In ancient Egyptian belief, a person’s heart was weighed after death to determine whether they are righteous or wicked. By referring to Pharaoh’s heart as heavy, the exodus story originally expressed the extent of his guilt.
The weighing of the heart in the from the Book of the Dead of Ani (ca. 1300 B.C.E.). The heart is on the left scale; the feather of maʾat on the right. The god Anubis sets up the scales, while Ani’s soul (ba) looks on in the form of a bird. On the right, the god Thoth records his judgment while the monster Amenti watches for the heart to drop below the feather so he can consume it. British Library, 2001.
Published: January 19, 2021
|
Last Updated: September 7, 2026
P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., I Samuel, Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1980), 134, writes: “Unmistakable is the allusion to Exod 10:1-2 in the so-called “J” or Yahwistic materials of the exodus account.”
Sarah Ben-Reuben, “ויכבד לב פרעה” [And He Hardened the Heart of Pharaoh], Beit Mikra 97.2 (1984): 112–113. See also Racheli Shalomi-Hen, “7:14 Pharaoh’s Unyielding (Heavy) Heart,” in The Koren Tanakh of the Land of Israel, Exodus, 2nd ed. (Jerusalem: Koren, 2020), 41. William Propp dismisses Ben-Reuben’s suggestion:
The text implies that Pharaoh’s heart, the seat of his mental faculties, does not function properly, is “an organ of perception that is no longer receiving stimuli” (Wilson 1979: 22). In 4:10, Moses’ “heavy” mouth and tongue hinder him speaking the divine word; in 7:14, Pharaoh’s “heavy” heart prevents him from heeding it. (Pace Ben-Reuben 1984, I do not find a reference to the Egyptian belief in the postmortem weighing of the heart.)
See William H. C. Propp, Exodus 1-18, The Anchor Bible (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 323. Nevertheless, Propp fails to account for the coincidence of this term being unique to this Egyptian context, and his light dismissal is unconvincing.
For a brief description view of this process, see John H. Taylor, Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), 35–39 and Joshua J. Marks, “The Egyptian Afterlife and the Feather of Truth,” Ancient History Encyclopedia (March 30, 2018).
Translation is from Raymond O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, ed. Carol Andrews (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997), 31.
See Jan Assmann, “Pharaoh’s Divine Role in Maintaining Maʾat (Order),” TheTorah (2015).
Jan Assmann, Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt, trans. David Lorton (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), 75; translated, updated, and abridged from Tod un Jenseits im alten Ägypten (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2001).
Faulkner, Egyptian Book of the Dead, 27–28.
Assmann, Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt, 75
Shalomi-Hen (Koren Tanakh: Exodus, 41) writes:
The Torah’s description of Pharaoh’s heart as heavy resonates with those familiar with this scene—including the Israelites who by this time had lived in Egypt for centuries. A heavy heart was believed to bring destruction to its owner. Thus, from an Egyptian perspective, God’s control of Pharaoh’s heart—to the point that He manipulates Pharaoh—causes him to deviate from Maat.
Shalomi-Hen treats the story as historical here, assuming the idiom was known because the Israelites were living in Egypt. Putting that aside, her overall observation about the connection between the biblical text and the Egyptian belief captures the main point.
Yair Zakovitch, “קונקרטיזציה של מטפורות ולשון מטפורית בפרשנות המקרא — פנימית וחיצונית” [The Concretization of Metaphors and Metaphoric Language in the Bible], Shnaton: An Annual for Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies 24 (2016): 5–33 [p. 6].
Source criticism distinguishes between the J (Yahwistic) story and the P (Priestly) story; the fortified (ח.ז.ק) heart comes from P, the Priestly text, and the heavy heart from J. These were eventually combined and supplemented to create the exodus account that we now have.
Another example of this author’s playfulness with foreign concepts is the Tower of Babel story, which pokes fun at Mesopotamian ziggurats. (See discussion in, Ronald Hendel, “Tower of Babel: The Hidden Transcript,” TheTorah (2014). See also, Ed Greenstein, “Language Is Baffling: The Story of the Tower of Babel,” TheTorah (2019), who argues that the story could also be playing off a Sumerian account of where languages come from.) In that account, J mocks the name of Babylon with a creative etymology based on the root ב.ל.ל meaning “confound” or “scramble.” The correct etymology according to many scholars derives from the Akkadian Bab-Ilu, “Gate of the gods,” while others derive it from another ancient language, and see its meaning as uncertain. In any case, it surely does not derive from the Hebrew ב.ל.ל!
David Frankel argues, in “When Pharaoh’s Stubbornness Caught God by Surprise” (TheTorah 2015), that in J, Pharaoh’s behavior shocks God and Moses both. See also his further elaboration in “Taking Control of the Story: God Hardens Pharaoh’s Heart,” TheTorah (2016). Accordingly, YHWH’s judgment of Pharaoh’s heavy heart is on point. In fact, Frankel actually shows that J has two stages. The core J narrative sees Pharaoh’s reaction as a surprise, but J was later revised to say that YHWH knew about it in advance, though God didn’t cause it. This was a result of J being influenced by P, whose core text believed this (that YHWH knew in advance that Pharaoh would refuse).
The end of the verse is from P and has apparently been truncated. Frankel (“Taking Control of the Story,” fn 2; accessed Jan 14, 2021) writes:
The Priestly version of the plague of frogs is found in Exodus 8:1–3, 11b. It concludes with the words ולא שמע אלהם כאשר דבר י־הוה (“and would not heed them as YHWH had spoken”). However, in light of the parallels, it is extremely likely that this final phrase was preceded by ויחזק לב פרעה (“and Pharaoh’s heart was fortified”) and that the editor excised it because the parallel phrase from the non-Priestly story in verse 11a, והכבד את לבו (“and he made his heart heavy”), made it superfluous.
The third plague, that of lice, appears only in P.
The plague of boils is only in P.
שמות ט:ל וְאַתָּה וַעֲבָדֶיךָ יָדַעְתִּי כִּי טֶרֶם תִּירְאוּן מִפְּנֵי יְ־הוָה אֱלֹהִים.
Exod 9:30 But I know that you and your courtiers do not yet fear YHWH God.
Again, see discussion in Frankel, “When Pharaoh’s Stubbornness Caught God by Surprise”; idem, “Taking Control of the Story.”
The redactor does not seem to distinguish between the preferred idioms of J and P, and, in one verse (Exod 7:3), introduces yet a third root to express Pharaoh’s stubbornness, ק.שׁ.ה, meaning “to harden or stiffen.” This verse is also part of the redactional layer, as Frankel notes, since it interrupts the flow of the passage.
