He Has Mercy on Whom He Desires, and He Hardens Whom He Desires

Moses asked for the glory. "Please show me your glory" (Ex 33:18). God did not answer with a spectacle of light. He answered with a proclamation: "I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim the name of Yahweh before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy" (Ex 33:19). The glory of God is His name, and the name He proclaims is sovereign freedom in mercy. He will be gracious to whom He will be gracious. No one else decides.

Paul heard that sentence and built a chapter on it. "For he said to Moses, 'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.' So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy" (Rom 9:15-16). Then Paul displayed the sentence in history, in two men who never met: Pharaoh and Daniel.

Pharaoh is the hardening half. Before Moses stood in Egypt, Yahweh had already declared the end: "I will harden his heart and he will not let the people go" (Ex 4:21). He repeated it: "I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt" (Ex 7:3). And He stated His purpose to Pharaoh's face: "but indeed for this cause I have made you stand: to show you my power, and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth" (Ex 9:16). Paul quotes the purpose word for word: "For this very purpose I caused you to be raised up, that I might show in you my power, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth" (Rom 9:17).

Pharaoh also hardened his own heart. "But when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he hardened his heart, and didn't listen to them, as Yahweh had spoken" (Ex 8:15). Both are written, and both are true. But hear the order. The declaration came first, spoken in Midian before a single plague. The self-hardening came after, and it came "as Yahweh had spoken." Pharaoh's hardness was his own act, and it was also the response formed in him by the word God had announced. The king resisted with all his will, and his resistance carried out the decree.

Daniel is the mercy half. He stood under a death decree of the same kind: the wise men of Babylon were to be destroyed, and Daniel was among them (Dan 2:12-13). Daniel asked the king for time, and promised the interpretation before he possessed it (Dan 2:16). Then he went home and did the only thing mercy ever does: he asked for it. He gathered his companions "that they would desire mercies of the God of heaven concerning this secret; that Daniel and his companions should not perish with the rest of the wise men of Babylon" (Dan 2:18). "Then was the secret revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night" (Dan 2:19).

The mercy was not wages. Before Daniel asked anything, "God made Daniel to find kindness and compassion in the sight of the prince of the eunuchs" (Dan 1:9). And Daniel confessed the doctrine in his praise before he ever told the dream: "Blessed be the name of God forever and ever; for wisdom and might are his. He changes the times and the seasons; he removes kings, and sets up kings" (Dan 2:20-21). Removes kings. Pharaoh removed. Nebuchadnezzar set up. One hand does both. Daniel then disclaimed himself entirely: "this secret is not revealed to me for any wisdom that I have more than any living" (Dan 2:30). Not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy. Daniel is Romans 9:16 walking in Babylon.

Daniel's own prayer joins the two halves in one mouth. He looks back across the centuries at Pharaoh's Egypt, and he calls it glory: God "has brought your people forth out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand, and have gotten yourself renown, as at this day" (Dan 9:15). Then the same man pleads for himself: "To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgiveness; for we have rebelled against him" (Dan 9:9). "We do not present our petitions before you for our righteousness, but for your great mercies' sake" (Dan 9:18). The vessel of mercy reads the vessel of wrath's judgment as God's renown — and asks for mercy on no other ground than that God is free to give it.

Paul names the two men without naming Daniel: "Or hasn't the potter a right over the clay, from the same lump to make one part a vessel for honor, and another for dishonor?" (Rom 9:21). Same lump. A Hebrew-hating king on the Nile and a Hebrew captive on the Euphrates. And the protest rises at once: "Why does he still find fault? For who withstands his will?" (Rom 9:19). Daniel's book answers the protest centuries before Paul wrote it, from the mouth of the other humbled king of Babylon: "he does according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand, or ask him, What are you doing?" (Dan 4:35). Nebuchadnezzar learned what Pharaoh never confessed. One king was hardened to destruction. The other was humbled to praise. The difference is not in the kings.

Then what of the power? Pharaoh was raised up for a demonstration of it (Rom 9:17), and Paul does not hide the connection: "What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath made for destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory on vessels of mercy, which he prepared beforehand for glory?" (Rom 9:22-23). Power is made known in wrath. But power is not wrath only. At the sea, one act carried both operations at once: "Israel saw the great work which Yahweh did to the Egyptians, and the people feared Yahweh; and they believed in Yahweh, and in his servant Moses" (Ex 14:31). The song sings the two in a single line: "Your right hand, Yahweh, is glorious in power. Your right hand, Yahweh, dashes the enemy in pieces" (Ex 15:6). The hand that dashes the enemy is the hand that brings Israel through the water. It is one hand. And Paul calls the gospel by the same name: "it is the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes" (Rom 1:16). Power is God's will arriving in the world. It arrives as judgment on Pharaoh, as mercy on Daniel, as salvation in the gospel. And power is finally not a force but a Person: "to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God" (1 Cor 1:24). Daniel saw Him: "there came with the clouds of the sky one like a son of man... There was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom" (Dan 7:13-14).

Moses asked to see the glory, and God answered with a sentence. History then displayed the sentence in two men who stand at either end of the canon like two pillars. Pharaoh shows the hardening. Daniel shows the mercy. The will is one, the operations are two, and the glory is the same: "So then, he has mercy on whom he desires, and he hardens whom he desires" (Rom 9:18).