Exodus 7:3 - Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt. I will harden Pharaoh's heart. This would be the result; but the divine message would be the occasion, not the cause of the king's impenitent obduracy. God did not assuredly harden the heart of the Egyptian monarch by any direct operation upon his mind. But the circumstances into which he was brought by the demands of Moses and Aaron, combined with his own constitutional temper and cherished character, would produce and render certain the bad effect described, without making that evil necessary in the sense of being unavoidable. The goodness and forbearance of God, so far as divine agency was concerned, were the only circumstances which, acting upon an imperious temper and a heart habitually evil, led to increasing and confirmed obduracy. But those circumstances would have been followed by a very different result, had the king's previous character and dispositions been benevolent or virtuous. The true view of this clause is, that while the Divine Being pre-intimated to Moses in words what His providence would permit to take place, it was not God, but Pharaoh himself, who was, properly and strictly speaking, chargeable with the sin. (See further the note at Exodus 11:10).