Parshat Bo5 min read

Why Pharaoh's Stubborn Heart Became a Sign

Moses reads the future before he strikes, Pharaoh's heart is hardened as a public lesson, and Moses walks out of the palace in fury knowing he cannot be killed.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. Moses Read the Future Before He Struck
  2. God Bent Pharaoh's Disposition Before the Contest Began
  3. God Tells Moses Why the Hardening Was Necessary
  4. Moses Was Made a Terror in Pharaoh's Eyes
  5. Moses Walked Out of the Palace in Fury

Moses Read the Future Before He Struck

The day Moses kills the Egyptian overseer, the targum slows the moment down. Moses does not act in rage or impulse. He turns, looks in every direction, and considers with the wisdom of his mind. What he sees is prophetic: no righteous convert will ever descend from this man's line. The violence he is about to commit has already been weighed against what that line would and would not produce. The Egyptian dies not because Moses lost control but because Moses saw what was not visible to anyone else in that alley.

That is a severe beginning for a liberator. The targum refuses to make Moses a reckless avenger, but it also refuses to sentimentalize the killing. Moses acts on prophetic knowledge, and prophetic knowledge is not the same as comfort. Before he ever confronts Pharaoh, before Aaron becomes his spokesman, before the first plague falls, Moses is already being trained in the weight of seeing consequences that others cannot yet measure.

God Bent Pharaoh's Disposition Before the Contest Began

The hardening of Pharaoh's heart is one of the most contested passages in Exodus. The targum does not soften it. God tells Moses that He will make Pharaoh's disposition obstinate. The word the targum uses for disposition points inward, toward the structure of Pharaoh's character rather than a single moment of decision. God is not overriding a good king's good instincts. God is confirming a bad king's bad nature so that the demonstration will be complete.

The targum's reading makes the purpose explicit. Pharaoh's refusals are not obstacles to the demonstration. They are part of it. Each refusal allows another sign to fall. Each sign strips another layer from Egypt's confidence in its gods. If Pharaoh had released Israel after the second plague, the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth signs would never have been seen. The stubborn heart is a stage, not a failure.

God Tells Moses Why the Hardening Was Necessary

God explains to Moses directly: I have hardened Pharaoh's heart so that these signs will be multiplied in Egypt, so that you will be able to tell your children and your children's children what I did in Egypt. The hardening is pedagogical. Future generations need evidence. One or two plagues would have been enough to frighten Egypt into compliance but not enough to prove to every generation afterward that Israel's God operates at a scale no empire can resist.

The targum intensifies this by making God's explanation personal. Moses is not being given a theological principle. He is being told why his own work will be harder than it needs to be by human calculation. The messenger has to understand that the resistance he is encountering is part of the design, not a failure of his delivery. Every time Moses returns to Pharaoh and finds the heart closed again, he is witnessing God's intention holding its shape.

Moses Was Made a Terror in Pharaoh's Eyes

At some point in the confrontations, Moses is afraid. The targum records God's response to that fear directly: Why are you afraid? I have made you a terror to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his people. The word the targum uses is strong. Moses is not a diplomat the king can dismiss. He is a figure who has been charged with something that Pharaoh's bodyguard cannot neutralize. The fear runs the wrong direction. It lives in the palace, not in the man standing before it.

That declaration shapes every subsequent meeting between Moses and Pharaoh. Moses does not have to perform courage. He has been made something that produces terror in the people around the throne. His own fear, whatever he felt in the quiet before these audiences, does not change what he is in Pharaoh's presence.

Moses Walked Out of the Palace in Fury

After the plague of locusts, Pharaoh summons Moses and Aaron, pretends to confess his sin, and then hardens again when the locusts are removed. After the plague of darkness, Pharaoh threatens Moses with death if he ever appears before him again. Moses answers: you have spoken correctly. I will not see your face again. Then he walks out of Pharaoh's presence in burning anger.

The targum preserves the fury. Moses is not serene. He is not above the insult of being threatened by a man he has watched lose every contest he entered. The anger is real and appropriate. But Moses walks out, not away. He does not flee Egypt. He does not collapse. He goes from the palace to complete the announcement of the final plague, the death of the firstborn, the blow that will finally break Pharaoh's will. The fury and the mission travel in the same direction.

Divine JusticeEgyptMidrash AggadahTargumPharaoh
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From the tradition

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The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 2:12Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus

The blow did not come first. The vision did.

