaiah's words in Isaiah's spirit, i.e., ironically, expressing the bitter feeling of one conscious that his best efforts to teach his countrymen would often end in failure, and in his bitterness representing himself as sent to stop ears and blind eyes. Such utterances are not to be taken as deliberate dogmatic teaching. If, as some allege, the evangelists so took them, thej' failed to under- stand the mind of the Master' (A. B. Bruce, EGT, 'The Synoptic Gospels,' 1897, p. 196).
The hardening of Pharaoh's (or of any other guilty man's) heart is a judicial, not an arbitrary, act of God, who never hardens a good man's heart. The process is, in Western language, natural and inevitable. ' By abuse of light, nature produces callousness ; and what nature does God does ' (M. Dods, EGT, ' The Gospel of St. John,' 1897, p. 812). If He gives men up to punishment, it is because they have deliberately given themselves up to sin (Ro V*- 2«- 28). The story of Pharaoh's overthrow has great and permanent value as a drama of freedom abused, and its moral effect would be ruined if we were to interpolate in it at any point the words of the Qur'an (x. 88) :
' And Moses said, O our Lord, Thou hast given Pharaoh and his nobles pomp and riches in this world, to make them wander from Thy path ; O our Lord, destroy their riches and harden their hearts, that they may not beUeve until they see exemplary punishment.'
St. Paul uses the case of Pharaoh, as well as the figure of the clay and the potter, to establish his doctrine of God's sovereign right and power of disposing of men's lives as He will. In the keen- ness of his dialectic the Apostle employs expressions which seem harsh : ' So then he hath mercy on whom he will, and whom he will he hardeneth ' (5c 5^ dlXei aKK-qpvvei, Ro 9'^). St. Paul
' has none of that caution and timorousness which often lead writers perpetually to trim and qualify for fear of being misunderstood. He lays full stress upon the argument in hand in its bearing upon the idea to be maintained, without con- cerning himself about its adjustment with other truths ' (G. B. Stevens, The Pauline Theology, 1S92, p. 120 ; cf. 0. Gore, St. Paul's Epistle to the Momaiis, ii. [1900] 37 f.).
He approaches the painful subject of the harden- ing of the Jews under the preaching of the gospel from two different sides. When his object is to humble their pride and pretension, he emphasizes (what no Jew would deny) the absoluteness of God ; when his aim is to silence their excuses, he shows tliem that it is for their own sins that they are rejected.
'The hardening . . . against the gospel, which in Rom. ix. and xi. he considers as a divine destiny, he characterises in chap. X. as the self-hardening of Israel' (VV. Beyschlag, ,^^1* Theol.^, Eng. tr., 1896, ii. 118).
There is, however, always a danger in the dialectical use of the language of absolutism. If the conversion of some and the hardening of others are ascribed to the mere will of God, it is clearly open to the hardened to say, 'Why dotii he yet find fault ? ' (ri in fiificpirai, Ro 9'") ; and if an inspired prophet is then quoted, ' Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it (t6 TrXd(x/j.a