Denying the Undeniable: Pharaoh and the Signs of
God
Ahmed Afzaal, Drew University
While the paper by Shaul Magid revolves around the
Biblical description of Pharaoh's "hardening of
heart," in its theological import it goes well beyond
that particular narrative to embrace complex issues
relating to human free will and specific forms of
God's retribution. The following response, therefore,
starts from a Qur'anic understanding of the
human-Divine dialectic as it manifests itself in a
person's guidance or misguidance, upon which depends
his or her ultimate fate; it is only in terms made
explicit by this general background that the specific
issue of Pharaoh's "hardening of heart" could be
meaningfully discussed.
Guidance and Misguidance: The Human-Divine
Dialectic
Of the many commonalities among the three
Abrahamic faiths, one of the most important is the
belief that the human individual has been created in
the "image of God." This implies that of all the
creations of God, the human individual is closest to
the Divine. According to the Qur'an, the human being
is God's vicegerent on earth and the highest possible
status that he/she can achieve as a vicegerent is to
be a collaborator, an associate, and a co-worker with
God. In the Second Sura of the Qur'an, the narrative
of the origins of human life on earth begins as
follows:
And when your Lord said to the angels, I am going
to place in the earth a vicegerent.... (Sura
Al-Baqarah 2:30)
The following assumptions are inherent in the
notion of a deputy or vicegerent: 1) the Sovereign
delegates some of His own authority to the
vicegerent; 2) the vicegerent carries out the will of
the Sovereign whenever a specific commandment comes
from Him; 3) the vicegerent is free to use his or her
own judgment in all other cases; 4) however, even in
cases where the vicegerent is free, he or she is not
expected do anything that indicates a disloyalty to
the Sovereign. The Qur'an seems to assert that while
all human beings are potentially God's vicegerents,
only those who "believe and do righteous deeds" will
be able to fulfill the demands of this grand
responsibility. On the other hand, those who fail to
recognize their true status as God's servants soon
fall pray to different forms of deviance and
transgression.
When a person endeavors to fulfill God's purpose
on earth, he/she becomes worthy of God's help; and
the two of them -- the Lord and the servant -- then
become co-workers for a common cause, as alluded in
the following ayaat:
O you who believe! If you help God, He will help
you.... (Sura Muhammad 47:7)
(Jesus) said: Who will be my helpers in God's way?
The disciples said: We are helpers of God.... (Sura
Aal Imran 3:52)
When God and the human being help each other to
achieve a common goal, they become friends of each
other, as stated in the following ayaat:
God is the friend of those who believe...
(Sura Al-Baqarah 2:257)
Now surely the friends of God, they shall have
no fear nor shall they grieve. (Sura Yunus
10:62)
Being a vicegerent, co-worker, and friend of God
requires that the human being "share" some of God's
attributes, without in any way "sharing" the divinity
of God. Since God possesses the attribute of what we
understand as "free will" in its uniquely absolute
and unlimited manifestation, the human being must
also possess at least some degree of free will in
order to be truly able to act as God's vicegerent,
co-worker, and friend. Human free will, however, will
remain relative, contingent, and dependent in
relation to Divine free will, the latter being
absolute, eternal, and independent.
In interpreting the Scripture, particular passages
must be understood in terms of other passages that
address the same issue; otherwise we may end up with
a truncated and incomplete view of Scriptural truth.
In some passages, for instance, the Qur'an appears to
favor the idea of human free will, and at other
places it seems to negate or minimize it in favor of
Divine omnipotence. Failure to appreciate this style
of emphasizing different aspects of reality in
different contexts led early Muslim theologians to
fall in the ultimately inconsequential debate of
human free will vs. Divine predestination. The choice
is largely artificial and represents a theological
artifact; it would perhaps be closer to the spirit of
the Qur'an to say that it favors a middle course by
synthetically embracing and transcending these
diametrically extreme formulations of the
problem.
