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THERE are two senses in which things are ascribed to God. 1. When he does things directly, as in the work of creation. 2. When he permits things to be done. In this latter sense God raised up and hardened Pharaoh. It is simply in the sense of permission—permitted him to rise up and be hardened. The hardening is also ascribed to Pharaoh. He hardened himself. This was the direct act. He did it. When the holy writer is looking at the providence of God, in permitting him to rise up into power, and assigning a reason for it, the explanation is made, that it was done to make known his power in all the earth. This is the sense in which God raises up kings and other rulers, that are bad, and uses them as vessels fitted for destruction. He permits them to rule and rule badly, do wickedly; oppress the people, as vessels of dishonor and wrath, making them examples to all the earth, in their overthrow and utter ruin, to teach other rulers and the people that they are all in the hands of the Lord.

The judgments of God have two different results on men, either, on the one hand, to subdue the heart and lead to repentance, or to harden the heart and lead to greater deeds of cruelty and oppression. When the holy writer speaks of it, in view of the case where men are hardened and become worse by it, he says, God hardened them. In the other case, where they are subdued and led to repentance by it, he says, God makes them “vessels of mercy,” leads them to repentance and saves them. The dealings of God are precisely alike in both cases, but the result is different. In one case it is a savor of life, in the other of death. The difference is not in the divine treatment, but in the patients. The one becomes a vessel of wrath, and the other a vessel of mercy. God is said to save the one and harden the other, because we have the two results from the same treatment. In that sense it is from God and ascribed to him, in both the hardening and saving. See the following:

“At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil I thought to them.” See Jer. xviii. 7, 8. This assures us, that where a nation or a kingdom repent, the Lord turns away the threatened calamity. The Lord then states the case for a nation that shall turn away from the Lord:

“At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then will I repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them.” See Jer. xviii. 9, 10. This sets forth the foundation of making vessels of honor and of wrath. God can make either the one, or the other. The ground of his doing this is their doing good and doing evil.

When God sent a judgment on Pharaoh, to subdue him and lead him to repentance, he promised to repent and let the children of Israel go; but then hardened his heart, broke his promise and refused to let them go. This was repeated ten times on him, and every time he broke his promise and he became still more hardened, and God permitted him thus to go on till his overthrow, thus making the power of God known in all the earth, and making the hardened monarch of Egypt an example to all the nations to follow. No doubt God hardens men now in the same sense as he did Pharaoh, subdues and leads others to repentance as he did the Ninevites, who repented at the preaching of Jonah.