Exodus 11: Holy Anger at the Moment of Rupture, and the Abyss of Discernment

Exodus 11: Holy Anger at the Moment of Rupture, and the Abyss of Discernment

"Then all these officials of yours will come to me, bowing down before me and saying, 'Go, you and all the people who follow you!' After that I will leave." Then Moses, hot with anger, left Pharaoh. (Exodus 11:8, NIV)

Even the final declaration of the death of the firstborn could not penetrate Pharaoh's hardened heart. Despite nine plagues that had devastated all of Egypt, the nation remained eerily resolute. If Pharaoh represents fallen human nature, then the human hardened heart possesses an irrational blindness that rejects God even at the moment when death's shadow looms. This is not mere stubbornness, but evidence of total depravity—the inability to reach salvation on one's own.

After declaring the final plague to Pharaoh, Moses left "hot with anger." Why did Moses, the epitome of meekness, become enraged? Contextually, this scene follows immediately after Pharaoh's threat in 10:28-29, "Never appear before me again," and Moses' response, "I will never appear before you again." In other words, Moses' anger erupted at the final moment of rupture when all possibility of negotiation had vanished. This was not petulant anger from wounded pride, but rather sorrow over obstinacy that ultimately rejected the path of life and chose destruction, and as Calvin said, holy anger toward an attitude that despised God's justice. For a prophet is one who feels God's anguish as his own emotion (Abraham Heschel).

However, we must pause here and examine ourselves. Just because Moses' anger was justified does not mean our anger is always justified. Christians must distinguish between when to be patient and when to be righteously angry. But this discernment is existentially very difficult. This is why Paul emphasized discernment as much as love in the last days. We often become most dangerous when our personal convictions align with our religious zeal. Many things done under the guise of being "for God," when examined coldly, are often projections of our own religious desires. Just as Saul (Paul) was before his conversion, zealous religious conviction filled with certainty can sometimes become the most fearsome weapon of oppression. Humanity's greatness and tragic limitation lie in the fact that at the very moment we believe ourselves righteous, our eyes of judgment become blind.

Therefore, we require what Niklas Luhmann called "Second-order Observation"—meta-reflection that goes beyond discerning the object to discerning ourselves as we discern. We must constantly ask whether this anger of ours stems from God's justice or from a wounded ego. Gideon's holy doubt and hesitation—repeatedly seeking signs as if testing a stone bridge—is the soul's safety mechanism against falling into self-righteousness.

Moses could express holy anger before Pharaoh because he had passed through forty years in the wilderness where his self was thoroughly denied and broken. True discernment is not in the realm of knowledge, but a character that naturally permeates when we are close to God. What we need today is not blind certainty, but the wisdom to discern discernment itself—seeking God's perspective in the humility that acknowledges "I could be wrong."