Then the Lord said to Moses: go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may perform these signs of mine among them. The eighth plague cycle opens with God's explicit statement of purpose: the hardening of Pharaoh and his officials serves the performance of signs. The signs in turn serve a purpose disclosed in the next verse. The chain of divine purpose — hardening, signs, testimony — is now fully transparent. God is not hiding the mechanism. He is telling Moses that the prolongation of the Exodus drama is intentional, that Pharaoh's resistance is being used as the material out of which God's most comprehensive self-disclosure will be fashioned. Ephesians 3:10 says that God's manifold wisdom was made known through the church to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms. The plague narrative is the first large-scale version of this same principle: God's wisdom displayed through the most public possible confrontation.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

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