"And Mosheh turned, and considered in the wisdom of his mind, and understood that in no generation would there arise a proselyte from that Mizraite man, and that none of his children's children would ever be converted; and he smote the Mizraite, and buried him in the sand."

The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (2:12) gives Moses a terrifying gift: prophetic foreknowledge, exercised in one second, before his fist comes down. He scans the Egyptian's future lineage. No ger. No soul will ever emerge from this man's line that will accept the God of Israel. This is a life that will produce only more cruelty, forever.

Only then does Moses strike.

This is not a rage killing. The Targum is careful to describe it as a judicial act performed by a prophet. Moses is operating like a judge in a heavenly court, seeing the entire future of this soul and concluding that no redemption is possible here, only more harm. He renders the verdict and executes it, and buries the man in the sand, the Aramaic echoing Abraham's own burial of kindness in desert earth.

Medieval commentators were uneasy. Did Moses really have the right? The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan says yes. But only because his insight was prophetic, not personal. The moment Moses leaves the prophetic frame, the next verse will show his mistake. He buries the Egyptian in sand because he thinks the sand will hold a secret. It will not.

Beloved, be slow to strike. The Targum only justifies Moses because he saw the entire future in an instant. And that is a mercy you and I do not have.

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Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 4:21Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus

On the road to Egypt, the Holy One issues a warning that has troubled readers for two millennia. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan softens the Hebrew's I will harden his heart into something slightly more precise: I will make obstinate the disposition (passion) of his heart, and he will not deliver the people.

The Aramaic word is disposition or passion, not the organ, but the inclination. This matters theologically. The sages of the Targumic tradition did not want readers to imagine God overriding Pharaoh's free will by surgery on a physical heart. Instead, God intensifies what is already there. Pharaoh's existing tyrannical disposition, until it cannot retreat.

Consider All the Miracles

The verse begins with a review of the toolkit: consider all the miracles that I have put in thy hand. Before Moses walks into Pharaoh's court, God tells him to mentally rehearse the signs. The serpent-rod, the leprous hand, the water-blood, all already placed in the hand of the former shepherd.

Then the warning: do them before Pharoh, and expect to fail anyway. The Targum's moral architecture is careful. The miracles are real. The obstinacy is also real. Both are from the Holy One.

The takeaway: Moses' success cannot be measured by whether Pharaoh softens on the first try. He was told in advance that Pharaoh would not. The plagues are not a failure of persuasion; they are the form the persuasion was always going to take. In the Jewish imagination, some conversions only come after the sea has closed over the chariots.

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Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 10:1Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus

By the eighth plague, the Torah's language has shifted. Before, it was Pharaoh who hardened his own heart. Now, the Lord takes a share of the responsibility.

"The Lord spake to Mosheh, Go in unto Pharoh; for I have made strong the design of his heart, and the design of the heart of his servants, to set these My signs among them" (Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 10:1).

The Aramaic paraphrase, preserved in the Targum attributed to Yonatan ben Uzziel, uses the phrase takif yat libeh, I have strengthened his heart. The sages of the Talmud and midrash wrestled with this line for generations. If God hardens Pharaoh's heart, is Pharaoh still responsible for his refusal?

The classical answer runs like this: for the first five plagues, Pharaoh hardened his own heart freely. He was exercising ordinary human stubbornness. But by the sixth, that stubbornness had become so deep that it became his nature. At that point, the Holy One simply allowed Pharaoh to continue being the person he had already chosen to be. God did not invent Pharaoh's cruelty. He confirmed it.

And the reason? L'shavaa atayai bein'hon, to set My signs among them. The remaining plagues would not be for Pharaoh's conversion. They would be for Israel's memory. The Maggid teaches: sometimes the Holy One lets a wicked man finish becoming himself so that the world can learn from watching him fall.

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Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 11:10Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus

Few verses in the Hebrew Bible have troubled readers as much as the one that says God hardened Pharaoh's heart. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 11:10) offers a subtle reading: the Lord "strengthened the design of Pharoh's heart." The word design does the work. God does not implant resistance where none existed. God reinforces the architecture Pharaoh has been building all along.

In the Aramaic, the verb atkaf (strengthen) sits beside machshavta (design, plan). Pharaoh already had a plan. That plan was to enslave, to dominate, to refuse. God's role, in the Targum's reading, is to make sure Pharaoh does not lose his nerve halfway through, the way lesser tyrants do when disaster starts arriving. A Pharaoh who caves after three plagues teaches nothing; a Pharaoh who holds out for ten becomes the backdrop against which the glory of the Exodus is revealed.