A plain sense reading of the Qur'an shows that the
human being is free to choose the path of guidance;
at the same time, he/she is equally free to choose
the path of misguidance. The human choice, however,
must be coupled with Divine "facilitation" for it to
produce any concrete outcome. Thus, while the Qur'an
explicitly asserts that human beings can freely
choose between good and evil, it also qualifies this
assertion by saying that human choices produce
results only if God so desires:
We have showed him the way; (it is up to him)
whether he be grateful or ungrateful. (Sura Al-Dahr
76:3)
And, in the same Sura:
But you cannot will anything unless God wills
(too)... (Sura Al-Dahr 76:30)
The idea of God "facilitating" whatever the human
individual has chosen for himself or herself, whether
it is the path of good or the path of evil, is
eloquently expressed in the following
ayaat:
Verily, (the ends) you strive for are diverse. So
the one who gives (in charity) and fears (God), and
testifies to the truth, We will indeed make smooth
for him the path of ease; but the one who is a
greedy miser, and thinks himself self-sufficient,
and rejects the truth, We will indeed make smooth
for him the path to misery. (Sura Al-Lail 92: 4-10)
In the final analysis, therefore, success or failure
in the ultimate sense is a matter of the human
individual decisively taking a certain path and God
helping him or her go that way. If the individual
chooses the path of good and strives sincerely, God
makes easy for him or her the path of goodness,
bestowing His grace and mercy. If, on the other hand,
the individual chooses the path of evil and continues
on this path despite obvious signs that warn him or
her of the flawed nature of that choice, then God
does not intervene to force another choice on that
individual; instead, God makes easy for that person
the path that leads to destruction. While God's
"facilitation" is important in both cases, the basic
choice of the individual remains crucial and
decisive, as evidenced by the following
ayaat:
...God does not change the condition of a people
until they first change what is in their own
souls.... (Sura Al-Ra'd 13:11)
And if your Lord had so willed, surely all those
who are in the earth would have believed, all of
them together; so will you then compel people
against their will to become believers? And it is
not for a soul to believe except by God's
permission, but He casts an abomination on those
who refuse to understand. (Sura Yunus 10:99-100)
...Then when they went wrong, God let their hearts
to go wrong; for God does not guide those who are
transgressors. (Sura Al-Saff 61:5)
Willfully disregarding God's guidance and choosing a
path that does not conform to one's status as
vicegerent and servant puts oneself on the road that
leads to destruction. The road to destruction,
however, is not a closed highway -- there are
numerous "exits" along the way. One could, if one so
wills, take one of these "exits" and go back on to
the path of guidance, the one that leads to ultimate
success and salvation. Taking an "exit," of course,
is a metaphor for repentance. However, if one
continues to persist in one's misguidance and
deliberately ignores all the signs of God, there does
come a point after which one cannot possibly take an
"exit," or, more precisely, after which one loses the
ability to even want to go back on the correct path.
This is the stage where the hearts are hardened and
they become impermeable to guidance; or, in the more
common Qur'anic parlance, "hearts are sealed" so that
nothing good can come out of them and nothing good
can go inside. This is often the fate of those who do
not accept the truth the very first time it becomes
clearly manifest to them; once they intentionally and
knowingly reject the truth, from that stage onwards
it becomes increasingly difficult for them to accept
it, until a "point of no-return" is reached where
their hearts are "hardened" or "sealed."
Such were the towns whose stories We are relating
to you; there came to them their Messengers with
clear signs, but they would not believe what they
had rejected the first time. Thus does God seal up
the hearts of those who reject the truth. (Sura
Al-A'raf 7:101)
If a person's heart is "sealed" or "hardened" so
that he or she can no longer repent, who should be
held responsible for this misfortune? Obviously, it
is God who does the "sealing" or "hardening," but
God's action has to be understood as a response to
the continuous and deliberate rebellion and
transgression of the person in question. Since God's
action in this case is a manifestation or application
of a Divine Law (or Sunnat-Allah), the statement "God
sealed his heart" is as correct as the statement "he
caused his own heart to be sealed." If my driver's
license gets suspended for repeated drunk driving,
the statement "DMV suspended my license" will be as
correct as the statement "I caused my license to be
suspended." In both instances, however, the final
onus of responsibility will be on the person who
repeatedly and deliberately violated the law rather
than on God or the DMV who simply made and executed
the law.
