Moshe is finally ready to return to Pharaoh, but God throws another wrench in Moshe’s plans. God tells Moshe that despite all of Moshe’s best efforts, Pharaoh will not listen. Instead, God will harden Pharaoh’s heart.
“Yet Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and he did not listen to them, as the LORD had said” (7:13).
How could God take away someone’s free will? Free will is an essential tenet of Judaism. There are many different explanations given about this question.
One is that God does not take away Pharoah’s free will. We once had a guest speaker in Mevaseret who usedthe following analogy. If someone decides to jump out of a plane, that is their free will. Once they leave the plane, however, they lose free will. No matter how much the person wills it, they cannot go back up to the plane—nature takes over.
Here, Pharaoh had free will when he made the decision to enslave the Israelites . After he had jumped out of the plane and could not turn back. Nature took over, much like gravity does for the skydiver.
My father in law, suggested a similar idea connected to Achebe’s Things Fall Apart a novel about the clash between traditional Igbo society in southeastern Nigeria and the forces of colonialism, showing how rigid adherence to norms can lead to personal and communal collapse.
“In the novel, Okonkwo’s inflexible commitment to strength and tradition becomes a weight that drags him down when faced with change. His inability to adapt mirrors Pharaoh’s ‘heavy heart’: both characters cross a threshold where their own choices set gravity-like forces in motion. Just as Pharaoh’s stubbornness triggers divine hardening, Okonkwo’s rigidity accelerates the disintegration of his world. The title itself—Things Fall Apart—echoes the universal truth that when the weight of pride grows too heavy, collapse is not just possible; it is inevitable.”
These two ideas are linked through the play Wicked and Elphaba’s ballad ending the first act. In contrast to Pharaoh’s descent into heaviness, the musical Wicked imagines a world where one can ‘defy gravity.’ Elphaba’s soaring declaration to rise above constraints highlights the opposite of Pharaoh’s fate: while she embraces freedom, his stubbornness anchors him. The juxtaposition underscores a universal truth—those who cling to weighty pride fall, while those who release it rise.”
Another is that this has nothing to do with free will. The Koren Tanach of the Land of Israel series provides a very interesting take. In Egyptian mythology in the Book of the Dead when someone dies they are brought before the god of the underworld, Anubis a jackal-headed deity. Before entering the underworld, the person’s heart is weighed on a scale. The scale is weighed against maat, the Egyptian concept of natural order. If the heart is heavier than the maat, usually depicted by a feather, then the person is unable to enter the land of the dead and the heart would be devoured by Ammit, a fearsome creature combo of a crocodile, lion, and hippo—three of the most dangerous animals in ancient Egypt.
Taken in context, God’s pronouncement that he will make Pharaoh's heart heavy in verse 14 is apt:
“And the LORD said unto Moses: ‘Pharaoh's heart is heavy; he refuses to let the people go’” (7:14).
Moshe and the Egyptians would understand what it meant that Pharaoh’s heart would become heavy. In essence, God was proclaiming that Pharaoh would be condemned both by the Israelite God and his own.
It’s also possible that the use of heavy/kaved here by God could have nothing to do with punishing Pharoah, but could actually be meant as a retort to Moshe. In chapter 4:10, Moshe uses the same word “kaved” to complain about his speech impediment:
‘Please, my Lord, I am not a man of words… for I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue’” (4:10).
Moshe complained to God about his heavy lips, so in return God punishes Moshe by making Pharaoh's heart heavy, thereby making Moshe’s job harder.
