The Heart of Pharaoh

My favorite of the tricks that he was like, okay, hey, put your hand in your robe. Okay, pull it out. Leprosy. He’s like, ah. Wait, why, why did you do that? And he’s like, okay, put it back in your robe. Now it’s cured. That is not a good trick. Don’t, don’t, don’t do that.

Hey, everybody, I’m Dan McClellan.

And I’m Dan Beecher.

And you’re listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast. And I’m gonna give it a little podcast voice where we increase public access to the academics. I don’t know if that’s public podcast voice, but we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. I feel like I’m supposed to speak softer.

And I think, I think your voice is technically a podcast voice because you do. You’ve been doing a podcast for two years now, so it’s been that long.

Well, I feel there’s a, there’s a, a joke that, that for whatever reason, I heard like four or five different times when I was a missionary in South America, in Uruguay specifically, folks would say, you know, we’ve been married for 10 years, but it really only feels like one year underwater or with my head underwater or something like that. And I was always like, that’s a dumb joke.

But you know that. That’s your wife you’re talking about, right? That’s your spouse. All right, well, coming up on the show, we’re, we, we’re talking about a couple things. We just had Easter. Yeah, we, I, we, we lived through it. We saw the other side of it.

I still got the Reese’s Easter egg thing bag.

Well, that’s insane. You haven’t eaten those yet.

No, no, I’m rationing them because I’ve got a, I’m, I’m trying to. So I, I had non-alcoholic fatty liver disease for a while. Lost 30 pounds, got rid of it and gained 40.

So now I’m, I, I have it back again, so. Oh, got, yeah, I’ve got to, I’ve got to try to pull it back a little bit.

Well, all right.

I, I only have two fistfuls at a time, so.

Fair enough, fair enough. Anyway, what we’re going to be talking about this week on our Taking Issue is the issue of, it’s, it’s not anything to do really with what is celebrated on Easter, just when it’s celebrated on Easter.

So, so yeah, that, that’s what we’re going to talk about. About the dating of Easter.

This was a question that was. You dated somebody named Easter?

I dated her sister for a little while.

Okay. I had. I had an uncle who, who was. Who used to be like, you know, I always love that Garth Brooks song, if Tomorrow Never Comes. By the way, did I ever tell you about my girlfriend? Tomorrow.

We’ll just glide right past that and move on. In the second half of this week’s show, we are going to be talking about a heart. Speaking of love, we’re going to talk about the heart of Pharaoh. And it is. And it’s hardening. The hardening thereof. Yes. And it’s actually a fascinating topic that I’m really glad we’re talking about because it’s something that has gotten at me ever since I read that book of.

Exodus and it hardened into chocolate, which is why on Easter, which is based on Passover, which is based on the.

It sounds like. It sounds like God is hardening your liver. So that’s. That’s, that’s what’s happening.

Anyway, should we. Should we just. Should we do our thing? Let’s do it. Let’s dive into Taking Issue. All right. The issue at hand is the dating of Easter. And here’s the thing about Easter, is that I remember as a kid being a little weirded out by Easter because I could never figure out when it was supposed to happen. And it always snuck up on me. Now, most I. Look, I was a kid with ADHD, most things snuck up on me. I, like, many times there would be everybody. I’d get to school, and they’d be like, you excited about the field trip? And I’d be like, what? The what? Now there’s a what? Where are we going?

I’m exactly like this. Like when I had. When I had a 9 to 5 and I had to go into an office and everything, my wife would be like, remember, Monday’s a holiday, a federal holiday. You don’t have to go into work on Monday. I’d be like, well, what holiday is it? Or she’s like, we got. We got something on Memorial Day. And I’m like, what month is that in? So, yeah.

And. But Easter is especially tricky because it moves around. It’s like, got a whole month that it could be anywhere in the middle of and then add to that. Now, I didn’t know this growing up, but there’s two Easters in the world calculated differently.

Although not this year.

I discovered this with my old 9 to 5 when I was making plans to take my first trip to Athens to go start work on the translation of the Book of Mormon into modern Greek. And I was talking with the, some folks over there who are going to help me identify translators and reviewers and stuff like that. And I was like, well, what about this date? And they were like, well, that’s the week of Easter. And I was like, no, it isn’t, idiot. Yes, it is. And they were like, you have to experience Easter in Greece, but don’t come out here and expect us to work. So, yeah, it’s, I have not been out there during the, the week of Easter. But, but yeah, I, I, and I was like, oh, I didn’t know that they, they did things differently out there. There’s an island that has a lot of Catholics in it. Okay. And the Catholics have been like, we will adopt the Orthodox date for Easter so we can all get along just,

Just so we can all be friends.

