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.
And 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.