Six Grounds for Accountability and the "Lethal
Seventh"
The Qur'an makes it abundantly clear that neither
the nature of ultimate reality nor the way to human
salvation is something incomprehensible, obscure, or
puzzling. Not recognizing God and not behaving as a
servant and a vicegerent is a disastrous situation,
the responsibility for which falls on the individual
in question rather than on the obscure nature of
truth. According to the Qur'an, the human individual
is responsible and accountable before God on the
basis of his or her own natural faculties as well as
the truths that are inherent within the human soul.
In addition, there are signs of God manifest
everywhere in the natural world, in the rise and fall
of nations during the course of history, and
additionally in the Scriptures that have been
revealed by God. In this way, there are six grounds
for human responsibility and accountability before
God, three "inner" and three "outer," as summarized
below.
The Qur'an uses three different terms to describe
the three dimensions of what we understand as human
"self." The most basic dimension, which the human
being shares with other animals, is that of
"nafs." Even though the human "nafs" is
of earthly origins and has a tendency to become
focused on its own immediate gratification that leads
to all sorts of sins, it is in many ways
qualitatively different from those of lower animals.
This is because the human "nafs" has been
endowed with the ability to reason on the basis of
observations, to name and categorize things and
ideas, and to manipulate abstract thoughts; in
addition, the "nafs" has the ability to
differentiate between good and evil. Human beings are
accountable in the first place because of the
reasoning ability and the moral sense inherent in the
"nafs," as demonstrated by the following
ayaat:
...surely the hearing and sight and the mind, of
all of these one will be questioned. (Sura Al-Isra
17:36)
By the nafs and the proportion and order given to
it; and its inspiration as to its wrong and its
right; truly he succeeds that purifies it, and he
fails who corrupts it. (Sura Al-Shams 7-10)
The second dimension of human self has been called
the "wruh," a Divine element in the human
being. The Qur'an identifies the "ruh" by what
God has "breathed into" the first human being, Adam,
out of His "own spirit" (Sura Al-Hijr 15:29 &
Sura Saad 38:72). The human being owes his or her
peculiar humanness, his or her ability to act as
vicegerent of God, and his or her being created "in
the image of God" to this very "ruh." Without
it, the human being is merely an intelligent primate,
a sophisticated ape. With it, the human being can
become a co-worker and a friend of God.
The human "ruh" has a natural and powerful
inclination toward its ultimate source, the essence
of Almighty God. The "ruh" harbors absolutely
no doubt or reservation about the Creator and Lord,
for the clear recognition and wholehearted acceptance
of the Creator-Lord is inherent within it. According
to the Qur'an, this is because the "ruh" of
each and every human being was placed before Almighty
God before the creation of the physical universe and
was made to testify in the intimate presence of the
Ultimately Real, as described in this intriguing
ayah:
When your Lord drew forth from the Children of
Adam, from their loins, their descendants, and made
them testify concerning themselves, (saying) "Am I
not your Lord?" They said: "Yea! We do testify"
(Sura Al-A'raf 7:172)
The presence of a powerful urge in human beings to
love, adore, worship, and serve the highest ideal of
beauty and perfection that they can find -- to have
an "ultimate concern" of one sort or another -- is an
undeniable and irrepressible sign in and of itself.