All right, well, I think that’s fine. I, I, it doesn’t seem like, I’m sure that there are Catholics and, or, or Eastern Orthodox Christians who would argue with me about this, but the date that you celebrate, it doesn’t feel like it should matter. It feels like the thing that’s being celebrated should be the important thing. Yes, but the, but no, the, the date is, is very important. So let’s talk about, like, first of all, should we talk about how it’s calculated first or should we talk about why it is tricky to calculate?

Well, I want to talk about how it has changed. Oh, yeah. So I’m going to go back to prior to the Council of Nicaea. Now it is, I am wont to get very upset when people say this happened at the Council of Nicaea, because. No, it didn’t. Almost every time.

Right.

This is one thing that did happen. Yeah, this is one thing that did happen. At the Council of Nicaea, they established a new mechanism for calculating the date of Easter. So before that there were two main, like, main traditions for calculating the date of Easter, and one was based on the Jewish Passover. Right. And they called these folks the Quartodecimans because they always celebrated Easter on the 14th of Nisan, which is the name of the Jewish month in which Passover is celebrated. Because Passover is closely connected with Jesus’s resurrection. Easter is supposed to celebrate Jesus’s resurrection. We’re just going to celebrate it on the Passover, irrespective of what day of the week it might fall on. So if it’s, if it’s on Hump Day, we’re going to celebrate it on Hump Day. If it’s on Friday Eve, we’re going to celebrate it on Friday Eve. Doesn’t matter. And then you had other folks who were like, no, it’s got to be on the Lord’s Day because he resurrected on a Sunday.

Sunday is the Lord’s Day. Sunday is the Christian Sabbath. We have to celebrate it on a Sunday. Which means usually it would be the first Sunday after the 14th of Nisan, so after the Passover. So, so it was different for different people. And then you had people in different areas who would be like, we’re going to do our own calculations. And particularly in places like Alexandria in Egypt where, you know, there that, that was a kind of hub of a lot of the Greco-Roman science at the time. And so you had a lot of people who were into the astronomy and stuff. So the Alexandrian Church was, you know, they were the nerds when it came to how to do this. But, and, and this was a controversy because, you know, you might think, who cares? But, but it has a lot to do. Well, it, in their mind, it had a lot to do with, you know, recognition of Jesus’s resurrection. And you know, some people were like, we shouldn’t be celebrating the Passover.

It’s not about the Passover. It’s about the Resurrection. And then the other people would be like, but the Resurrection happened on the Passover, so let’s do. And so it was a big fight. And then at Nicaea, Constantine came in and, you know, just locked the kids in the room and said, figure it out. And, and what they decided was, and, and there were, there was another problem as well, is that if you were following whoever’s method, you might have to wait for them to send you a letter and saying, this year we decree that it should be celebrated on this day. And they wanted a way, one, to unify the church, but two, they wanted it to be something that people could figure out on their own without having to wait for a, a festal letter or something like that.

And, and they were solving the problem of, this is not difficult enough to figure out. So let’s find a way. This is nowhere near convoluted enough. Let’s solve that issue.

And, and there was, and an additional issue was they, they wanted to decouple it from the celebration of Passover. They did not want to celebrate Easter on the same day that Jewish folks were celebrating the Passover. And so they, what they came up with is it must be celebrated on a Sunday. So they sided against the, the Quartodecimans; they said, you guys are wrong. We’re doing it on a Sunday. It must not coincide, coincide with the Jewish Passover. And, and what they, what they decided on was the Sunday after the first full moon after or on the equinox, the spring equinox. And they had this ecclesiastical, ecclesiastically authoritative date for the equinox, which I, I’m pretty sure was March 21st was the date. Okay, so it was basically, we hit the 21st, next full moon, it’s the Sunday after that.

Right. And so how did they make sure that that avoids being on Passover? I don’t know when Passover is. I don’t know because is that just, is just that date of, of the March 21st or whatever that’s just after Passover every year.

