Parshat Vaera 5777-Chizuk Halev-What does this mean?

One of the great theological issues in the story of the Exodus is the whole discussion surrounding the ‘hardening of Pharo’s heart’.Many commentaries raise the obvious question:surely this action of G-d is forcing Pharo not to send the Jews out so as to punish him and the Egyptians for their cruel enslavement of the Jewish people. But if G-d hardened his heart, then Pharo is not to blame for his actions. So why is he being punished in this seemingly unfair way?

Rambam in Hilchot Teshuva(chs.5-6) gives a classic response to this question. He maintains that there are people in the history of the world whose ability to repent will be denied them as a result of their very cruel ways. In our time, as the war was ending and the defeat was obvious , the German leader  commanded at the end was to “continue the war against the Jews’ Such a person had lost the ability to repent and died in the midst of his sin without reprieve. The same is true with Pharo and with many other anti semites as we have experienced in our history. “Hardening the heart’ for Rambam means that the possibility of Teshuva has been removed and deservedly so, due to the evil deeds of this individual.

Many people have objected to the Rambam’s explanation as we are told that Teshuva is a concept which is available to anyone and everyone(even Nineveh, as we read on Yom Kippur). The suggestion that G-d has removed the ‘gift’ of Teshuva from certain people is very controversial, although in terms of reward and punishment the Rambam’s idea has within it a certain sense of satisfaction that evil people can not get a free pass if their deeds were so bad, such as Pharo and others.

The Bet Halevi(Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik-great grandfather of Rav Soloveitchik of YU)  argues in the opposite direction, based on an approach seen in the Seforno commentary on Torah. In fact G-d wants Pharo to make a balanced decision to let the Jews go and the plagues may be seen as coercing Pharo to let them go against his will. In order to counteract this pressure Pharo’s heart is hardened, i.e. he is able to withstand the pressure and make a balanced decision to let the Jews go. Bet Halevi is saying that hardening the heart gave Pharo the ability to choose and is opposite to the Rambam who said that Pharo was denied the ability to choose as a punishment for his bad deeds.

An interesting modern approach is found in the writing of Rabbi Y. Eisenberg, a Bible professor at Bar Ilan in Israel. He analyses all the cases where we are told that there was a’ hardening of the heart’(e.g.Pharo, Sichon, the wars of Yehoshua,the sons of Eli) and he concludes as follows: the hardening of the heart represents in all these cases the logical conclusion of the oppressor according to the circumstances in which he finds himself. In the case of Sichon, he felt it was logical to go to war against Israel and with Pharo it was logical for him to resist the pressure to let the Jews go. With hindsight we are told that G-d allowed  these evil men ito arrive at their ‘logical’ conclusions in order to bring about their destruction. The ‘hardening of the heart’ represents G-d’s  allowing the mind of the evil dictator to pursue his evil ways, which seem logical to him at the time, but are seen to be wrong with hindsight after the event.This explanation helps particularly to explain the strange story of Eli’s children who continue in their negative behavior  in the Tabernacle.(Samuel 1, ch.2)It seemed logical to them to do what they did, but with hindsight it was clearly wrong and they were punished accordingly.This is the equivalent of giving the man enough rope with which to hang himself. The choice is still his as to whether to do the deed or not.

This whole issue has certainly taxed the minds of our great commentators both old and new and it is exciting to see how the discussion ranges from one extreme to the other in the effort to understand the story and the actions of G-d. This is surely one aspect of  the greatness of Torah, in the fact that it demands our full attention and focus to truly understand the hidden depths of meaning in so many of its stories.

Shabbat Shalom