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 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.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Q&A, Responding to Calvinism
Topics: Providence, Predestination and Free Will, Responding to Objections
Verse: Psalm 105
Related Reading
Does the Bible forbid interracial marriages?
Absolutely not! Racist Christians used to argue against interracial marriage by quoting Old Testament passages that prohibited Jews from marrying non-Jews. This prohibition had nothing to do with race, however. In fact, there was no concept of different “races” until white Europeans invented it during the Colonial period, partly to justify their enslavement of other…
What are the main principles of the warfare worldview?
In my book God At War (IVP, 1997) I flesh out what I call the “warfare worldview” of the Bible. This is the view that the world is a battle ground between God and good angels, on the one hand, and Satan and fallen angels, on the other. In my book Satan and the Problem…
When Did Jesus Bind the Strongman?
Question: In Luke 11:21-22 Jesus said: “When a strong man, with all his weapons ready, guards his own house, all his belongings are safe. But when a stronger man attacks him and defeats him, he carries away all the weapons the owner was depending on and divides up what he stole.” My question is, when…
How do you respond to Jeremiah 1:5
The Lord says to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” This verse shows God’s love and plan for Jeremiah before he was born. This does not imply that Jeremiah could not have “rejected God’s…
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…
A Cross-Centered Evaluation of Responses to Tragedy
I’d like to pick up where I left off on my previous post about Draper’s article entitled “Aurora shooting inspires various perspectives on God and belief.” Toward the end of his article, Draper reports on an informal survey conducted by Stephen Prothero on his CNN Blog. Prothero simply asks people to respond to the question: “Where…