The Reprobate Race of Apostate Jews
Of all people to picture the Jews, Paul uses Pharaoh.
Among all the enemies of God’s people in holy Scripture, none is more archetypal than the Pharaoh of the Exodus. The repeated hardening of his heart in the face of miraculous signs and plagues decimating the nation presents the supreme portrait of rebellion against all light. Every fresh experience of God’s power only hardened him more to resist reason and store up for himself further judgment. He is the exemplary enemy of God, and indeed, the paradigmatic reprobate. As the Lord tells him, “Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth” (Romans 9:17–18). None are as notorious for hardened hearts as the Pharaoh who would not let Israel go.
Nevertheless, the stubborn image of Pharaoh does not stand alone. In Paul’s treatment of his own brethren, he turns to an astonishing comparison. Of all people to picture them, Paul uses Pharaoh. He applies this hardness of heart to his own people, identifying Israel with Pharaoh’s iconic obstinacy. The apostasy of Paul’s countrymen is indeed the very context for presenting Pharaoh’s divine hardening. The tyrant under judgment is deployed to depict the Jewish people.
Thus have the slaves become as their captor. The Hebrews have turned into their historic nemesis. God’s chosen people are made a reprobate race.
Scripture’s presentation of the hard-heartedness of the Jews instructs us both about the reality of race and the manifestation of God’s power and justice. As we shall show, their hearts are first hard by nature, and then hardened further by judgment after rejecting Christ.
Hearts Hard by Nature
The first period of Jewish history portrays their hardened hearts by nature, unfolded here in three ways: their habitual acts of rebellion, the unique image of their sinful character, and the transmission of their particular sinfulness from generation to generation. Their hard-heartedness is seen in their sins, proceeding from their nature, received from their race.
1. Their Habitual Rebellion
This people’s pattern of rebellion is no stranger to the Christian. The history is proverbial. Who has not heard of their grumbling in the wilderness, their lawlessness in the book of Judges, or their national sins recited at length in such passages as Nehemiah 9, Daniel 9, and Psalms 78 and 106? Moses asked at the end of his life, “behold, while I am yet alive with you this day, ye have been rebellious against the LORD; and how much more after my death?” (Deuteronomy 31:27). And as Ezra confesses for Israel, “Since the days of our fathers have we been in a great trespass unto this day” (Ezra 9:7). So hardened were they that they ended up committing even greater abominations than the Canaanites whom they saw destroyed: “But they hearkened not: and Manasseh seduced them to do more evil than did the nations whom the LORD destroyed before the children of Israel” (2 Kings 21:9).
The Jews in the New Testament follow this pattern in nothing less than their rejection of Christ. When Stephen stood before the Sanhedrin and accused them of sin, he began by charging, “Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye” (Acts 7:51). The persecutors of his day followed the pattern of their fathers of old. Stephen had just reminded them how they treated Moses: “For he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them: but they understood not” (Acts 7:25). And a few verses later he described Moses as a man
To whom our fathers would not obey, but thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt… And they made a calf in those days, and offered sacrifice unto the idol, and rejoiced in the works of their own hands (Acts 7:39, 41).
Even as the nation delivered from Egypt refused Moses (Acts 7:35), so the following generations carried on their sins, as Stephen continues accusing them, “Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted?” Matthew Henry writes, “Their fathers had been the cruel and constant persecutors of the Old-Testament prophets… More or less, one time or other, they had a blow at them all.”
Stephen’s indictment culminates with his audience’s personal completion of what their ancestors started: “they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers” (Acts 7:52). This crime of killing the Son of God is what Jesus accuses the scribes and Pharisees of in advance, likewise connecting his audience with their ancestors: “Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers” (Matthew 23:31–32).
In his ministry, Jesus reflects also on the cities that had rejected him despite seeing his miracles. He upbraids his countrymen for refusing to repent, when even notoriously heathen cities would have done so:
Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee.
—Matthew 11:21–24
The cities of Tyre and Sidon, and even Sodom, would have repented if they had received the gospel light that Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum did. With the same exposure to these means of grace, the Jewish cities refused Christ even while pagans would have received him. Henry explains the heinousness of resisting grace that others would have received: “Among the children of disobedience, some are more easily wrought upon than others,” and “it is a great aggravation of the impenitency of those who plentifully enjoy the means of grace… not only that there are many who sit under the same means that are wrought upon, but that there are many more that would have been wrought upon, if they had enjoyed the same means.”
