The Pulpit Commentary — Exodus — Volume 1 — Section 331

tion, this will-energy, and do with it, as we know that Jesus in me.ny of his miracles did with defective or absent faculties? To the blind, Jesus gave vision, and he who could thus ca.11 a non-existent faculty into existence, evidently could increase a faculty act.ually existing to any degree such 11.S man might be 1ible to possess. And was it not something of this kind that God did in hardening Pharaoh's heart? The term has come to have a dreadful meaning to us in connexion with Pharaoh, simply because of Pharaob's career. But the very miracle which God wrought in Pharaoh's heart would ~ave had good r~snlts, if only Phar~h had been a different sort _of man. Suppose the mstance of a blmd man who gets sight from Jesus. He goes mto life again with a recovered faculty : and that life, with respect to its opportunities, is vastly larger than it ~ . before. H~w v,i~l he use these opportunities? He may use them selfishly, and Christ s own blessmg will thus become a curse ; or he may use them as Christ would have him use them, to become his efficient and grateful servant. There is a moral certainty that some who had fa.ith enough in Jesus to have impaired natural faculties put right were yet destitute of that faith which went on to spiritual salvation. and spiritual service. It was one thing to believe in Christ for a temporal gain, quite another to believe in him for a spiritual one; and the one faith while meant to lead on to the other, would not always have that effect. It is but a fond imagination to suppose that it would. So Pharaoh, if he had been a humane, compassionate and righteous man, a king with a true king's feelings for his own people, would, throu"h the very process of hardening his heart, have become a more efficient ruler. This is the way God helps men who are struggling with temptation, struggling towards truth and light, towards conquest over appetite, violent temper, evil habits. God does for them and in them exactly what he did in Pharaoh. What he did in Pharaoh happened to hasten him in the way where he was already disposed to go. If Pharaoh had been a blind man as well as a bad one, no one would have had any perplexity as to God's dealings in restoring his sight and giving it the greatest perfection sight can attain. If Pharaoh had used that restored vision for bad, cruel purposes, he would have been blamed, and not Jehovah, and exactly the same remark applies if we change the nam& of the faculty. God strengthens the faculty of will, but Pharaoh is responsible for a right use of the strengthened faculty as much as he was for the use of the weaker faculty before. God dealt with a part of his nature where he had no power to resist any more than a blind man would have power to resist, if God were to restore vision to him. It was not against the hardening that Pharaoh struggled, but against the deliver- ing. The hardening worked in a way he was not conscious of, but the delivering was by an appeal to him, and that appeal he was by no means disposed to entertain. It was not an awakened conscience that compelled him to his successive yieldings; these were but as the partial taming of a wild beast. Paul said. " When I would do good. evil is present with me;" but Pharaoh was steadily disposed to do evil. His cry would rather have been, " When I think to get my own way, one of those terrible plagues comes in to relax my resolutions and confuse my plans." VL A certain amount of weiuht must also be allowed for PHARAOH's TYPICAL POSI- TION AND CHARACTER. We m~t distinruish between what he was typically and what he was personally. Far be it from us to diminish his guilt or attempt to whitewash his memory. Doubtless he was a bad man, and a very bad man; but for typical purposes it was needful to represent him as not having one redeeming feature. His name is not iuked even with one virtue amid a thousand crimes. He had to be set before the whole world and all ages as the enemy of God's people. He is the typ~ of a pefD;anent adversary far greater than himself. And just as the people of God, typically considered, appeared very much better than they actually were, so Pharaoh, typically considered, is described so as to appear worse. (E.g. in Num. xxiii. 21, it is said, "He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither bath he seen perverseness in Israel.") We do not know all God's dealings with Pharaoh. They are hidden beneath the waters of the Red Sea, and it is no duty of ours to pass judgment on the defeated and baffled opponent. God ea.lb, 1111 to the more practical bUlliness of going on with the living, struggling people.-Y. OD, XIV. 10-14.] 'l'lIE BOOK OJ<' EXODUS.