I, I’m pretty sure I would have to go back and, and look at exactly how they determine Passover. But the, the, the Jewish calendar was lunisolar, and and so Passover was based on the phases of the moon. So I think it was a way to guarantee that it would always be after.

So like Passover’s on the new moon, Easter’s on the, after the full moon, something like that.

Something. Well, Passover would be on the, on the full moon. So I, I think that by saying it’s the Sunday after, they’re saying it’s the Sunday after Passover. Okay. Or, or something like that.

Okay, so Passover is on the full moon and then this is like the Sunday after that. Okay.

Yeah. And so that was what they decided at Nicaea and everything was, was just working grand until we had something called the, the Gregorian calendar reform. Reform. Do you recall the, the story Pope Gregory?

Pope Gregory was like, I am getting really annoyed with the time slip that happens every four years.

Got slippage.

We got, we’re slipping, Jerry.

Can’t do what.

Yeah, it was some, it was something like that. They, what they were discover, they were discovering the problem of days, not the things not working out to exactly a number of days every year. So you were, you were losing days or you were gaining days or whatever.

It is because the, the Julian calendar counted exactly 365.25 days for the year and had a leap year every four years no matter what. And the reality is that there, it’s something like 365.2415 or something like that days in a year, which means you lose a day every, what is it? It’s like four or five days every 400 years or something like that. I think today the difference between the Julian and the Gregorian calendars is 13 days.

So things have, mean it kept on slipping, slipping, slipping, so that now there’s…

So the Julian calendar, people have kept following that. That’s still rolling. And then the Gregorian calendar and, and since they, like, they started and it was the same day, and now it’s been long enough that… but that they are 14 days different.

Yeah. So the, the Eastern Orthodox churches were like, we’re not doing that silly Gregorian thing. We’re sticking with the Julian calendar. I’m a Julian man.

Right.

And so slowly, the, the date of Easter has slipped away so that now it’s, it’s like 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar. So I think 1582 is when that reform was, was instituted.

Yeah. So. And, and I, I think there might be a difference in, in when they identify… well, because of that, the equinox is on a different, is calculated to be on a, a different date.

Which.

So what, so what that means is that many times there is the Orthodox Easter and the, the Western Easter, the Catholic slash Protestant Easter, fall on different days.

But not always, as we learned.

Not always. Yeah. But last year, you know how far apart they were?

No, I don’t.

Over a month.

Oh, wow.

I’d have to look it up. But I think that in 2024, Orthodox Easter was on May 5, and Western Easter was on March 31.

So they were over a month apart because of that little difference.

Well, and I read a thing that said that, and I wish I had it pulled up, but I don’t. But I read a thing that said that there will be, you know, in the next X number of years, there will be two or three more occurrences where they overlap, where they’re on the same day again, and then it won’t happen again for, like, a thousand years. Just as a quirk of, like, how things are slipping.

Yeah. Yeah.

So that’s interesting if they… and… but that’s only if everybody sticks to their guns and stays on the… the calendar that they’re currently going on there.

And there are campaigns to reform the date of Easter, and there are institutions who’ve been like, “This is… this is just… this aggression will not stand. We’ve got to fix this.” In the United Kingdom, Parliament passed the Easter Act in 1928, which says the date of Easter will be the first Sunday after the second Saturday in April.

Although that legislation was never implemented.

Interesting. So they were. So that. That was just. We’re gonna just… we’re just gonna go completely rogue.

Yeah. I guess Parliament was like, “Everybody listens to us. We rule the world, so we’ll just do this.” And everybody was like, “We’re not.”

I mean, you’d think in a country that has a state religion, they might be able to. They might. You know, it’s plausible that they could have pulled it off, but apparently they weren’t able to.

The… let’s see. There was a summit in Aleppo in Syria in 1997. The World Council of Churches proposed a reform, and the reform was proposed for implementation starting in 2001, but it was not adopted by any member body. I feel bad for whoever was so excited about getting their reform in front of the World Council of Churches. And everybody was like, “Okie, yeah.”

There. No, no, thank you.

In January 2016, the Anglican Communion, Coptic Orthodox Church, Greek Orthodox Church, and Roman Catholic Church considered agreeing upon a universal date for Easter that evidently fizzled. November 2022, the Patriarch of Constantinople said that they had been in conversation with the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodox Churches to try again. And they… it says the agreement is expected to be reached for the 1700th… 1700th… 1700th… You can see why I have… I ditch, like, a hundred takes for every TikTok video I put out. The agreement is expected to be reached for the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea in, what, 1700 years after 325? Yeah, 2025, this year. Yeah.

