Isn't the hardening of Pharaoh's heart proof that God is willing to interfere with "Free Will"?

Question

If God will meddle in large affairs, he will meddle in small affairs. He hardened Pharaoh's heart so that he would attack the Israelites... against his will.

If Pharaoh wanted to attack the Israelites without intervention, God wouldn't have intervened. So doesn't this prove that "free will" is just lip service to a God that will interfere with your supposed free will?

Answer 1

Pharaoh chose his destiny

he hardened his heart against God many times before God set his heart hard

Answer 2

1) Isn't the hardening of Pharaoh's heart proof that God is willing to interfere with "Free Will"?

Yes



2) If God will meddle in large affairs, he will meddle in small affairs. He hardened Pharaoh's heart so that he would attack the Israelites... against his will.

Not neccesarily true, after the final plague Pharoh again decided to attack the Isrealites it's who he was.



3) If Pharaoh wanted to attack the Israelites without intervention, God wouldn't have intervened.

You don't know that, he might have had the plan to chase them and kill them all along. It is impossible for you to state the above as a fact.



4) So doesn't this prove that "free will" is just lip service to a God that will interfere with your supposed free will?



If you are walking across the street and I see a car coming towards you and I yank you out of the way, was it your will to be yanked or my will to yank you? If everyone has freewill the person with the stronger will, will get his way. Your will to calmly walk across the street was eclipsed by my will to save you.





5) God chose Pharaoh's destiny.

Its in the Bible... unless the Bible is wrong...



Or unless you interpreted it wrong. God didn't tell pharoh to pursue the Isrealites after they were set free. How do you know God didn't harden his heart to spare his life? If I saw all types of plagues I would not pursue those people and yet pharoh still did. Pharoh wanted war knowing full well that God worked on behalf of the Isrealites.

Answer 3

Actually no, because the Pharaoh was a Pagan. God hardened his heart so that God could execute His will against the evil in Egypt and to free His people.



God hardened his heart, the Pharaoh still made his own decisions.

Answer 4

Holy crap! Good point. I wonder if something was "lost in translation" when it says that God hardened his heart? If it's meant to be taken literally (and you can never tell which verses should and shouldn't, apparently) then the only reason Pharaoh didn't let the Israelites go is because God forced him not to. Thanks for pointing that out.

Answer 5

This is one of those bible stories that illustrates nicely that it is a myth. 1). The moses character appears to have been plagarized from the much earlier sumerian King Sargon myth. 2). There is no evidence whatsoever (from a literate culture) that the jews were ever in bondage in egypt. 2). There is no historical evidence whatsoever of the 10 plagues of egypt (no red layer of silt in the nile, no insect corpses or frog bones discovered, no evidence of a large number of males all being buried at the same time. Nothing from the egyptians--rather odd this destruction never rated a mention. 3). The bible story tells us that all the horses and cows died--yet when the hebrews (*that weren't there wink) supposedly left--the pharoh supposedly sent his charioteers after them (what horses did they use-as the bible says they were dead) 4). There is no archeological or historical evidence of a large group of people wandering in a very small desert for 40 years 5). there is no evidence the hebrews ever occupied the promised land until about 1000 years after the story and 6). half of the 10 commandments were from the egyptian book of the dead. Other than these little details this paul bunyan yarn is believable right?

Answer 6

God gave us the two greatest gifts of all: His love and free-will. In other words, He gave us His love and the ability to deny it.



As far as the Old Testament scriptures detail of the story of Moses, take it for what it is worth to you. Hardening Pharaohs heart may or may not have occured such as it was written, what is important however is that events took place to eventually free the Israelites from the Egyptians.



The mystery that is God out Father remains beyond our capacity to understand - as it should be.

Answer 7

are the miracles christ performed proofs of intervention in free will? No! People still did not accept Christ even after seeing his miracles. God hardned pharaoh's heart but ultimately the decision still laid on pharaoh. God made the pharaoh angry but did not make the pharaoh's decision for him. That is in the bible and you are correct the bible is not wrong.