Some might object that the Galilean towns are not representative of the Jews, who were not so hardened as a whole to reject Christ. They might point to Matthew 23:37, where Jesus explicitly targets the religious leaders for not allowing the people to come to him: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” Or they might point to Acts 21:20 on the myriads of believing Jews: “And when they heard it, they glorified the Lord, and said unto him, Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe; and they are all zealous of the law.”
In the first text, the Jews in Jerusalem may not be as hardened as their leaders who received the woes of Christ throughout Matthew 23, yet still they bear responsibility for being deceived not to come under his wings. Likewise the leaders persuade the crowd to beg for Barabbas’ release and our Lord’s crucifixion, yet the people bear the guilt for being led into that sin: “But the chief priests and elders persuaded the multitude that they should ask Barabbas, and destroy Jesus” (Matthew 27:20). They moreover call a curse on themselves, saying together, “His blood be on us, and on our children” (Matthew 27:25). As for the second text, while we rejoice at the conversion of many Jews in the diaspora, we lament that they represented such a small part of the Jewish nation which disbelieved as a whole. As Poole cites this verse, “there are many thousands of them” who believe as “a remnant of the Jews,” and thus, “those that believe are few in respect of those that believe not, as a remnant is but little in respect of the whole piece.” The Jewish nation as a whole rejected the Christ, with some identified as especially hardened, namely the cities of Galilee and the religious leaders. As Henry comments on Matthew 11, “There were many indeed that pressed into the kingdom of heaven; but the generality continued in unbelief and obstinacy.” And this hardness can be seen in no more heinous act than “[denying] the Holy One… and [killing] the Prince of life” (Acts 3:14–15). Indeed, “the Jews… both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets” (1 Thessalonians 2:14–15).
2. Their Character Portrayed
The obstinacy of the people is not only seen in their persistent acts of rebellion but in their moral portrait. Those actions proceed from a distinctly hardened nature. The comparison with Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom shows most clearly that the Jews had hearts more hardened than even pagan cities. Matthew Poole writes:
The men of Chorazin and Bethsaida... had showed a greater stubbornness and hardness of heart than these heathens, who, though they were bad enough, yet had not had such means to reform and to convince them… The scope and sense of it is the same, to let the Capernaites know that the hardness of their heart was greater in contempt of the gospel.
Alongside Jesus’ words in Matthew, the book of Acts ends on this very note, as Paul quotes Isaiah on the prophesied hardening of the Jews in contrast with the Gentiles. “Be it known therefore unto you, that the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and that they will hear it” (Acts 28:28). John Gill juxtaposes the Jews and their “folly, stupidity, and infidelity” alongside “the Gentiles, which knew not God” yet “received the Gospel and are saved.”
Scripture not only portrays the Jews’ characteristic hardness by comparing them to Gentiles, but also by its designations for them. Its pages are replete with epithets for their hard-heartedness. When the Lord threatens to wipe them off the earth after making the golden calf, his case concludes, “I have seen this people, and, behold, it is a stiffnecked people” (Exodus 32:9). Moses then confesses the people’s sinfulness in the simple terms, “it is a stiffnecked people” (Exodus 34:9). And he tells them when about to enter the land, “thou art a stiffnecked people”—just as the LORD himself had said, “it is a stiffnecked people” (Deuteronomy 9:6, 13). In his final words to Israel after leading them for 40 years, Moses says, “For I know thy rebellion, and thy stiff neck” (Deuteronomy 31:27). Isaiah identifies them this way generations later, calling them “a rebellious people” (Isaiah 65:2), and charging, “thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass” (Isaiah 48:4). Ezekiel calls them “impudent children and stiffhearted” (Ezekiel 2:4), as well as “impudent and hardhearted” (Ezekiel 3:7). The New Testament describes them as “enemies” of the church (Romans 11:28) and as “contrary to all men” (1 Thessalonians 2:15), even as Paul quotes Isaiah to designate them “a disobedient and gainsaying people” (Romans 10:21). In Stephen’s accusation, he picks up the language of Exodus, describing the people’s nature as “stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears” (Acts 7:51) as he ties their sin to their fathers’ rejection of Moses. Whether with the golden calf, or the first martyr in the apostolic age, Scripture labels the Jews with their characteristic hardness of heart. Indeed, they were blind when Moses descended the mount with a veil lasting “until this day” (2 Corinthians 3:14).
