aspen
“"The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few
I think this issue comes down to "what happened", rather than "what God planned and executed". Pharaoh was an evil man - he reaped the consequences of his actions. The person telling the story and those who wrote the story down, rightfully assigned the responsibility to God, but it was not an attempt to teach a lesson on freewill. Instead, the authors were commentating on the sovereignty of God. A poor analogy might be - "the man was forced to work over time by his boss" - it is not a statement about free will, but an explanation of the man's emotional state and attitude towards his boss when he chose to work over time.
I can picture a historian looking back on this statement, 2000 years from now and misinterpreting it as a commentary on the naked power of employers at the turn of the 21st century, when it is really more about how the employee felt about the situation and his response to it. On one hand it is accurate to say that the boss forced him to work over time because if he did not, he may have angered the boss and damaged his reputation; on the other hand, a boss really cannot physically force us to do anything - we have choices.
Many stories in the OT are misunderstood because we miss the point of the stories - most of the time, authors are not making theological statements in the same way authors do today - they are simply commentating on God's sovereignty. I am not suggesting that the author's of the Bible are guilty of inaccuracies - we are simply emphasizing the wrong parts of the stories.
Not sure if this makes sense.
I can picture a historian looking back on this statement, 2000 years from now and misinterpreting it as a commentary on the naked power of employers at the turn of the 21st century, when it is really more about how the employee felt about the situation and his response to it. On one hand it is accurate to say that the boss forced him to work over time because if he did not, he may have angered the boss and damaged his reputation; on the other hand, a boss really cannot physically force us to do anything - we have choices.
Many stories in the OT are misunderstood because we miss the point of the stories - most of the time, authors are not making theological statements in the same way authors do today - they are simply commentating on God's sovereignty. I am not suggesting that the author's of the Bible are guilty of inaccuracies - we are simply emphasizing the wrong parts of the stories.
Not sure if this makes sense.