Some Thoughts on an Exodus Theme
Part 4a: What does a “hardened heart” mean?
June 16th, 2025
This is the final stretch (in three parts) of a mutli-part series on a leitmotif from the Exodus story: the hard heart.
It’s a theme that occurs throughout the Bible, from the Old Testament to the New, and in Exodus, you will find it in 19 verses.. Given its prevalence, it seems like a fairly important theme. We took up this theme by asking three questions:
- What is being “hardened” when the Bible speaks of the “heart”?
- What does it mean for the heart to be “hardened”?
- And who does the hardening?
In our previous articles, we answered two of the questions above (#1 and #3). The heart is Pharaoh’s will. And the causes of its hardening are God’s actions, Pharaoh’s own choices, and circumstances (we called it an “all of the above” answer).
Now, we take up #2, the final question: what does it mean for the heart to be hardened?
The motif of the hardened heart occurs more than 40 times in all the books the Bible, including the 19 occasions in Exodus. Its frequency makes it an idiomatic expression in Hebrew.
When you read the phrase – the hard heart – what meaning comes to your mind? If you’ve read this series, the 1980s classic from Quarterflash( might come to mind. Maybe (if you’ve been reading your Bible) your mind goes to Ephesians 4:
They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.
Speaking of reading your Bible, do you think of Exekiel’s “heart of stone” prophecy from 36:26?
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
As we wrote earlier, the motif of the hard heart appears 19 times in Exodus. What’s more, the metaphor of the hardened heart plays on repeat throughout Jesus’ Bible and onward into the New Testament. For instance:
For it was of the Lord [a]to harden their hearts, that they should come against Israel in battle, that He might utterly destroy them, and that they might receive no mercy, but that He might destroy them, as the Lord had commanded Moses.
Joshua 11:19-20
Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion, As in the day of trial in the wilderness…
Psalm 95:8
O Lord, why have You made us stray from Your ways, And hardened our heart from Your fear? Return for Your servants’ sake, The tribes of Your inheritance.
Isaiah 63:17
But the house of Israel will not listen to you, because they will not listen to Me; for all the house of Israel are impudent and hard-hearted.
Ezekiel 3:7
He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.
Matthew 19:8
Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, In the day of trial in the wilderness…
Hebrews 3:8
There are probably several ways of reading meaning onto a hardened heart.
For Rindy Ross and Quarterflash, it was feeling no emotion. I have heard it described as being “emotionally calloused”.
For others, I suspect a common way to think of the hardened heart relates to obstinance or stubbornness. We might think of being willfully dull, deaf, or ignorant.
I do not think these readings onto the Exodus motif are inherently wrong, but I believe they do not tell the full story. When you explore and drill into the deep mine of Exodus in its original Hebrew, some surprising veins of precious ore begin to show through. Yes, back to that tortured metaphor, which, like Chekhov’s gun, has been waiting to re-appear here, in the final act. (Benoit Blank would be proud.)
Red Pilling the Hard Heart
If you’re a fan of the Washowski brother’s film, you know the connotation of the Red Pill trope. Reading Jesus’ Bible in its original Hebrew – or investigating the root words behind our English translations – has the tendency to upset status quo understandings of what the Text means. They can represent Red Pill moments. If you do not want your status quo messed with, you can take the Blue Pill and just happily trudge on. Ignorance is bliss, they say.
Reading Jesus’ Bible with Hebraic eyes – that is, peeling back the English to reveal the Hebrew that underlies it – can be like downing an entire bottle of Red Pills. But maybe that metaphor is not an apt one. Afterall, it’s not as though the English translations become null and void. The majority of them, in fact, do an excellent job of rendering original languages into readable English.
So, reading Jesus’ Bible with it original Hebrew in mind is not a Red Pill moment. Instead, it feels more like Dorothy stepping out of her house into Oz for the first time. Do you remember the scene? Dorothy Gale, tornado-swept from her black-and-whiute Kansas world steps out of the dark into the Technicolor® light of the Land of Oz. Not only is the moment brilliantly effective cinematically, it serves as a potent symbol for what I’m describing here.
None of the facts on the ground have really changed. What is there has always been there, hiding in plain sight, as it were. But new, brighter light allows those long-hidden things to leap to the foreground.
So, it’s less Red Pill versus Blue Pill, than it is Kansas-to-Oz.
This is what understanding the Hebrew Text does for me. It takes plain “Kansas” text and renders it into vivid “Oz” Technicolor. When it comes to our Exodus theme, of the “hard heart”, it may bring some unseen color to your understanding, as it did for mine. Of course, it might also be a hard pill to swallow…
We’re venturing down into the mine to look for gems. They are there, waiting for us. We need to do a little digging to uncover them.
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