if one bade the avalanche to pause which his own
act had started down the icy slopes? Was Pharaoh as little responsible
for his pursuit of Israel as his horses were--being, like them, the
blind agents of a superior force? We do not find it so. In the fifth
chapter, when a demand is made, without any sustaining miracle, simply
appealing to the conscience of the ruler, there is no mention of any
such process, despite the insults with which Pharaoh then assails both
the messengers and Jehovah Himself, Whom he knows not. In the seventh
chapter there is clear evidence that the process is yet unaccomplished;
for, speaking of an act still future, it declares, "I will harden
Pharaoh's heart, and multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of
Egypt" (vii. 3). And this terrible act is not connected with the
remonstrances and warnings of God, but entirely with the increasing
pressure of the miracles.

The exact period is marked when the hand of doom closed upon the tyrant.
It is not where the Authorised Version places it. When the magicians
imitated the earlier signs of Moses, "his heart was strong," but the
original does not bear out the assertion that at this time the Lord made
it so by any judicial act of His (vii. 13). That only comes with the
sixth plague; and the course of events may be traced, fairly well, by
the help of the margin of the Revised Version.

After the plague of blood "Pharaoh's heart was strong" ("hardened"), and
this is distinctly ascribed to his own action, because "he set his heart
even to this" (vii. 22, 23).

After the second plague, it was still he himself who "made his heart
heavy" (viii. 15).

After the third plague the magicians warned him that the very finger of
some god was upon him indeed: their rivalry, which hitherto might have
been somewhat of a palliation for his obstinacy, was now ended; but yet
"his heart was strong" (viii. 19).

Again, after the fourth plague he "made his heart heavy"; and it "was
heavy" after the fifth plague, (viii. 32, ix. 7).

Only thenceforward comes the judicial infatuation upon him who has
resolutely infatuated himself hitherto.

But when five warnings and penalties have spent their force in vain,
when personal agony is inflicted in the plague of boils, and the
magicians in particular cannot stand before him through their pain,
would it have been proof of virtuous contrition if he had yielded then?
If he had needed evidence, it was given to him long before.