So. So we may get a change.

Interesting.

This year.

I mean, it’s one of those things where, again, like, to my mind, it… it shouldn’t matter what the actual date is. We don’t know the date of the actual resurrection. You know, the date of his… of… of the… the killing of Jesus and then the subsequent dates.

Yes. And it was not April 3, 33 CE, because a lunar eclipse does not cause darkness.

We’ve been through that one.

We’ve been through that one. Yeah.

But. But because we don’t know the actual date, it seems silly to me to worry too much about it. Other than now. There’s like an identity thing. Like they’re, you know, part of how an… an Eastern Orthodox Christian sees themselves is, well, we do this other thing that separates us.

From these other guys. And that’s important to them. You know what I mean? Like, that could be important to them.

It’s our thing.

It’s. It’s our thing. So I. So I can see why it’s. It has been and may continue to be an intractable, intractable problem. Though if the Patriarch of Constantinople… and my understanding is that the Constantinople patriarch is first among equals in the patriarchate of the, of the Orthodox, which is one of those, one of those phrases that I don’t, that doesn’t.

Make, doesn’t make any sense. Yes, because it’s, it’s an attempt to connect to incommensurate dots.

Right. Yeah.

Square the circle.

But, but if, you know, if the, if, if, if that, if that guy’s going to come to the table. That’s an interesting question. It seems, it does seem like, and you can correct me if you, if I’m wrong here, but it seems like you go to the Gregorian. You know what I mean? Like, they’re the ones who should be, who should be taking the step because the Gregorian’s just the more accurate calendar.

Yeah. And, and I think that maybe a way you offer a compromise is just come up with a whole new system.

Right.

And not just say you adopt our system, but say scrap the system. Let’s, let’s come up with something new that we can all agree to.

What do you think? What, what would you do? What’s. What, what’s your proposal? The, the, the Dan McClellan AI official proposal for how you calculate Easter.

I would just pick a date.

I would, too. I, I feel like, yeah, April 6th is great. Whatever.

Or, or, or just say the, you know, the last Sunday in April or something like that.

Right?

If you want to keep it a Sunday, that’s fine.

Yeah. I think that, Yeah, I, I think everybody’s moved past the, the other one was a little outdated. I think everybody’s on Sunday now.

Moving away from the Sunday might be a bridge too far.

There you go.

And the, the first Council of Nicaea convened on May 20th. Okay. And adjourned at the end of July, 325.

So the theory is that, that these guys could do the same. They could.

They. It could be. Yeah. Depending on when they decide they’re going to celebrate the anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. Then, around May, June or July, the, the, the Nicene Creed was formulated on June 19th. On Juneteenth.

There you go.

Of 325 CE. So, so maybe they pick that day and, or maybe they go, let’s, let’s not step on too many toes here. Let’s find another date. We’ll see. And, and maybe those, those talks broke down. Maybe they got upset and stormed out of the, the building and, and said, you know, yeah, we can’t tolerate this. This aggression will not stand well, and.

Also, I guess not for nothing, but there will be a. A different Pope at the table.

Yes, there will be.

So who. So that might throw a spanner in the works as well. Who knows?

What will happen with that? That’s always a fun, interesting experience, watching the. At least being around during the Conclave. Maybe not watching it, but I. I read something today that said, like, the streaming of Conclave, like, shot up after the news of the Pope’s death made.

It around the world.

Yeah. Because it’s. That’s the. The new hot thing now. So did they stream it?

Do they live stream what’s going on?

No, no, no, no, no. The movie.

Oh, the movie Conclave. Oh, okay. I’m like, I. That would be fascinating if.

Oh, I would. Yeah. But no, it’s all very, very private, so Ralph Fiennes. I. I probably need to see that movie.

I haven’t either.

I like. I like Ralph Fiennes.

Yeah. I like him a lot.

He was. I don’t think. I think it was. It was one of his brothers, Joseph.

Who was. Who played Martin Luther.

Oh, okay.

