No attempt should be made to "reconcile" Yahweh's hardening of Pharaoh's heart (plagues 6, 8, 9, 10) with statements in the other plagues that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. The tension cannot be resolved in a facile manner by suggesting, for example, that Pharaoh has already demonstrated his recalcitrance, so Yahweh merely helps the process along, or that he is doing what Pharaoh would have done on his own anyway. Rather, 9:12 is a striking reminder of what God has been trying to teach Moses and Israel since the beginning of the Exodus episode: He is in complete control. However Pharaoh might have reacted is given the chance is not brought into the discussion. He is not even given that chance. Yahweh hardens his heart. It is best to allow the tension of the text to remain. . Peter Enns
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
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Anonymous
Sometimes God allows what he hates to accomplish what he loves.
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Joni Eareckson Tada
No woman wants to be in submission to a man who isn't in submission to God!
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T.d. Jakes
His hands are holding my cheeks, and he pulls back just to look me in the eye and his chest is heaving and he says, "I think, " he says, "my heart is going to explode, " and I wish, more than ever, that I...
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Tahereh Mafi
Why is there ever this perverse cruelty in humankind, that makes us hurt most those we love best?
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Jacqueline Carey
More Quotes By Peter Enns
Church is too often the most risky place to be spiritually honest.
When we reach the point where things simply make no sense, when our thinking about God and life no longer line up, when any sense of certainty is gone, and when we can find no reason to trust God but we still do, well that...
To love as God loves means loving not just others like us, but those who are not.
Grace grows best in winter.
In the New Testament, God's steadfast love and faithfulness are seen, not in an act of deliverance from foreign enemies, but in sending the Son and raising Him from the dead to enact a global rescue mission (Romans 8:3.) Jesus is God's supreme, grand, climactic...
