In my daily Scripture reading I came across a statement that God made to Pharaoh after having already sent six plagues on Egypt because the king refused to heed the Lord’s command, “Let my people go” (Exodus 5:1). Before unleashing the seventh plague (hail) on Egypt, the Lord declared,
By now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth. But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. (Exodus 9:15-16)
We know from Scripture that the Lord “makes nations great, and destroys them; he enlarges nations, and he dispenses them” (Job 12:23). We rightly affirm that “it is God alone who judges; he decides who will rise and who will fall” (Psalm 75:7 NLT). When we see certain people or political parties come into power, we may wonder why God would allow such a thing, especially when “the wicked strut about, and evil is praised throughout the land” (Psalm 12:8 NLT).
But in God’s pronouncement to Pharaoh, the Lord told him the precise reason he had raised Pharaoh to power and allowed him to live in that state for a time. It was to show Pharaoh who was really in charge – and not just Pharaoh but everyone throughout the rest of human history who would read this story of Israel’s redemption from Egypt. As explained on GotQuestions.org,
In those ancient days, the Pharaoh was considered a god, and his every word was law. There was no one who could stand against Pharaoh, so the Lord used him to demonstrate His own superior power. The Lord’s plan to use plagues and miracles to free the nation of Israel was not conceived in reaction to Pharaoh’s rebellion. God is never reactive; He is always proactive. He had orchestrated the back-and-forth with Pharaoh and the exodus from the very beginning (see Isaiah 46:10). Four hundred years prior to the exodus, Joseph prophesied on his deathbed that God would lead His people out of Egypt to the Promised Land, and he made his relatives promise to carry his bones with them when they went (Genesis 50:24–25).
Seen as a symbol of the world’s ungodly system, Egypt represents the enemies of the Lord (cf. Ezekiel 29:1–6). God used Pharaoh’s hardheartedness to showcase His own glory and to show the world His supremacy over all the kings of the earth (Psalm 2:10–11; Ezekiel 20:9; 36:22).
In Romans 9:17, Paul quotes God’s declaration to Pharaoh in Exodus 9:16 as an illustration of God’s sovereignty in salvation. God has the right to show mercy on whomever he wishes, yet he never acts unjustly toward anyone.
In fact, when the Lord pronounced his judgment on Pharaoh in Exodus 9 just before unleashing the plague of hail upon the Egyptians, God gave them the opportunity to seek shelter so that they would not be destroyed by the plague. Matthew Henry wrote,
When God’s justice threatens ruin, his mercy at the same time shows us a way of escape from it, so unwilling he is that any should perish. See here what care God took, not only to distinguish between Egyptians and Israelites, but between some Egyptians and others. If Pharaoh will not yield, and so prevent the judgment itself, yet an opportunity is given to those that have any dread of God and his word to save themselves from sharing in the judgment.
What a picture of salvation! Scripture implores us to turn from our sin and to trust in “Jesus, who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thess. 1:10). God preserved the story of Pharaoh and Israel’s liberation from Egypt to point us not only to the Lord’s sovereignty, but also to the great salvation that he mercifully provides for all who take him at his word and put their trust in him.