The rabbis often noted the problem this raises for free will. If God reinforced Pharaoh's resolve, is Pharaoh still responsible? The Targum's phrasing answers by pointing to agency. The design was Pharaoh's own. God strengthened the thing Pharaoh had already chosen to build.

Meanwhile, Moses and Aaron have performed every sign asked of them. The verse lists them by name as if to contrast their obedience with Pharaoh's reinforced stubbornness. Two prophets say yes to every task. One king says no to every offering of mercy.

Takeaway: A hardened heart is usually a heart that has been building its walls for years. God only holds them up when the builder is already finished.

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Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 7:1Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus

The plain verse says God made Moses as a god to Pharaoh (Exodus 7:1). The phrase has rattled translators for two thousand years. The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 7:1) handles it with stunning care: Wherefore art thou fearful? Behold, I have set thee a terror to Pharoh, as if thou wast his God, and Aharon thy brother shall be thy prophet.

Two moves matter here. First, the meturgeman refuses any hint that Moses has become divine. Moses is not a god; he is a terror to Pharaoh, as if he were Pharaoh's god. The Aramaic cushions the Hebrew against misreading. The point is Pharaoh's perception, not Moses' nature.

Second, and more tenderly, the Targum has God ask Moses why he is afraid. The Hebrew verse is a declaration; the Aramaic opens it with compassion. Moses the stammerer, the reluctant shepherd who begged at the bush to be sent anyone else, stands trembling before the throne of Egypt. God does not scold him. God asks.

Fear is not absent from the redemption story, it is answered inside the story. Aharon becomes the voice, Moses becomes the signal of dread to the oppressor, and the whole delegation walks forward on courage that was handed to them, not manufactured.

The takeaway: God's first question to a trembling leader is not why are you unqualified, but why are you afraid. The difference is everything.

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Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 10:29Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus

Moses's reply to Pharaoh's death-threat is magnificently calm. And the Targum reveals why.

"Thou hast spoken fairly. While I was dwelling in Midian, it was told me in a word from before the Lord, that the men who had sought to kill me had fallen from their means, and were reckoned with the dead. At the end there will be no mercy upon thee; but I will pray, and the plague shall be restrained from thee. And now I will see thy face no more" (Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 10:2)9).

The Aramaic paraphrase, preserved in the Targum attributed to Yonatan ben Uzziel, adds a detail that unlocks the whole scene. Moses already knows that the men who once sought his life are either dead or powerless. The Lord had told him so in Midian, before the burning bush, before the return to Egypt. So when Pharaoh threatens to release assassins, Moses is unmoved, those assassins cannot harm him. Heaven has already told him so.

Then Moses delivers his own warning. B'sofa lo yehei rachamei alach, at the end, there will be no mercy upon you. He is speaking of the tenth plague, which is now only hours away. And he says: I will pray for your people, I will even contain the plague where I can, but there is a limit, and you have crossed it.

V'lo osif l'mechzei sever apach, I will see your face no more. Moses is done negotiating. The Maggid teaches: there is a moment when the prophet stops speaking and God takes over. Moses walks out of that palace knowing he will never return. The next conversation between heaven and Egypt will not use words. It will use angels.

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Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 11:8Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus

Moses almost never loses his temper in the written text, but on this night he does. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Exodus 11:8) describes him warning Pharaoh that the day is coming when Pharaoh's own servants will chase him down and beg him to leave. Pharaoh, who has spent months demanding that Moses approach, will soon send every courtier he has to plead for his departure.

Then comes the final line: "And he went out from Pharoh in great anger." The Aramaic does not soften it. Moses, the servant of God who begged not to take up this mission at the bush, walks out of the throne room burning.

What does that anger mean? The rabbis read it as the right anger, the clean kind, directed at injustice rather than at wounded pride. Moses has watched Pharaoh harden his face through nine plagues, demand a negotiation on every one, and still refuse to let the children go. He has seen the Hebrew midwives threatened and babies thrown into the Nile. Now, at the edge of the final plague, Moses breaks his composure in a way that honors the suffering of his people.

The Targum preserves that fury because it teaches something. A prophet who never gets angry is not really listening. Moses leaves Pharaoh's palace for the last time not as a courtier making a graceful exit but as the brother of slaves who has seen enough.

Takeaway: Righteous anger, held in reserve until the precise moment, is not a failure of the prophet. It is part of the job.

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