Commentaria in Exodum
Secondly, God hardened Pharao by miracles; first, those of the magicians: for when Pharao saw his magicians do the same portents which Moses did, he despised the portents of Moses and of God; whence then not so much God as the magicians are said to have hardened Pharao. But after the magicians were overcome by Moses, and struck by him with boils, they could no longer stand before Pharao and harden him; then at last God is said to have hardened him, chap. 9, verse 12: for there it is first said that God hardened Pharao, namely because these miracles of God were at once plagues and scourges, which, beating his hard mind, did not soften it but made it harder. Add, thirdly, that God after the plagues presented to Pharao such thoughts as these: God wills that thou yield to Him and humble thyself; He wills that thou lay aside a proud and hard mind; He wills that thou let go the Hebrew people whom thou oppressest tyrannically, though they be to thee a great honour, advantage and glory. By which thoughts the proud mind of Pharao, being provoked, swelled the more, hardened, grew hot and resisted God, and said: Who shall command me? I am Pharao, a great king. Who is the God that will snatch this prey from me? I will not yield, I will not let the people go. And this seems properly to be what the words of Scripture signify, to which after most of the plagues there is straightway added: “And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharao, and he did not hearken to them.” And in this sense Augustine says, book 5 Against Julian, chap. 1, that God hardened Pharao not only by His patience but also by His power (that is, by powerful command, plagues and scourges). God therefore hardened Pharao, that is, by that mode of providence which God used about him, in miracles and scourges, both in sending and in recalling them, in permitting the arts of the magicians, in the rigour and rigid demand of Moses, and other things, by which Pharao hardened himself more, and by which God foresaw that he would harden himself more from his own malice and his own free choice of will, but not by which He Himself intended to harden him.
Thou wilt ask thirdly, what is hardness of heart, and what are its properties and effects?
St. Bernard answers, book 1 On Consideration to Eugenius: “A hard heart,” he says, “is one that is neither pierced by compunction, nor softened by piety, nor moved by prayers, nor yields to threats; nay by scourges is hardened the more. A hard heart is ungrateful for benefits, unfaithful to counsels, cruel in judgments, shameless in base things, fearless in dangers, inhuman toward human things, rash toward divine things: forgetting the past, neglecting the present, improvident of the future: for it is one to which, of things past, nothing at all passes by except injuries only; of things present nothing does not perish; of things to come there is none, unless perhaps foresight for revenge; and, to embrace in brief all the evils of a horrible evil, a hard heart is one that neither fears God nor reverences men.”
Now the properties of a hard heart are, first, that the hardened in heart do not wish to understand so as to act well, they shut their eyes and ears to salutary warnings, they do not wish to hear what belongs to virtue and salvation. “Who,” as Job says, chap. 21, verse 14, “have said to God: Depart from us, we desire not the knowledge of thy ways.” So Pharao, Exodus 5:2: “Who is the Lord,” he says, “that I should hear his voice? I know not the Lord”; hence Job, chap. 24, says such are rebellious to the light.
Hence secondly, such God in turn leaves, casts off and despises, Prov. 1: “You have despised all my counsel, and have neglected my reprehensions: I also will laugh in your destruction, and will mock.”
Thirdly, “such,” as the Wise Man says, Prov. 2, “are glad when they have done evil, and rejoice in most wicked things; whose ways are perverse, and their steps infamous”; and chap. 10: “A fool worketh mischief as it were for sport.”
Fourthly, the hardened have come into the depth of evils, and despise God and men. Prov. 18: “The wicked man, when he is come into the depth of sins, contemneth, but ignominy and reproach follow him.”
Fifthly, their sin is called indelible, and their wound incurable, because it is remitted hardly and scarcely; hence Jerem. 17: “The sin of Juda,” he says, “is written with a pen of iron, with the point of a diamond”; and chap. 30: “Thy bruise is incurable.”
Sixthly, they are not ashamed even of the most shameful crimes, but, as Jeremias says, chap. 3: “Thou hast had a harlot’s forehead, thou wouldst not blush.”
Seventhly, such are almost incorrigible: whence of them the Wise Man says, Eccles. 7: “Consider the works of God, that no man can correct whom he hath despised”; and Wis. 12: “Their nation is wicked, and their malice natural, and their thought can never be changed.”
Eighthly, such, struck by God, do not feel it. Jerem. 5: “Thou hast struck them, and they have not grieved”; such also do not feel the stings and remorse of conscience, because they have as it were extinguished it.
