[Ibn Ezra on Exodus 7:3, "I will harden Pharaoh's heart."]


Many have wondered how Pharaoh can be considered to have sinned if God
hardened his heart.  Some great minds reply that what God did was to
strengthen Pharaoh's ability to bear his troubles.  My answer is that
God gives man wisdom and plants within his heart the intelligence to
receive a higher power that enables him to increase his pleasure, or to
lessen his pain.  I will explain this further in my comments to 33:23
and Deut. 5:26.

[Now let's find Ibn Ezra on Exodus 33:23, when God tells Moses
"You shall see My back."]


The remark of our Sages that God showed him the knot on His phylacteries
is correct, but not literally so, as contemporary scholars think.  It is
a profound mystery.  Saadia takes this to mean "You will see the end of
My light, but you cannot see its beginning."  In my opinion, the text
speaks of God here in human terms, as it customarily does.  For we know
quite clearly that God has no material body and therefore cannot be
seen, since the eye can see only material things.  So I think Moses does
not mean "behold" literally.  After all, "The LORD would speak to Moses
face to face" (v. 11) does not mean that God has a mouth.  Rather, He
spoke with him through a kind of direct communication for which "speech"
is merely a metaphor.  "As one man speaks to another" (v. 11) merely
means that Moses communicated directly with the Creator, without an
angelic intermediary.  "But My face must not be seen."  The purpose of
Moses' request was to unite with the "forms" that have no material
content, for they are the ladder by which one ascends to the Sublime.
No living being can do this, because of his materiality; hence "man may
not see Me and live" (v.20).  You must understand that every compound
body has a "face" and a "back."  But the sun, the greatest and most
glorious of all created things, has no face and no back.  Nor do the
stars, [Carasik: "Another reading has "the glorious ones," that is, the
angels."] much less their Creator.  So every soul is attached to God,
and He alone has no beginning and no end.  The soul that is attached to
Him has no end from the perspective of God.  But it does have a
beginning, the moment at which it became attached to God.  [Carasik:
"Souls are created at one moment in time but then continue to exist
forever."]


[Ibn Ezra continues.]  With regard to these upper realms of sun, moon,
and stars, "He made them endure forever, establishing an order that
shall never change" (Ps. 148:6).  They were created this way for the
sake of those who would be subject to their influence.  But the upper
worlds cannot change their motions in any way.  So one who prays to the
stars achieves nothing.  Whatever is decreed for him by their position
at his birth is going to happen--unless he is protected by some Power
higher than theirs.


[Ibn Ezra continues.]  Let me explain with a story.  It was in the stars
that a river would rise and flood a certain city, drowning its
inhabitants.  A prophet came and warned them to repent before their day
of evil, which they whole-heartedly did.  Once they had cleaved to God,
He put into the hearts of the people of the city to go out of the city
to pray to Him.  It was on the very day they did so that the river
suddenly rose (as rivers do) and flooded the city.  What God had decreed
to happen in nature did not change its course--and yet He saved them.


[Ibn Ezra continues.]  Consider that the planets run like horses on a
highway--not with the purpose of doing good or evil, but simply running
on their way.  Imagine a blind man on the road, who cannot see when the
horses are running to the right and when they are running to the left.
He must rely on someone with sight to protect him by leading him to this
side or that.  The horses do not change their course, but the blind man
is saved.  In just this way, "the LORD took you and brought you out of
Egypt, that iron blast furnace, to be His very own people" (Deut. 4:20).
It is in this respect that Israel is "distinguished ... from every
people on the face of the earth" (v. 16).


(From "The Commentator's Bible: the JPS Miqra'ot gedolot Exodus", editor
M. Carasik (2005) JPS, pp. 46 and 300-301.)