From the two instances just quoted Paul draws the comprehensive conclusion: So then on whom He will He has mercy, and whom He will He hardens. The whole emphasis is on θέλει. The two modes in which God acts upon man are showing mercy and hardening, and it depends upon God's will in which of these two modes He actually does act. The word σκληρύνει is borrowed from the history of Pharaoh, Exodus 7:3; Exodus 7:22; Exodus 8:19; Exodus 9:12; Exodus 14:17. What precisely the hardening means, and in what relation God's hardening of Pharaoh's heart stood to Pharaoh's own hardening of it against God, are not unimportant questions, but they are questions which Paul does not here raise. He has one aim always in view here to show that man has no claim as of right against God; and he finds a decisive proof of this (at least for a Jew) in the opposite examples of Moses and Pharaoh, interpreted as these are by unmistakable words of God Himself. It was through God, in the last resort, that Moses and Pharaoh were what they were, signal instances of the Divine mercy and the Divine wrath.

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Old Testament