In the movie Martin Luther, which was. I. I thought it was. It was interesting. There you go. Yeah, it was. It was my first kind of glimpse into all of that history. But it was fun. Yeah. Conclave would be. Did it win any Oscars? I don’t remember. I don’t think it was. I think it was nominated for a handful.

Yeah. But. All right, well, there you go. Do we have anything more we need to say about Easter and the dating thereof?

I. I don’t think so. I think we’ve. We’ve covered most of the stuff I wanted to. To talk about and even found some stuff that I didn’t prepare to talk about.

Yes, indeed.

To talk about.

All right, well, there you go. That’s the Computus Paschalis for you, if. If you want to get fancy.

That’s a deep cut. Yeah.

Yeah. Let’s move on to our chapter and verse.

Let’s do it.

And I’m excited about this one. As I said earlier, as I teased in the opening of the show, because when I read Exodus, there’s this thing that keeps happening over and over again in chapter four and chapter seven and chapter 10 and chapter 14. And if I read it, you know, the way I see it on the page, it’s mystifying. It’s infuriating is what it is. So let’s talk a little bit about. About. Okay, so what we’ve got, We’ve got Moses, we’ve got Pharaoh, we can read.

Exodus 4 , verse 21.

I think that kind of introduces what we’re talking about.

So this is. This is Moses. He has left Egypt. And he. And. And God is sending him back into Egypt to go and free his people from bondage under the pharaoh.

So this is Mount Horeb. This is Burning Bush. This is. I am that I am the. You know, the Val Kilmer flowing robes. Sure gracious.

All that stuff. Get. Get all of that in your head. You’re. You’re a Val Kilmer guy. I, of course, was.

I’m a Charlton Heston.

Heston fella. Did.

Who played. Who played God in that? Was it also Charlton Heston?

It might have been. It was just a voice.

Yeah, well, that. And that’s what it is in.

Anyway, that’s what everything is in Prince of Egypt.

That’s. Yes, exactly.

In. Yeah. In animated films, it’s all just. Anyway, so verse 21 in chapter 4 says, and the Lord said to Moses, when you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders that I have put in your power. He gave him a whole bunch of tricks, a bag of tricks, to go.

And do a staff of tricks, you might say.

Indeed. Including the one, my favorite of the tricks, that he was like, okay, hey, put your hand in your robe. Okay, Pull it out. Leprosy. Like, why? Why did you do that? He’s like, okay, put it back in your robe now it’s cured. That is not a good trick. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t do that. Anyway, that was one of his. That was one of the tricks. Anyway, so. So he says, when you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders that I have put in your power, but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.

That I think we’ve mentioned before that if you’re Moses and God’s like, so here’s what you’re gonna do at great personal threat to your bodily safety. And I’m gonna make it so it doesn’t work.

And Moses, like, what?

Yeah. You know that you’re all powerful, right? Why don’t you do the opposite and make it work? Work. Because I thought that was the goal.

Yeah. God’s like, I’m trying something. Hang on a minute.

I just want to see what happens. This is going to be funny.

Yeah. You’re supposed to know what happens.

So. So what’s going on here? What? First, first of all, talk to me a bit about what the original Hebrew has to say, like what Are we reading here?

Yeah. So it’s. So it says heart and the. And the first thing to keep in mind is that the heart was the seat of both emotion and intelligence and cognition.

Right.

In the Hebrew Bible, the brain was like, there’s no word in the Hebrew Bible for brain. Every time you see mind in a translation of the Old Testament, that’s heart. Like they, they located everything in the heart. And then your kidneys or your bowels were the seat of like, passions and, and fear and stuff like that. So. And then the verb is hazaq and it is probably the Piel. Yeah. So the Piel would be to put in a state of being hard. Okay. So I will put his heart into a state of being hard. And the idea there, the imagery is that he is not soft hearted, it’s hard hearted. In other words, he’s. He’s mean or he’s.

And he’s. And he’s. And he’s probably like, like hard in the sense of like unmovable or a stone.

Not gonna show compassion. Right. In other words. And it quite explicitly says, I will harden his heart. And we’re. Yeah. Which is. And then when. When we get to chapter seven, which is when Moses finally is having to do all this crap that God told him to do, even though he also told him. And none of it’s gonna work. And I’m gonna make sure of it.

It kind of takes. I imagine it would take the wind out of your sails and Moses would just be like, let my people go.

Please let them go.

Okay, there you go.

Yeah. Yeah.

