Some Thoughts on an Exodus Theme: What is being “hardened”: the Heart of the Matter

 

Some Thoughts on an Exodus Theme

Part 3: What is being “hardened”: the Heart of the Matter

June 12th, 2025

It should go without saying that the ancient Hebrew mind that composed Exodus did not have our modern understanding of anatomy and biology.  While we moderns believe that emotions and thoughts emerge from our minds, to the ancient Hebrew, they originate in the body somewhere.  This creates some obstacles to understanding for the modern reader. 

Nowhere is this more clear than in the Hebrew word we translate as “anger”: APH (אַף). 

APH literally means “nose” in Hebrew.  Well, how in the world does a word that denotes a part of anatomy come to mean “anger”.  Hebrew is a concrete language.  When an ancient Hebrew observed someone getting angry, they noticed that the person’s face grew red…particularly his nose.  Just think of the flaring of a bull’s nostrils when he’s ready to charge.

Ergo, becoming angry is about the nose.  When the Bible says God is “slow to anger”, the very concrete Hebrew Bible tells us God is “long-nosed”.  Or how about this verse, 1 Samuel 20:34?

So Jonathan arose from the table in fierce anger, and ate no food the second day of the month, for he was grieved for David, because his father had treated him shamefully.

The literal translation of “in fierce anger” is “with a burning (or hot) nose” (אָ֑ף חֱרִי). 

Let’s look at another concrete oddity from Hebrew: the kidney (כִּלְיָה).  You and I know that our kidneys filter waste products and fluids from our blood.  But to the ancient Hebrew mind, the kidney was something else altogether.  

Whom I shall see for myself,
And my eyes shall behold, and not another.
How my heart yearns within me!
Job 19:27

Oh, let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end,
But establish the just;
For the righteous God tests the hearts and minds.
Psalm 7:9

For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
Psalm 139:13

But, O LORD of hosts,You who judge righteously,Testing the mind and the heart,Let me see Your vengeance on them,For to You I have revealed my cause.Jeremiah 11:20

In each of the verses above, the bold underlined term is the Hebrew word for “kidney”. 

And this helps to underscore that the bodily organ is being “hardened” in Exodus is not just a blood-pumping muscle.  In the Hebrew Bible, the heart represents the will and the mind.  Emotions can emanate from the heart, though typically they reside elsewhere, such as the bowels, kidneys, or “inward parts”.  Because of where it sits in the body and its importance to life, the heart is also used symbolically for things at the center, as we do with “the heart of the matter” or “going to the heart of the city” or even “he is the heart of the team”.  We see this in Jonah, where he laments that God has cast him into “the heart of the sea”. 

The Hebrew word for “heart” is LEB (לֵב) or LEBAB (לֵבָב).  In its different forms, including the Aramaic versions in Daniel, the word appears 870 times in the Old Testament.Its first occurrence is when God considers mankind’s evil in Genesis 6: 

Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his HEART was only evil continually.

The noun’s final appearance is Zechariah 8:17:

‘Let none of you think evil in your HEART against your neighbor;
And do not love a false oath.
For all these are things that I hate,’
Says the LORD.” 

When Exodus talks about Pharaoh’s heart, it connotes something more than the beating muscle in his chest.  It is about Pharaoh’s will.  Another way to say it, we are speaking about a person’s decision-making apparatus, his character, his inclinations, his power, his desires, or his resolve.