Answer 8

This is another example of a mistranslation of the Bible. There are many errors, omissions and inserted lies found in the Bible.



The correct translation of the passage is "...Pharaoh hardened his heart..."



Yet, the presence of errors in the Bible does not negate its value. It is full of the words of God, which were true and pure when written down by prophets.

Answer 9

So freewill is a paradox. Especially since the Bible has prophecies and God is omnipotent and knows everything before it happens. So if He is omnipotent then freewill is a joke, and then He punishes us for something He already knows we are going to do.



I think the best lesson learned from the Bible is this (if you believe in God): Do NOT get noticed by God, if you do He starts to **** with your life. Just like he did to poor Job

Answer 10

Interestingly, God hardened His heart as a response to the plagues. He evened out the playing field by giving Pharaoh a choice to remember the plagues or have his emotions to get the best of him.

Answer 11

It also says that God chose Pharaoh because He knew exactly how Pharaoh would respond.

Answer 12

Pharaoh had to go after the Israelites after agreeing to let them go because Moses stole something he should not have. The content of the ark of the covenant went before them and helped them cross the red sea.



Practicing Shaman.... quantum physics rocks.

Answer 13

God will only hardened the hearts of those that choice to disobey, even after they've witnessed or heard revelation.

Answer 14

We have some evidence that God did intervene in the Old Testament, but we are also told that since Jesus died for our sins, God will not intervene in our lives until after the end times.

Answer 15

Did you forget that Pharaoh had enslaved the people of God? And rebelled against the words of the Lord through Moses before the hardening took place?

Answer 16

To answer your question, you need to see if anyone interviewed Pharaoh to see if his heart was hardned by God..

We all have free will. we all have free will, we all have free will.



because you can only Love if you have free will and can choose, other wise we would be like robots or fish or whatever..

You cannot force anyone to to Love you.. so God gave us free will so we can Love him.

God took a big risk didn't he... as he knew that we could do very nasty things and make very nasty decisions with our free will.

Answer 17

Think of a bunch of cockroaches heading toward a can of roach killer. If you keep one of them on the path toward the can so that it won't turn around, you're simply directing the events that should be happening anyway.

Answer 18

If God is omnipotent and omnicognizant then there can be no such thing as free will.



Free will.



An infinitely knowledgeable and infinitely powerful deity.



Christians have to pick one or the other as they can not both exist.

Answer 19

I always wondered about this myself.

If God hardened Pharoah's heart, does this mean that free will is a load of bull?

Answer 20

Yes, absolutely it is, but what you have to remember is that just as we have a better grasp of reality in scientific terms nowadays than in Biblical times in the Middle East, we can also have a more sophisticated theological understanding.

Answer 21

God is in control that's what the Bible teaches - you are correct!



He also chooses who becomes a Christian





Ephesians 1

Answer 22

you truly have no idea what so ever how the story actually reads. and just who are you to say that you know what the Pharaoh would or would not have done and what God's response to it would be?

Answer 23

god interferes with everything whenever he steps in in the bible. the stories are perfect evidence that they are man-made stories.

Answer 24

RAmen.

Answer 25

My supposed view on free will?

I see we've never met.

Answer 26

it's proof that yeah! Jamaica so good!

Answer 27

Here is part of my research on "free will"...



Regardless of any “free will” the Bible God could have prevented Eve from touching a fruit from the tree of KNOWLEDGE of good and evil simply because GOD IS LOVE and Eve HAD NO KNOWLEDGE AT ALL of any evil especially when talking to the Snake, aka Satan! Eve had no “Guardian Angel” to advice her of anything wrong. Eve saw “that the fruit was good to eat” and she ate of it in all her innocence! She must have thought that God was wrong again like when he created man alone and now God wants them to be stupid without KNOWLEDGE. She honestly didn’t know that God set her up to fall, either! Her fall was orchestrated and made possible BEFORE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD! Otherwise what other excuse would God use to have God the Son Jesus Christ nailed to a Holy Cross! (1 Peter 1:19-20)