I knew that was going to happen. And then again in. In Exodus 7 , verse 3, and I love Exodus 7 , verse 1, God tells Moses, I will make you a God to Pharaoh.

But I’m not gonna let Pharaoh let your people go.

And it’s not very much of, I will make you a God. Because what he’s about to do is these. The rod into a snake trick, which is a good trick. That’s really awesome. But then like, Pharaoh’s guys can do the same trick.

So. So I don’t know how godlike Pharaoh sees him in that moment.

Yeah. But. And God says again in verse three, I will harden Pharaoh’s heart and I will multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt. And this is, this is kind of the theme is that God is like, wait, no, I’m doing something here. I want all these. I want him to say no, all this, all these times, so I can fiddle with all these signs and wonders.

So I could do More tricks.

Yeah, I wanna, I’m gonna put. I’m putting on a show and if.

He says yes at any time, then I don’t get to do all of my whole, My whole. I got a whole list of things.

That I wanted.

Prop comic. I got a whole bunch of props I work with. And you know, this is, this one’s a frog and looks nice.

Yeah. Look at all the locusts.

Got a whole set here. And it’s ruined. If Pharaoh is like, yeah, sure, whatever, go.

Yeah, it’s fine.

So God. So, so really what’s going on here is God wants to show off because God wants this reputation that’s going to spread around the world. Look what God did. And, and God is like, I have fixed the deck so that I get to show off. But after that you get a couple of Exodus 7:13 , it just said. And, and, and here’s a peculiarity. It’s just a Qal. And. And he hardened the heart of Pharaoh. And so maybe God is supposed to be the subject of that verb. But like the NRSVUE says, however, Pharaoh’s heart was hardened.

Right.

Makes it passive. Takes away the. The subject.

Doesn’t say who’s doing it. So.

But I mean, 10, just 10 verses ago, we’ve. We learned who’s doing it. Like he literally said. God literally said, I’m going to do this. And then he’s. And then in verse 13 it says, however his heart was hardened. So, yeah, I think we can safely infer who’s doing the act.

It’s still. The, the. The antecedent is still active here. Yeah, but then we get into chapter eight and, and things shift a little bit. In verse 15, it says when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, He. Well, there it says he made his heart heavy. You have the hiphil, which is the causative of, of the verbal root kavad, which means to, to be heavy. So Pharaoh caused his own heart to be heavy and would not listen to them.

And then in verse 32, we have. And does it again. And Pharaoh caused his heart to be heavy. Let me see if hazak is ever used with Pharaoh as the subject because they’re, they’re using different verbs here. I don’t, I don’t think I picked up on that.

What is, what, what does hazak mean?

Hazak means to be strong or firm or something like that. It’s. It’s frequently used to mean to grab hold of somebody or something or something like that. And here in the. It can mean To. To be hard. To put in a state of being hard.

Yeah. So it looks like when God is doing it, it’s one verb. And at least so far, when it’s Pharaoh doing it to himself, it’s a different verb.

Interesting. Yeah.

Doesn’t say whether he uses his left or right hand.

But I was gonna say the jokes are all there. We. We hear it too. We’re just trying not to make the. The jokes.

We got to leave them on the table.

But making himself hard, we hear it. Don’t worry about it. It’s his heart. You guys grow up.

Yeah. No, so then we got in. In chapter. Yeah. So they’re using two different verbs here. Sometimes it’s God, sometimes it’s. It’s Pharaoh. And. And I think that the idea here is, is probably to create some. Some narrative tension and say, you know, there’s. It’s a give and a take. There’s. God has their sovereignty, which they’re going to exercise. They’re going to get what they want. But it’s also showing that Pharaoh is also taking action himself. Pharaoh is. Is taking some responsibility himself for hardening his own heart. So it’s not. It’s not all God. Again, we’re trying to square a circle here and have our. Eat our cake and have it, too. If you say have your cake and eat it too, by the way, on social media, you will get dragged to hell.

Because it’s supposed to be eat first.

Yeah. That’s. That’s the idea. I. I think. Yeah. And so every time. Every time I say it, I make sure to say, eat your cake and have it too, even though it’s not. Because.

That’s because of the Internet pedants. Yeah.

But every time I do it, I get a bunch of people who are like, thank you for saying it.

Right.

And so, I mean, I understand.