The only true object of this urge is God; most
people, however, erroneously content themselves with
one of the lesser and imperfect substitutes, before
their disillusionment causes them to look for
something better. This nameless and incessant human
search for a beloved is nothing but an echo of their
eternal covenant with God. Incidentally, each and
every human being is bound in this covenant just by
virtue of his or her existence. This covenant also
implies that to deny God is to deny oneself, because
to reject God is to reject the most intense longing
of one's own self. The inner love for God, then,
constitutes the second ground for human
responsibility and accountability.
The third dimension of human self is what the
Qur'an calls the "qalb." It is a uniquely
human faculty that can directly perceive spiritual
truths in a single, luminous unveiling. Thus,
Al-Ghazali believes that God is revealed and not
hidden; the fact that we are often not able to
perceive God is because of the "rust" on the mirror
of our "hearts," caused by our sins and heedlessness.
All we need to do is to clean and polish the mirror
and God will become revealed immediately in the
depths of our own hearts. Indeed, the Qur'an treats
the "qalb" as a contemplative inner faculty
that "understands" truth in its own peculiarly subtle
way. Heedlessness, however, causes the human beings
to willfully disregard the evidence supplied by the
"qalb."
Have they not traveled in the land so that they
should have hearts with which to understand, or
ears with which to hear? For surely it is not the
eyes that are blind, but blind are the hearts that
are in the breasts. (Sura Al-Hajj 22:46)
This faculty of intuitive perception, then, is the
third ground for human responsibility and
accountability.
In addition to these three "inner" faculties for
the recognition of truth, there are three "outer"
grounds too; these are the signs of God in the world
of nature, in human history, and in the Revealed
Word. The Qur'an makes it abundantly clear that the
entire physical universe is full of indicators that
point towards ultimate reality, if only the human
beings would pay attention.
Most surely in the creation of the heavens and the
earth and the alternation of the night and the day,
and the ships that run in the sea with that which
profits people, and the water that God sends down
from the cloud, then gives life with it to the
earth after its death and spreads in it all (kinds
of) animals, and the changing of the winds and the
clouds made subservient between the heaven and the
earth, (in all of these) there are signs for a
people who understand. (Sura Al-Baqarah 2:164)
God is He Who raised the heavens without any
pillars that you see, and He is firm in power and
He made the sun and the moon subservient (to His
command); each one pursues its course to an
appointed time; He regulates the affair, making
clear the signs that you may be certain of meeting
your Lord. And He it is Who spread the earth and
made in it firm mountains and rivers, and of all
fruits He has made in it two kinds; He makes the
night cover the day; most surely there are signs in
this for a people who reflect. And in the earth
there are tracts side by side and gardens of grapes
and corn and palm trees having one root and
(others) having distinct roots; they are watered
with one water, and We make some of them excel
others in fruit; most surely there are signs in
this for a people who understand. (Sura Al-Ra'd
13:2-4)
The signs of God are manifest not only in the
world of nature but also in the course of human
history and the rise and decline of nations.
Does it not teach them a lesson, how many
generations We destroyed before them, in whose
dwellings they (now) go to and fro? Verily in that
are signs; do they not then listen? (Sura Al-Sajdah
32:26)
To top it all, God also revealed His Word in the
form of Sacred Scriptures that contain His signs in
the form of human speech:
He has revealed to you the Book with truth,
verifying that which is before it, and He revealed
the Torah (to Moses) and the Gospel (to Jesus)
aforetime, a guidance for the people, and He sent
the down the Criterion (of judgment between right
and wrong). Surely they who disbelieve in the signs
of God shall have a severe chastisement; and God is
Mighty, the Lord of retribution. (Sura Aal Imran
3:3-4)
To recapitulate, the human being is responsible
and accountable before God on the basis of three
"inner" grounds (the faculties of observation,
reasoning, and moral sense inherent in the
"nafs," the powerful inclination towards and
love for God that is inbuilt in the "ruh," and
the faculty of intuitive perceptiveness that is found
in the "qalb") as well as three "outer"
grounds (the signs of God that are manifest in the
world of nature, the signs of God that are found in
human history, and the signs of God that could be
read in Revealed Scriptures).
