“And the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, neither would he let the children of Israel go; as the Lord had spoken by Moses.”
So Pharaoh's heart was hard and he would not let the Israelites go, just as the Lord had predicted through Moses. The plague cycle ends as every previous cycle has: hardness confirmed, prediction fulfilled. The phrase just as the Lord had predicted appears at the end of each plague account like a liturgical refrain — not because God needed to say I told you so, but because the fulfillment of prediction is itself part of the testimony. Every outcome God announced in advance is an announcement of who He is. The God who knows what Pharaoh will choose before he chooses it is the God of Isaiah 46:10: I declare the end from the beginning, and from ancient times what is still to come. The hard heart and the fulfilled prediction together constitute a statement about divine omniscience and human freedom that the book of Romans will spend three chapters exploring.
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