According to the Bible writers as soon as God created the angels 1/3 of them were not one bit impressed with God’s Beauty and Holiness. They rebelled against God on the spot ON FREE WILL! The most beautiful and highest ranking angel ever created is LUCIFER* (*Light Bearer) which is another of God’s goofs! If God were my employee I would question his competence! God also created Eve only as an afterthought. She was created after God admitted that they couldn’t find an animal that Adam could use for a mate! Eve ate from the forbidden fruit for about the same reason we eat any fruit! Any honest Christian with a reasonable IQ can tell you that the whole Garden of Eden story is a set up!



The wanking Bible writers created an original God different from any other primitive God. The dissident angels were not evicted from Heaven! They became known as Demons. God is using them to hurt the people that he loves so much! According to the Bible writers the Demons and Satan will be evicted from Heaven after the Rapture™



Revelation 12:9-10 (KJV) And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which DECEIVETH the whole world he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for THE ACCUSER OF OUR BRETHREN IS CAST DOWN, WHICH ACCUSED THEM BEFORE OUR GOD DAY AND NIGHT



To the End of the World SATAN and all DEMONS are busy DAY AND NIGHT blowing the whistle before THE HOLY THRONE OF GOD on the misbehaving Christians… You can tell that the Bible Heaven is run by a bunch of low IQ alien @ssholes!



Back in the Garden of Eden God set up a “flaming sword moving back and forth” to protect the “Tree of Life” so no matter how much “free will” Adam and Eve had they couldn’t eat of it and live for ever! God also PREVENTED anybody from killing Cain. So why not doing the same thing to protect Eve and the bulk of the human race from going to Hell? The wanking Bible writers enjoyed having people tormented with fire and sulfur for ever and ever! Christianity is as Heathen and barbaric as you can’t possibly imagine!



God personally intervened and PREVENTED that the Heathen King Abimelech had sex with Abraham’s sister/wife/hooker Sarah so this Heathen king “wouldn't SIN against God"! God himself NOT A GUARDIAN ANGEL, BUT GOD HIMSELF was present in this King’s Royal Bedroom to PREVENT a questionable sexual activity that he might have enjoyed with Sarah! BTW, Abimelech means “my Dad is the God MOLOCH” from the competition. Neither the Bible God in all his bragging of “omnipresence” nor a Guardian Angel was anywhere near Eve or the untouchable fruit tree to prevent that the WHOLE HUMAN RACE that God loves so much end up tormented in Hell for ever! Obviously the Bible writers were a bunch of wanking perverts creating a God so full of Holy Crap! It takes years of Christian schooling to keep Christianity still marketable today! The top Clergy and Preachers are fully aware of all this.



Genesis 20:2-6 …and there Abraham said of his wife Sarah, "She is my sister."* (*incest [inbreeding] was ALLOWED, COMMANDED and ENFORCED all along by God’s Holy Law [Numbers 36:8]!) Then Abimelech king of Gerar sent for Sarah and took her. But God came to Abimelech IN A DREAM ONE NIGHT* (*only this wanking God knows how many nights he was peeking on him!) and said to him, "You are as good as dead because of the woman you have taken; she is a married woman.”* (*It is OK with God if Sarah had no husband! God didn’t mind that this Heathen king was a married man or not! God enjoyed watching him perform sexual numbers in bed all along! God also declared King Solomon the wisest man “EVER TO SET FOOT ON THIS EARTH”. Maybe because he loved to watch him perform in bed with over 1,000 wives and lovers! By the time God in the person of the Holy Ghost visited the Blessed Virgin Mary it was not a nerd!) Now Abimelech had not gone near her* (*at least that night, but he was aware that God was watching him perform in bed before because of his lack of surprise!), so he said, "Lord, will you destroy an innocent nation?* (*God and this Heathen king discuss National Security issues in a dream!!! Too bad CNN or FOX were not there to interview the king!) Did he not say to me, `She is my sister,' and didn't she also say, `He is my brother'?* (*can you imagine this Holy man of God Abraham handing over his 90 year old horny sister/wife Sarah without any objection for the unrestricted sexual pleasure of this Heathen king? BTW, this illiterate Hebrew shepherd Abraham already pimped his sister in the same way before to the king of Egypt and he came out of it filthy rich! Gen 12. The old lady was a horny gorgeous trick!) I HAVE DONE THIS WITH A CLEAR CONSCIENCE AND CLEAN HANDS"* (*Just like Eve did when she ate a fruit from the wrong tree!) Then God said to him in the dream, "Yes, I know you did this with a CLEAR CONSCIENCE* (*so as long as you do it with a clear conscience and clean hands you can’t possibly commit any sin against this whimsical Bible God, or can you? Well, maybe you can if you are a woman like Eve!), and so I have kept you from sinning against me. That is why I did not let you touch her.”