Our Protestant forefathers are extremely clear on this. William Prynne termed the Jews “the most bitter, inveterate, professed enemies of Christ himself.” Henry comments that “the general character of the Jewish nation” was “the stiff neck” and “hard heart, obstinate and contumacious, and that will not yield.” Likewise Gill writes on their being “‘hard necked’… a character frequently given of this people… expressive of their obstinacy, stubbornness and refractoriness.” Gill also writes that the deafness and blindness prophesied in Isaiah 6:9 “was very appropriate, not only to the Jewish fathers in the times of Isaiah, but to their posterity in succeeding ages,” and “exceeding applicable to the… unbelieving Jews” in the New Testament. Calvin refers to “the inflexible obstinacy [of the whole people] which continued to the very last.” Luther paints with vivid colors “the hardened unbelief of the blinded and stubborn Jews” and “the embittered, venomous, blind heart of the Jews.” And he recounts, “The Jews are well aware that the prophets upbraided the children of Israel from beginning to end as a disobedient, evil people and as the vilest whore,” and also, “they are… stiff-necked, disobedient, prophet-murderers, arrogant, usurers, and filled with every vice, as the whole of Scripture and their present conduct bear out.”
3. The Transmission of their Sinfulness
Scripture presents Israel’s hardness of heart by recording their rebellion and depicting their character, which perpetuates through the race from one generation to the next. We see this first in Israel’s sin with the golden calf. When God reveals his glory to Moses, he concludes with “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation” (Exodus 34:7). In the context of the people’s great rebellion, their iniquities are promised to continue. Though it is tempting to see this as punishments visited on future generations, not only punishments, but also sins are carried on in the children.
Gill writes on the parallel verse Exodus 20:5, the children “especially… are visited in such a manner, when they tread in their father’s steps, and fill up the measure of their iniquity.” Poole comments, “But if children tread in their fathers’ sinful steps, it is but just that they should partake of their plagues.” And he elsewhere writes, “Their children (through the righteous judgment of God) inherited their fathers’ sins, and should be heirs also of their punishments.”
Thus their sins are perpetuated, along with the punishment. And on sin specifically, Henry comments, “He may justly [visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children], for all souls are his, and there is a malignity in sin that taints the blood.” The sinfulness of fathers will carry on in their progeny.
In the context of the golden calf incident, God’s words in Exodus 34:7 are immediately followed by Moses’ confession, “it is a stiffnecked people” (Exodus 34:9). Let us note the connection between these statements. The confession of Israel’s character is in the context of their sin continuing through the generations. The people are “stiffnecked” and will remain so with this disposition passed on through their race. The hardness of the Hebrews is inherited from their fathers.
And the Lord’s visitation of iniquity is not limited to three or four generations. Poole affirms, “it is but righteous with God to punish the sins of parents upon their children; and though such vengeance doth not ordinarily reach further than the third and fourth generation, yet where succeeding generations go on in the same sinful courses, it may reach further, and often does.” And he quotes Isaiah 65:6–7 speaking of the Jews, “I will recompense into their bosom your iniquities, and the iniquities of your fathers together.” In the Jews’ case, this recalcitrance will be a fixed feature. Again, Poole notes the visitation may extend “further… as appears in the ten tribes, and afterwards in the two tribes, upon whom the iniquity of their fathers hath been visited now for many generations.”
Our Lord also condemns his audience for sins they inherited from their fathers. When he says, “ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers,” he is not only noting a pattern between fathers and sons, but drawing an organic connection through the generations. He expects the sons to act as the fathers. He adds these words, “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?” (Matthew 23:33). The word for “generation” means literally “that which is begotten.” And “Generation of vipers” is thus “that which is begotten of vipers.” Jesus thus calls them snakes and the offspring of snakes, carrying on the sins of their fathers according to their nature. He therefore expects them to continue persecuting the righteous and so fill up the measure of their fathers.