Ninthly, by inveterate and strengthened habit of sinning, it becomes as it were impossible for them to act well and not to sin. Jerem. 13: “If the Ethiopian can change his skin, or the leopard his spots, you also may do well, when you have learned evil.” And St. Augustine, book 6 Confess.: “I sighed,” he says, “bound not by another’s iron, but by my own iron will. The enemy held my will, and thence had made a chain for me. For of a perverse will a habit was made, and while the habit was not resisted, a necessity was made; by certain rings linked to one another a hard servitude held me fast.”
Tenthly, St. Paul to the Romans, 1 and 2, says that such treasure up to themselves wrath, and are delivered up to a reprobate sense, and elsewhere calls them children of perdition and of unbelief, and vessels fit for destruction, who, despairing, have given themselves up to all uncleanness.
Eleventhly, these heap sins upon sins, and day by day grow worse, and, as is said Apoc. 22 [11], they that are in filth grow filthy still. “Then is unhappiness consummated,” says Seneca in the Proverbs, “when base things not only delight but even please; and there is no more place for remedy, where what were vices have become manners.” Such was Cain, Genes. 18 [4]; Sedecias, 2 Paralip. 36:13.
Thou wilt ask fourthly, how God treats the hardened, and how He behaves toward them?
I answer: As a punishment of the sins they have committed, first, He permits them to follow their desires and lusts, and does not remove from them their allurements, occasions and temptations, Psalm 80: “I let them go according to the desires of their heart: they shall walk in their own inventions.” And Paul to the Rom. 1 says that God delivered them up to the desires of their heart; hence also Psalm 72 it is said: “They are gone into the affection of the heart,” that is, whatever they affected and coveted in heart they have obtained, and all things have succeeded to them as they wished.
Secondly, God gives them abundance of temporal things, and prosperous success, by which they, blinded, rush into all crimes and their own destruction, Ps. 72: “Their iniquity hath come forth as it were from fat,” that is, from a fattened and gross heart, by reason of abundance of temporal things, their iniquity hath proceeded.
Thirdly, God takes from them tribulations, by which chastised sinners return to a sound mind, Psalm 72: “They are not in the labour of men, neither shall they be scourged like other men”; or if He scourges them, He sends them less than can bend or break their hardness, whence it comes about that they harden themselves the more by the scourges of God.
Fourthly, God forbids the Saints to pray for such, Jerem. 7: “Do not thou pray for this people, and do not withstand me, for I will not hear thee”; and chap. 15: “If Moses and Samuel shall stand before me, my soul is not towards this people.”
Fifthly, God removes from them good admonishers, confessors, teachers and holy angels, Jerem. 51: “We have cured Babylon, but she is not healed: let us forsake her, for her judgment is come even to heaven”; and Paul, Acts 13, to the Jews: “Seeing you reject it (the word and kingdom of God), behold we turn to the Gentiles; for so the Lord hath commanded us.”
Sixthly, He takes from them the preaching of His word, by which the mind is enlightened, fed and bent, and sends a famine into the land: “not a famine of bread, nor a thirst of water, but of hearing the word of the Lord.”
Seventhly, by God’s permission such fall into flatterers and evil counsellors, who impel them to evil and their own ruin. So Roboam, following the counsel of foolish young men, lost a great part of his kingdom. So Absalom neglected the useful counsel of Achitophel, and preferred the counsel of Chusai, which was his destruction.
Eighthly, God permits false teachers and prophets to arise, who by their signs, hypocrisy and smooth speech seduce the hardened, as the magicians did before Pharao, and as Antichrist will do, 2 Thess. 2:12.
Ninthly, God slackens the reins to the devil, giving him greater power of lying in wait for and harming such men, which having received, he wonderfully vexes and tempts them, both by seducing their minds with vain and false opinions, and by presenting various objects of pleasure and various allurements of vices, and also by disturbing the phantasms and inflaming the affections, and by sending false prophets to seduce them, concerning which matter there is extant a wonderful vision of the prophet Micheas, 3 Kings 22:19.
Tenthly, He takes from them good examples, good rulers and princes, good companions, and almost all aids of salvation, and permits contrary things to be set before them, which incite them to every evil, whence it comes about that they everywhere offend and fall, which Isaias chap. 5 declares by the fair similitude of the vineyard. So Pereira.