Romans 9:17-18

“ For the Scripture saith unto Pharoah, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath He mercy on whom He will, and whom He will He hardeneth. ”

Having given an instance of the liberty with which God dispenses grace, Paul gives an example of the way in which He hardens. This example is the more appropriately chosen, because the two personages brought on the scene are, in the Bible history, as it were the counterparts of one another. The logical connection expressed by for is this: There is nothing strange in Scripture ascribing to God the right of dispensing grace, since it ascribes to Him even the yet more incomprehensible right of condemning to hardness. These two rights indeed mutually suppose one another. The God who had not the one would not have the other. The passage quoted is Exodus 9:16. God pronounces this sentence after the sixth plague. The verb ἐξεγείρειν (Osterv.: I have called thee into being; Oltram.: I have raised thee up) signifies properly: to bring out of a state of insensibility or inaction; from sleep, for example, as in Xenophon: “having seen this dream, he awoke (ἐξηγέρθη);” or from death, as 1 Corinthians 6:14: “God will also raise up us by His power” (ἐξεγερεῖ). This passage is, with the one before us, the only place where this word is used in the N. T.

But it is employed in the LXX. in the sense of raising up, causing to be born, thus Zechariah 11:16: “I raise you up (ἐξεγείρω) a shepherd;” Habakkuk 1:6: “I raise up (I cause to come) against you the Chaldeans.” It is in this last sense that the simple ἐγείρειν is used in the N. T., Matthew 11:11: “There hath not been raised up (ἐγήγερται)...a greater than John the Baptist;” John 7:52: “Out of Galilee no prophet hath been raised up (ἐγήγερται).” The simple verb ἐγείρειν is likewise used, James 5:15, to signify to cure of a disease: “And the Lord will raise him up (ἐγερεῖ).” All these different shades of meaning have been applied by commentators to our passage. According to some (Aug., Fritzs., De Wette), the meaning is: “I aroused thee to resistance against me.” Reuss also says: “Pharaoh acts as he does in regard to the Israelites, because God excites him thereto. In this case the apostle must have departed completely from the meaning of the Hebrew word héémid (not héir), which simply signifies: to cause to stand up. And would there not be something revolting to the conscience in supposing that God could have Himself impelled Pharaoh inwardly to evil? Comp. James 1:12. Others (Hofmann, Morison), fixing on the sense of the Hebrew word, according to which the LXX. have translated (διετηρήθης, thou hast been preserved), as on that of the simple verb ἐγείρειν, James 5:15, think that God is thereby reminding Pharaoh that He could have left him to die (in one of the previous plagues), or that He could at that very moment visit him with death with all his people; comp. Romans 9:15. But in the former case God would be made to allude to a fact which there is nothing to indicate; and in the second, the verb employed would not be suitable; for it expresses more than the idea of simple preservation, as is acknowledged by Hofmann himself. A third set give the word the meaning of: “I have established thee as king ” (Flatt, for example). But so special a qualification as this would require to be expressed more precisely. This last meaning, however, comes near what seems to us to be the true one. We think, indeed, that we should here apply the meaning raise up in all its generality. “I have caused thee to appear at this time, in this place, in this position” (Theoph., Beza, Calv., Beng., Olsh., Rück., Thol., Philip., Beyschl.). The subject in question is not the wicked disposition which animates Pharaoh, but the entire situation in which he finds himself providentially placed. God might have caused Pharaoh to be born in a cabin, where his proud obstinacy would have been displayed with no less self-will, but without any notable historical consequence; on the other hand, He might have placed on the throne of Egypt at that time a weak, easy-going man, who would have yielded at the first shock. What would have happened? Pharaoh in his obscure position would not have been less arrogant and perverse; but Israel would have gone forth from Egypt without éclat. No plagues one upon another, no Red Sea miraculously crossed, no Egyptian army destroyed; nothing of all that made so deep a furrow in the Israelitish conscience, and which remained for the elect people the immovable foundation of their relation to Jehovah. And thereafter also no influence produced on the surrounding nations. The entire history would have taken another direction. God did not therefore create the indomitable pride of Pharaoh as it were to gain a point of resistance and reflect His glory; He was content to use it for this purpose. This is what is expressed by the following words: ὅπως, that thus, not simply that (ἵνα). Comp. Exodus 15:14-15, those words of the song chanted after the passage of the Red Sea: “The nations heard it; terror hath taken hold on the inhabitants of Palestina. The dukes of Edom have been amazed; trembling hath taken hold upon the mighty men of Moab; the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away.” Also the words of Rahab to the spies sent by Joshua, Joshua 2:9-10: “Terror hath taken hold of us, the inhabitants of the land have fainted; for we have heard how the Lord dried up the waters of the Red Sea from before you...; the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and in earth beneath.” Read also the words of the Gibeonites to Joshua, Joshua 9:9: “From a very far country thy servants are come, because of the name of the Lord thy God; for we have heard the fame of Him, and all that He did in Egypt.” Thus it was that the catastrophes which distinguished the going out from Egypt, provoked by Pharaoh's blind resistance, paved the way for the conquest of Canaan. And even to the present day, wherever throughout the world Exodus is read, the divine intention is realized: “to show my power, and make known my name throughout all the earth.”