ITO, being used in the sense
of ‘thou wast kept alive’’—the sense adopted by Dillmann for the Hebrew ; probably Paul changed it intentionally to give the meaning, ‘‘for this reason I brought thee on the stage of history ”’: ο. abs 1: (6, “Zeer xd. 10, erm. 41 (S. and H.). The purpose Pharaoh was designed to serve, and actually did serve, on this stage, was certainly not his own; as certainly it was God’s. God’s power was shown in the penal miracles by which Pharaoh and Egypt were visited, and his name is proclaimed to this day wherever the story of the Exodus is told.
Ver. 18. From the two instances just quoted Paul draws the comprehensive conclusion: So then on whom He will He has mercy, and whom He will He hardens. The whole emphasis is on θέλει. The two modes in which God acts upon man are showing mercy and hardening, and it depends upon God’s will in which of these two modes He actually does act. The word σκληρύνεε is borrowed from the history of Pharaoh, Ex? νη ας ο νι. “Ios ixseras αν πο What precisely the hardening means, and in what relation God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart stood to Pharaoh’s own hardening of it against God, are not unimportant questions, but they are questions which Paul does not here raise. He has one aim always in view here—to show that man has no claim as of right against God; and he finds a decisive proof of this (at least for a Jew) in the opposite examples of Moses and Pharaoh, interpreted as these are by unmistakable words of God Himself.
16—2r.