Anybody who feels strongly about that. I don’t feel strongly about that. Yeah.

And. And if you do feel strongly about that, consider not. You don’t need to.

Yeah. Same. Same thing. For I could care less versus I couldn’t care less.

Yeah. It means the same thing.

I could care less.

And I couldn’t care less. So there.

Yeah, so there you go. Yeah. And then we’ve got God says in. In chapter 10, verse 1, then the Lord said to Moses, go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his officials.

I love that he’s. That he keeps. Like, just don’t tell Moses if you’re. If you’ve done that and you’re sending Moses in. Just don’t. Don’t tell him I’m sending you on this futile endeavor.

Yeah, yeah.

It just seems mean.

Yeah. At some point, he had to have been like, kind of taking the wind out of my sails here, Lord of the universe. I’m just going through the motions now.

Yeah. It feels like a shallow victory when.

I, you know, for the puppet master is just playing their game.

And. Yeah. I mean, it just seems like you’re not, like you’re not getting. Yes. You get to do your signs and wonders, but, like, it’s not like the. The pharaoh was supposed to be this really nice guy and. And God is. Is tricking him into being mean. He was already mean, right?

Like, it just seems. Or was he. That’s the other question. Maybe he was kind of a cool dude and the Lord just kept messing with him.

Well, we, we do have. Let me, let me pull up what’s going on here. Because if this is the same Pharaoh now, Moses took off for 40 years. And I think when we look at. I think when God visits Moses, he says that there’s a new pharaoh, a new pharaoh that arises, that enslaves.

Okay. Yeah. Because it’s Yul Brynner now.

Yeah. Now in verse Exodus 1:8 , now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. And, And Moses is in. Supposed to be wandering for a bit before he shows up at Horeb. And God’s like, I got a job for you. It’s not going to work, but still got a job for you.

You have to do it. It’s just going to be a failure.

Yeah. I.

Over and over and over.

I want to say it’s a different. If it’s a different Pharaoh, because if it’s the Pharaoh that Moses split from, then one, the. The pharaoh should know him. But two, he’s. I don’t know how harsh that that pharaoh was, but probably wasn’t very nice.

Well, Cecil B. DeMille had it be the guy that was raised as his brother. Oh. Because it’s. It’s Yul Brynner. And so. But it is like he ascended to the throne while I think, while Moses was in the wilderness.

Yeah. So I, I have not read through the entire story of the Exodus for a bit. So Exodus specialists are going to be ashamed of me.

Yes, I’m ashamed of you.

I’m pretty sure it’s different. It’s a different pharaoh. By the way I looked it up, it was actually Cecil B. DeMille who voiced.

Who voiced God.

Perfect.

And that is perfect. Evidently, some people suggest that Charlton Heston’s voice was overlaid also to give it that. That tenor.

Oh, sure.

That tone.

Got it. You gotta. You gotta have multiple voices for God.

And because he’s. Because he’s actually three people, so that all it makes is sense.

Three. Three persons. Yep. One. One ousia.

Yeah. So, okay, are we to chapter 14 yet or to the. In the plagues you got in. So basically, I have an article that has a whole roundup of the various plagues.

And in the first, I think five, the wording is that Pharaoh’s heart became hard or hardened. He hardened his own heart, as you said, all of that sort of thing. And then we’re back to. By. By plague six. This is chapter nine, I think the Lord’s. The Lord hardens Pharaoh’s heart. Pharaoh. And then Pharaoh hardened his own heart. And then locusts. He hardened. So God announces that he hardened Pharaoh’s heart. And then chapter 10, in the darkness, God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. So. So we’re getting back to God hardening Pharaoh’s heart.

Yeah. And I. And it looks like 9:34 is when the last time Pharaoh hardened his own heart. And after that, it is God every time.

Right. So I. I guess the question is, what are we to make of this? Like, what. What’s going on here?

Yeah, this. A. A lot of people don’t like thinking of God as. As playing puppet master with the lives and the agency of their creation, but that’s what the text is saying. And. And I think literarily, rhetorically, the idea seems to be to kind of play from both sides of the plate to. To attribute this partially to Pharaoh, but also partially to God, because again, God’s got signs and wonders that he’s just burning to get out of him. And God wants the world to know about all of this. And so if that means livestock gotta die, if that means firstborns gotta go, this is not. This narrative, you know, has some things it’s got to get to. It’s got to achieve certain things. And so those have to be elements of the story. But I’m sure that the. Whoever was writing this was. Was like, well, let’s have a little from God.