While these six sources of knowledge are available
to all human beings, there have been some nations in
human history that came cross a seventh ground for
accountability -- a Messenger of God with clear and
miraculous signs. But this seventh ground was a
lethal one, in the sense that rejecting the truth
that was being presented directly by a Messenger of
God had very immediate consequences as compared to
rejecting the truth of the six other sources. The
Qur'an relates the stories of several nations of old,
each of which was guilty of rejecting their Divinely
appointed Messengers and each of which was destroyed
and eliminated from the face of the earth as a
punishment for its sins and transgressions. It is
important to note that, according to the Qur'an, such
an open manifestation of God's wrath used to appear
in the past only after one of God's Messengers had
explicitly and unambiguously communicated the Divine
message to a particular people, and they still
remained persistent in refusing to surrender before
the will of their Lord.
We never punish till We have sent a Messenger.
(Al-Isra 17:15)
But your Lord does not destroy habitations without
having sent a Messenger to their metropolis to read
out Our commandments to them. (Al-Qasas 28:59)
Clearly, then, Pharaoh's problem was that he had
come face to face with the seventh "lethal" ground of
accountability in the form of Prophet Moses and his
miracles. How many undeniable signs can a person
possibly deny and still not face any
consequences?
Pharaoh's Arrogance and the Blessings of
Plagues
In the Qur'anic narrative, Pharaoh appears as the
epitome of rebellion against God's authority and
dominion; he not only rebels against God but claims
to be the absolute lord and sovereign of Egypt, in
both the religious and political sense.
And Pharaoh said: O chiefs! I do not know of any
god for you besides myself.... (Sura Al-Qassas
28:38)
He said: I am your Lord, Most High. (Sura
Al-Naziyat 79:24)
He said: If you will take a god besides me, I will
most certainly make you one of the imprisoned.
(Sura Al-Shu'ara 26:29)
Since there were numerous gods and goddesses in
the Egyptian religious system, as evidenced by the
Qur'an itself, the ayaat quoted above can only
mean that Pharaoh saw himself as the unchallenged and
absolute "god" primarily in the political sense of
word "sovereign."
As pointed out in the beginning, the human being
is meant to act as God's vicegerent on earth and as
such possesses some measure of delegated authority
and power; this delegated authority and power,
unfortunately, causes some human beings to be carried
away by a delusion of grandeur in which they pass all
legitimate limits. They refuse to accept God's
sovereignty and their own status as vicegerents.
Mawdudi describes three stages of human transgression
in Qur'anic terms:
The first stage is that one acknowledges in
principle that obedience to God is right, but
disregards it in practice. This is fisq
(wrongdoing). The second state is that one not only
disobeys but also rejects obedience in principle,
and thus either refuses to become the subject of
anyone at all or adopts someone other than God as
the object of service and devotion. This is
kufr (disbelief). The third stage is that
one not only rebels against one's Lord but also
imposes one's won will [in disregard of the will of
God] on God's world and God's creatures. Anyone who
reaches such a point is termed taghut
(rebel)....
