We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded by your direct support for ReKnew and our vision. Please consider supporting this project.

How do you respond to Psalm 105:25?

Speaking of the Egyptians, the Psalmist says,“…whose hearts he [God] then turned to hate his people, to deal craftily with his servants”

Some compatibilists cite this verse as evidence that God meticulously controls human hearts. If so, we must accept the conclusion that even grotesquely wicked hearts like Hitler’s and Stalin’s were exactly as God willed them to be. Fortunately, the passage does not require this conclusion. It speaks specifically of the Egyptians’ hatred of the Jews.

God’s plan was to develop his people while they were in Egypt for four centuries (Ps. 105:24), then to deliver them and bring them into the promised land (bringing divine judgment on the Canaanites for four centuries of wickedness in the process [Gen. 15:16]). At this critical juncture in human history it fit God’s providential plan to turn the Egyptians’ hearts in this fashion. This display of sovereignty is noteworthy to biblical authors precisely because it is atypical.

Even here, however, we should not assume that God was the originator of the hatred in the Egyptians’ hearts. It’s not as though the Egyptians would otherwise have cherished the Israelites as good neighbors were it not for God “turning their hearts.” The Israelites were already abused slaves at the hand of the Egyptians. God’s “turning” only intensified what was already there. It is similar to God’s activity of “hardening” hearts (see How do you respond to Joshua 11:19–20?). God could have done this simply by shutting down other avenues by which the Egyptian hatred of the Jews could have been dissipated or suppressed.

This way of reading the text does not make God a co-conspirator with every wicked person (and angel) and retains the moral responsibility of the Egyptians. Given Scripture’s pervasive insistence that God is in no sense aligned with evil and that free agents are responsible for their own inclinations and behavior, it is, I submit, to be preferred over the compatibilist reading.

Related Reading

Terror in the Night

I’ll never forget the night it first happened to me. I was thirteen, sharing a bedroom with my older brother. I woke up in the middle of the night and felt as if something was pinning me to the bed, choking me, and electrocuting me, all at the same time.   The wind was blowing through…

What is the significance of 2 Samuel 24:12–16?

The Lord gives David three options of how Israel will be judged. “Three things I offer you; choose one of them, and I will do it to you.” This verse reveals how the Lord gives people genuine alternatives and responds to their choices. If God foreknew what David would choose, however, the purpose of the…

Topics:

What do you think of the “Penal Substitution” view of the atonement?

If asked what Jesus came to do and how he did it, most contemporary western Christians would automatically say something like, “Jesus took the punishment from God that I deserved.” This is what’s usually called “Penal Substitution” view of the atonement, for it emphasizes that Jesus was punished by God in our place. His sacrifice…

Three Arguments Against Determinism

There was an interesting article in the NY Times yesterday by John Tierney entitled “Do You Have Free Will? Yes, It’s The Only Choice.” The article reviews research that suggests that everybody intuitively believes people are morally responsible only for actions they could have refrained from doing and that when people don’t believe they are free…

What is the significance of Matthew 25:41?

The Lord teaches that on the judgment day he will say to the wicked, “Depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels…” Hell was expressly prepared for “the devil and his angels”; humans were never meant to go there. But if God eternally knew that certain persons would end…

Topics:

What did Jesus mean when he said he came not to bring peace, but a sword (Mt 10:34)?

Given Jesus’ uniform teaching about loving enemies and abstaining from violence, and given that his followers were known for their refusal to engage in violence for the first three hundred years of church history, it’s obvious that Jesus wasn’t saying he came so that his disciples would use swords. The context of Jesus’ comment makes…