Exodus 8 – the Ten Plagues of Egypt

My youngest said, “what’s wrong with frogs?”  It’s a good question.  I don’t know.  The quantities I guess.   Many such cases.

Tiny Egyptians or colossal frogs

The Bible says that God hardened Pharoah’s heart.  The JST says that Pharoah hardened his own heart.  I think they are both right.  Pharoah’s heart was neither hard nor soft until God caused him to be given the hard  choice, over and over and over until Pharoah’s heart was what it was.  He does this with all of us.  He will either harden your heart, or soften it–the choice is yours.

Pharoah has a real lack of integrity.  He lies, sure, but I mean that in the fuller sense of the word.  He is not whole across time.  He wants relief and makes promises to get it, but once the relief happens he is unable to integrate himself with the way he felt the day before, so he goes back on the promises, and the cycle starts again until the awful end.  The Pharoah and the plagues are a perfect parable for sin. (His over all approach to the Hebrews shows the same lack of wholeness.  He apparently wants to get rid of them–hence the edict to kill the baby boys–and apparently doesn’t value their labor–or else why would he set them to making bricks without straw, which is more difficult but also valueless; but then when Moses repeatedly gives him perfect opportunities to get rid of them the Pharoah is desperate to hold on to them.)

I don’t understand why Moses keeps asking just for permission to go into the wilderness to make sacrifices, with the implication that he and the Hebrews will then return.  This seems to be a lie, but why?