Godtalk

In Cincinnati, there is a large shopping mall with exactly one lane of traffic into the parking lot and one lane out. It can get really crazy around the Christmas buying season, in fact, and will have a line of a dozen cars waiting to exit. If that were not bad enough, a popular chain restaurant has its entrance right where the traffic backs up, so drivers often have to wait for overly-full diners with doggie bags to make their way across both lanes.

So it happened that once during the holiday season, I was following a suburban as we were attempting to leave the parking lot. It stopped unexpectedly in the lane, right in front of the restaurant – as if there were no line of cars behind him! – and then two able-bodied passengers climbed into the car. Aghast, I honked at him: move it!

What I could not see, however (for he was just outside of my peripheral vision), was the man in a full leg cast up to his hip making his way cautiously across the icy sidewalk to the car. In other words, the suburban actually had a good reason to stop.

The man’s friends and family, absolutely outraged that I would begrudge him his time to be loaded into the car, got out of the car and started yelling at me. One man – I think that he was the driver – kept saying over and over to me, ‘Are you stupid? Are you stupid?’ I tried to mime the idea ‘I’m sorry; I didn’t know’ but that isn’t an easy concept to convey with a gesture. It just seemed to make them madder. So I rolled down the window. He leaned in and said it one more time, this time with emphasis: ‘Are? You? Stu? Pid?’

Um, no, not stupid, actually. Just sorry for having honked at him before I understood the situation.

In the case of Pharaoh, it is not stupidity that causes him to ignore all the signs around him, but rather a refusal to understand. It’s not that he doesn’t see the man in a hip cast, but rather that he simply doesn’t care.

Even so, in responding to Moses, Pharaoh certainly seems remarkably dense. Exactly how many times does Moses have to correctly predict a calamity before Pharaoh believes that Moses has God on his side?

How could Pharaoh be so stubborn? The text, of course, provides its own answer: God intervenes and hardens Pharaoh’s heart. But why does God do that?

We have here a basic problem of free will: if we are to be held responsible for our actions, if we have some kind of ethical responsibility, then we must assume that the actions we take are made on the basis of free will. For it would be merely cruel to punish someone for something outside of his or her control.

But, if we do indeed have free will, then how can it be possible for God to harden Pharaoh’s heart?

Consider the possible implications:

It could mean that God has the ability to intervene and cause someone to fulfill a predetermined destiny. But then we have an ethical difficulty: how do we know when God has made this predetermination, as opposed to knowing when an individual has chosen this path voluntarily? How could we hold everyone responsible if some are indeed responsible but some really are not?

Another possibility is that God does not intervene directly, but that everything ultimately flows from God. For example, the Italian Jewish scholar Samuel David Luzzatto of the early nineteenth century suggested the following understanding: “Know that all acts are ascribed to God, since He is their ultimate cause, some by absolute decree, and others through the operation of human choice granted by Him…In the sense that He is author of all acts, He hardened Pharaoh’s heart…”[1]

In this explanation, it is Pharaoh’s own doing that he has become so stubborn; God is involved only in the sense that God is involved in everything.

But this explanation does not address a critical question: why is Pharaoh being so stupidly stubborn about the Hebrews? Why does he stubbornly endure (or be hardened to endure) ten plagues?

In this regard, I think that Maimonides’ naturalistic explanation makes the most sense: he argues that Pharaoh’s own wickedness has become such an ingrained habit that it is nearly impossible for him to repent and change his ways. It is as if God had hardened his heart, for he is so accustomed to a certain path of behavior.

Aha. There is an important insight there. Sometimes our worst behavior is the force of habit: a reflexive refusal to recognize the pain and suffering of others whenever it is inconvenient to change our ways.

So, to return to my story: honking at someone is hardly a sin, and few would fault me for it. But the incident itself could be used as a metaphor: the people around us might be lumbering on with a difficulty we cannot see. They might be waiting for someone outside our field of view. On a small scale, these small interactions are not noteworthy. But be careful of the habits you create: Don’t go hardening your own heart. Boundless compassion takes effort and practice. And a bit of patience.

 

Tagged: Egypt, God, Maimonides, Moses, parashah, parashat hashavua, parashat hashavuah, Pharaoh, Samuel David Luzzatto, Torah, weekly Torah portion

§ 2 Responses to Va’era

• Lee says:

  December 23, 2013 at 1:01 pm

  Thanks for a thoughtful piece. I have often been puzzled about why the text says that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, when this seems to violate the law of free will in our choice between good and evil that is so clearly indicated by the Scriptures.

  I like the explanation of Maimonides that you mention. It brings to mind a principle from my own religious tradition in interpreting such passages as Isaiah 6:9-13, especially, Isaiah 6:10:

  “Make the heart of this people fat,
  stop up their ears, and shut their eyes.
  Otherwise, seeing with their eyes,
  and hearing with their ears,
  then understanding with their hearts,
  they might repent and be healed!”

  Perhaps, following the lead of Maimonides, Pharaoh’s wickedness has become so ingrained that he simply won’t and perhaps can’t repent and change his ways. Listening to Moses would involve accepting the sovereignty of the God of Moses.

  But Pharaoh is not able to follow the God of Moses. God sees that after accepting God, Pharaoh would inevitably backslide, reject God, and violate God’s will, thus profaning what is holy. The “repentance” and “healing” would be only temporary. When the wickedness returned, it would be in an even more hardened and virulent form than before. You know, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Once we’ve accepted, then rejected something good due to our own contrary heart, we are much more resistant to ever accepting it again. We also attack it more stubbornly and viciously than if we had never accepted it in the first place. This can cause great collateral damage to innocent bystanders.

  Therefore God hardens Pharaoh’s heart as a matter of mercy, to protect him from accepting, then inevitably rejecting the sovereignty of God and profaning the good things that come from God.

  Reply
• Gabriela Graubart says:

  June 30, 2021 at 1:34 am

  We are creatures of habit and the question is do we have awareness of those habits? are positive or destructive?

  Reply