We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
How do you respond to Joshua 11:19–20?
“There was not a town that made peace with the Israelites, except the Hivites…all were taken to battle. For it was the Lord’s doing to harden their hearts so that they would come against Israel in battle, in order that they might be utterly destroyed…” (cf. Exod. 7:3; 10:1; 14:4; Deut. 2:30)
Some compatibilists argue that passages that speak of God hardening human hearts demonstrate his absolute sovereignty. He hardens whomever he wills (Rom. 9:18). He could just as easily soften their heart, but for his own sovereign reasons he chooses to do otherwise. It is difficult, to say the least, to reconcile this conception of God with the teaching that God “does not willingly afflict, or grieve anyone” (Lam. 3:33), that he desires and pleads with everyone to turn to him (Isa. 30:18; 65:2; Ezek. 18:30–32; 33:11; Hos. 11:7ff.; Rom. 10:21; 1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Pet. 3:9) and that evil flows from humans’ own hearts (Luke 6.43–45, cf. Matt. 15:19). Fortunately, this interpretation of these verses is not necessary.
The root meaning of the Hebrew word “to harden” (chazaq) is “to strengthen.”* God hardens people by strengthening the resolve in their own hearts. Before God hardened Pharoah’s heart, Scripture says, Pharoah had already hardened his own heart. Similarly, long before God hardened the Caananites’ hearts, he had been tolerating their freely chosen wickedness and hardness toward him (cf. Gen. 15:16). The God of unsurpassable love strives with humans to turn toward him, but there is a point where humans become hopeless (Gen. 6:3–8; Rom. 1:24–32). At this point God’s strategy changes from trying to change them to using them in their wickedness for his own providential purposes.
God judges people by hardening them. But it could have been—and God’s wishes it would have been—otherwise.
Note
*See the excellent discussion in R. Forster and V. P. Marston, God’s Strategy in Human History (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1974), 155–75. On the hardening of Pharoah’s heart, see C. W. Carter, ed. The Wesleyan Bible Commentary, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eermans, 1967), 183–84.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Q&A, Responding to Calvinism
Topics: Defending the Open View, Interpreting Violent Pictures and Troubling Behaviors
Verse: Joshua 11
Related Reading
How do you respond to 2 Samuel 17:14–15?
“Absalom and all the men of Israel said, ‘The counsel of Hushai the Archite is better than the counsel of Ahithophel.’ For the Lord had ordained to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel, so that the Lord might bring ruin on Absalom.” This passage is sometimes cited to support the view that God ordains all…
How do you respond to Acts 2:23 and 4:28?
Question: Acts 2:23 and 4:28 tell us that wicked people crucified Jesus just as God predestined them to do. If this wicked act could be predestined, why couldn’t every other wicked act be predestined? Doesn’t this refute your theory that human acts can’t be free if they are either predestined or foreknown? Answer: In Acts…
What is the significance of Exodus 4:10–16?
Immediately after convincing Moses of his ability to [somehow!] convince the elders of Israel to listen to him, Moses says, “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent…I am slow of speech and slow of tongue” (vs. 10). The Lord reminds him that he is the Creator and is therefore bigger than any speech impediment.…
What is the significance of Hosea 8:5?
The Lord asks, “How long will they [Israel] be incapable of innocence?” The Lord’s continual striving with Israel regarding their lack of innocence suggests that this question was not merely rhetorical. If God knows the future to be eternally settled, however, he could not in earnest ask this (or any other) question about the future.…
What is the significance of Exodus 32:33 ?
The Lord says “I will blot out of my book” all those who persist in rebellion against him. If everything is eternally foreknown by God, one wonders why he would have recorded in his “book” the names of people who were to be blotted out eventually (cf. Rev. 3:5). Indeed, if God foreknew that certain…
How do you respond to Acts 4:27–28?
“[B]oth Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” This passage is very close in content to Acts 2:23 (see How do you respond to Acts 2:23?). While…