Let’s have a little from. From Pharaoh. And then we create some tension. We. We help people realize that, you know, it’s. It’s a joint effort between deity and humanity to. To save the. The Hebrews from Egypt or to, you know, provide the resistance to the saving of the Hebrews from Egypt.

You know, sorry to interrupt, but it’s starting to occur. It suddenly occurs to me that maybe the. The narrative structure here is that those first five plagues, blood, frogs, gnats, flies. You can kind of believe that, like, that’s not enough to convince Pharaoh on his own. But then when you start to get to, like, all of the livestock dying or the boils, the hail, locusts, like, when it starts to get, like, really.

Nasty, God’s like, oh, Pharaoh’s losing his resolve. I gotta get in there.

Or at least the author is like, people are not gonna believe that this guy was like, okay, like, was still saying no to this.

So. So they got to come up with a way to make it believable that Pharaoh is still not letting these people go, even though, like, seriously insane stuff is happening.

Yeah. And I’m. I’m sure that’s. That plays into it.

I’m.

I’m sure there’s. There’s a lesson about obstinacy and a lesson about obedience where Moses is doing everything God says to do, and. And Pharaoh is the one who. Who is not. Even though sometimes, you know, it’s. It’s someone else pulling the strings, namely God. So. But it. But it is troubling for a contemporary reader of this text, someone who thinks of God a certain way as a respecter of agency and as someone who would not toy with people’s lives and just arbitrarily destroy them just for the sake of showing off or showing off the.

And the firstborn children.

Yeah, that. Culminating in that firstborn, firstborn children thing. Like, that’s horrific.

So it does seem like it’d be a lot nicer if God softened Pharaoh’s heart, went the other direction. And Pharaoh just—after the first trick, Pharaoh’s just like, “Oh, yeah, you better take these people, skadoodle.”

“I got more sense than that.” And then you get the institution of the Passover where it’s like, “Remember all this happened?” And, you know, from a mortal perspective, it’s like, “Okay, we’re remembering that things sucked and we were delivered.” But if you’re thinking of this from God’s perspective, he’s like, “I want you to remember when I did all this cool stuff. Remember the show I put on when I, yeah, had all those kids killed.” Which I think, you know, makes it clear that this is a narrative that was constructed to serve certain rhetorical purposes associated with identity markers and a sacred past that we’ve got to keep in mind in order to construct and curate our boundaries today and keep in mind who we are and all that kind of stuff.

Right.

So I think it definitely originates in the human literary imagination and with the curation of social memory.

In other words, this was not written by God.

Right. Nor was it written about an event that actually occurred.

It’s a pretty narcissistic, megalomaniacal deity who sacrifices all of these humans for the sake of putting on a show.

Not to mention the livestock. I mean, we don’t even have to go into all of the livestock that had to die for this, for this story to occur.

Jonah got that message where at the end of Jonah, God was like, “And the livestock. You can’t remember the—that’s some good cattle.” Yeah, and here, yeah, they totally missed out on that.

Yeah. All right, well, there you go. I’m going to harden my heart and say that that’s enough of that. I’m cutting it off.

I didn’t get to use the line, though.

Oh, please use the line.

Hard hearted harbinger of haggis.

Yes. If we didn’t have enough 90s pop culture references, it wouldn’t even be our show.

I think we haven’t gotten to So I Married an Axe Murderer for a while, so it was due.

Yeah, it’s—

It was time.

It was time. It was time. (he pants) No. All right, friends, thank you so much for tuning in. If you would like to be a part of making our show continue on and feel so good about yourself in doing so, you can go to patreon.com/dataoverdogma and sign up to be one of our patrons, where you will get, or where you can get early access to an ad-free version of every show. You can get access to the After Party, which is bonus content that we do every week, and that’s often a lot of fun and every now and then a dud, but don’t think about that. Don’t think about that. And also you’ll get our undying love, which I think is the most valuable thing of all. Our show, by the way, is edited by Roger Gowdy. Thank you so much. If you would like to reach us, please feel free to reach out at contact@dataoverdogmapod.com, and we’ll talk to you again next week.

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The Heart of Pharaoh

Segments

The Transcript

Scripture Index

Terminology