This horny old lady Sarah is one of the ancestors of Jesus Christ! Practically all of Jesus’ ancestors are loaded with all sorts of sexual escapades!



Compare the porno story of King Abimelech and the Holy hooker Sarah to the story of King David and Bathsheba. The latter couple committed adultery of the kinkiest sort! Bathsheba was a gorgeous sexy woman. Even though she was married it didn’t stop King David from having sex with her. After Bathsheba was done having sex with King David she was drenched in royal sperm so she took a shower to "purify herself and be clean” (2 Sam 11:4). She became pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy while God was delighted watching them perform in bed! God planned for Bathsheba to be the ancestor of Jesus Christ through King David, not through her original husband! King David had to have Bathsheba’s loyal husband killed for fear of reprisals! She was so happy to become King David’s favorite wife that she never grieved the death of her husband! God had their first baby boy killed in a long and painful death so everybody in Israel can watch the baby suffer and die and learn whatever lesson God had for them! The baby boy was born in adultery and GOD, not Satan, but God had to kill him! Pregnancies as result of incest or rape are most sacred to the Christians today, but not so babies born in adultery to the Bible God… God hates them and he uses slow painful death tricks to get rid of children like that! Fortunately for the Clergy and the Preachers Christians hardly read the Bible paying attention to what they read! Shortly after the death of their first illegitimate son, Bathsheba mothered King Solomon another ancestor of Jesus Christ! Like in the case of King Abimelech this peeping tom God enjoyed watching King David perform sex and even adultery in bed all along, but he didn’t do a thing to stop anybody, except King Abimelech! So as long as you are a Christian you can get away with murder before God, but you must be aware of the unforgiving long arm of the SECULAR LAW that can get you!



To fix everything God is “pleased” to step aside and allow God the Son Jesus Christ to be totally beaten up, tenderized and thoroughly marinated in Roman soldier spit so he can be nailed totally naked to the Holy Cross as a “worthy lamb of God taking away the sins of the world”. BTW, the Roman soldiers never dressed the genital area of their victims with a white diaper! Now Christians need to snack Jesus spit flavored Meat and drink his Holy Blood in the Holy Communion so they can go to Heaven when they die. Jesus was terrified about dying on the Holy Cross! He was sweating blood praying “to pass the cup!” He must have asked his Sadistic Heavenly Father, “Hey Dad, wouldn’t have been much easier to stop Eve from eating the forbidden fruit?”



I Timothy 2:14-15 (NIV) And Adam was not the one deceived; IT WAS THE WOMAN WHO WAS DECEIVED AND BECAME A SINNER. BUT WOMEN WILL BE SAVED THROUGH CHILDBEARING… (Virgin girls, nuns and sterile women are out of luck! But you can keep trying… Catholics came up with the idea of banning birth control to help some of you!)



Christians are brainwashed to believe that the Bible doesn’t mean what it says so they need to relay on the Pope or any Preacher! Isn’t it ridiculous to live in a Country that chose to be a Nation under this peeping-tom wanking GOD!