Keeping in mind the Qur'anic terminology of
fisq, kufr, and tagha (or
wrongdoing, disbelief, and rebellion), it is clear
that Pharaoh was at the third, and worst, stage of
transgression. He not only did not obey God, but he
also refused to accept in principle that God should
be obeyed; even more seriously, he established
himself as a ruler in a system of governance where he
himself enjoyed the unconditional and absolute right
of political sovereignty in complete disregard to the
authority of the Creator-Lord. In Pharaoh's claim to
divinity, therefore, religious and political elements
were deeply and inseparably interlinked. It is
obvious from the Qur'anic narrative that the issue
was not simply the liberation of Israelites, but that
Pharaoh and his chiefs saw Prophet Moses as a threat
to their political order, for the latter was
proclaiming the name of the Creator-Lord who had
dominion over everything and everybody, including
Pharaoh himself. This is evidenced by the following
ayaat:
(Pharaoh and his chiefs) said: Have you come to us
to turn us away from what we found our fathers
upon, and (that) greatness in the land should be
for you two? And we are not going to believe in
you. (Sura Yunus 10:78)
Said he: Have you come to us that you should turn
us out of our land by your magic, O Moses? (Sura
Ta-Ha 20:57)
And Pharaoh said (to his chiefs): Allow me that I
may slay Moses and let him call upon his Lord;
surely I fear that he will change your religion or
that he will cause corruption to appear in the
land. (Sura Al-Momin 40:26)
Looking at the narrative of Pharaoh and Prophet
Moses from a Qur'anic perspective, it is clear that
God kept the possibility very much open in the
beginning that the Egyptian monarch might accept the
Divine truth and liberate the Israelites (Sura Ta-Ha
20:44 & Sura Al-Naziyaat 79: 15-19). It is only
after repeated rejections of clear and unambiguous
signs of God that Pharaoh became worthy of Divine
punishment.
After them We sent Moses with Our signs to Pharaoh
and his chiefs; but they wrongfully rejected them.
So see what was the end of those who made mischief.
(Sura Al-A'raf 7:103)
Has not there come to you the story of Moses? When
his Lord called upon him in the sacred valley of
Tuwa? Go to Pharaoh, surely he has become
inordinate. Then say: Have you (a desire) to purify
yourself. And I will guide you to your Lord so that
you should fear. So he showed him the mighty sign.
But he rejected (the truth) and disobeyed. Then he
went back hastily. Then he gathered (people) and
called out. Then he said: I am your lord, the most
high. So God seized him with the punishment of the
hereafter and this life. Most surely there is in
this a lesson for the one who fears. (Sura
Al-Naziyat 79:15-24)
The plagues that God sent to Pharaoh and his
people were not "punishments" in the usual sense of
the words; more precisely, they were "wake-up calls."
God sent the plagues to warn Pharaoh and his people,
to wake them up from their heedlessness, and to
"soften their hearts." According to the Qur'an,
whenever God sent a Messenger to a particular people,
He would simultaneously afflict the people with
disasters of one sort or another, the purpose of
which was to put them in a more receptive frame of
mind vis-a-vis the Divine message.
And We did not send a prophet in a town but We
overtook its people with distress and affliction in
order that they might humble themselves. (Sura
Al-A'raf 7:94)
These smaller afflictions, then, were meant to
bring the afflicted people back to God in repentance.
To the extent that an event brings someone closer to
God, that event must be seen as good and desirable
rather than a punishment.
And indeed We will make them taste of the lighter
chastisement before the greater chastisement, in
order that they may return. (Sura Al-Sajdah 32:21)
From this perspective, therefore, the plagues that
visited Pharaoh and his people could be understood as
blessings in disguise. These "lighter chastisements"
from God did soften the hearts to some extent. At the
arrival of each plague, Pharaoh and his people would
promise Prophet Moses that they would accept the
Divine truth and liberate the Israelites if he would
only pray to his Lord and remove the plague. Each
time, however, they went back on their word, not
because God had prevented them from repenting but
because of their own arrogance and heedlessness.
Finally, the number of chances that God was willing
to allow them ran out, and the Divine Law of
Retribution came into effect -- a justifiable
punishment for denying the undeniable.
So We sent on them floods, locusts, lice, frogs,
and blood: signs openly self-evident; but they were
steeped in arrogance, a people given to sin. And
when the plagues fell on them, they said: "O Moses!
On our behalf call on your Lord in virtue of His
promise to you; if you will remove the plague from
us, we shall truly believe in you, and we shall
send away the children of Israel with you." But
when We removed the plague from them according to a
fixed term which they had to fulfill, behold! they
broke their word (every time). So We exacted
retribution from them; We drowned them in the sea,
because they rejected our signs, and failed to take
warning from them. (Sura Al-A'raf 7:133-136)
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