This racial continuity is not lost in the commentary tradition. John Chrysostom remarked in the ancient church, “as those beasts are like their parents, in the destructiveness of their venom, so also are ye like your fathers in murderousness.” Matthew Poole paraphrases the text as “you have not only their blood communicated to you, but their spirit.” He continues, “you are the children of those who killed the prophets in a moral as well as a natural sense; you inherit the same spirit.” John Gill says much on this point:
They were of the very selfsame blood thirsty, persecuting spirit; and did, and would do the same things to the prophets and apostles of the New Testament, their fathers had done to the prophets of the Old… What they said was a plain acknowledgment, and a full confession, what their fathers had done, and whose offspring they were; and from whom better things were not to be expected; since they were their fathers’ own children, and of the same temper and disposition with them… Their own words testified against them, that they were a seed of evildoers; their practices showed them to be of the same spirit and principles with their progenitors… They were like to the old serpent, their father the devil, and to their ancestors, that murdered the prophets; nor could any good thing be expected, from such a viperous generation.
Likewise Matthew Henry:
They meant no more than that they were their children by blood and nature; but Christ turns it upon them;, that they were so by spirit and disposition; You are of those fathers, and their lusts you will do. They are, as you say, your fathers, and you… take after your fathers; it is the sin that runs in the blood among you.
And he adds, multiplying texts on the continuation of sin, “They came of a persecuting race, were a seed of evil doers (Isa. 1:4), risen up in their fathers’ stead, Num. 32:14. Malice, envy, and cruelty, were bred in the bone with them, and they had formerly espoused it for a principle, to do as their fathers did, Jer. 44:17.”
As though the commentators could not be clearer on this passage, Calvin comments on a parallel text in Luke 11, Jesus “declar[ed] that they labored under a hereditary disease of obstinacy.” Matthew Poole says on that passage, “The hearts and practices of malicious and wicked men, in succeeding generations, do (as in a glass) answer the hearts of persons of their spirits and morals in preceding generations.”
When Stephen echoes Jesus’ words, saying “as your fathers did, so do ye” (Acts 7:51), Calvin comments, “they have this wickedness, as it were, by inheritance from their fathers.” Henry writes, “they were the genuine seed of those who slew the prophets that foretold his coming.” And as Chrysostom preached, Moses “shows that ‘they’ from the very beginning have been doing this… and that they had their enmity all along from the very beginning.”
Thus Scripture and the Christian tradition testify to the Jews’ inheritance of their hardened dispositions, manifested through history in their distinctive rebellion. They are hard by their own nature. Of all racial sins in Scripture, none is so striking as the stiff-neckedness of the Jews.
Hearts Hardened by Judgment
The subsequent period of Jewish history is one of judicial hardening. Upon their rejection of the Messiah and invocation of his blood on their race, the Lord has imposed a special hardening in addition to their naturally hardened hearts, judging them with more of their own distinctive sin. The Jews as we see them today are thus an apostate race under divine judgment.
The Westminster Confession of Faith teaches judicial hardening as doctrine: “God, as a righteous judge, for former sins, doth blind and harden...” certain “wicked and ungodly men” (WCF 5.6). Likewise Matthew Poole distinguishes the act of judicial hardening:
There is judicial or judiciary hardness, which is inflicted by God as a punishment. Men harden their own hearts sinfully, (so it is thrice said of Pharaoh in Exodus, that he hardened his own heart, Exodus 8:15,32 9:34), and then God hardens their hearts judicially: so it is often said of God in Exodus, that he hardened Pharaoh’s heart.
Paul teaches the Jews’ judicial hardening in Romans 9–11, elaborating on the state of his unbelieving “brethren… kinsmen according to the flesh”—namely, “Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness” (Romans 9:31) and “stumbled at that stumblingstone” (Romans 9:32). And here, he illustrates them by the Pharaoh of the exodus: “For the Scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth” (Romans 9:17–18). In an ironic turn, the Israelites take the hardening of their great enemy upon themselves. In like manner, God’s treatment of their rival Edom—once said to be hated while Israel was loved (Malachi 1:2–3)—is now applied to Israel: “As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated” (Romans 9:13).
Still in more explicit terms, aside from the few elect, they are now
Blinded. (According as it is written, God hath given them the spirit of slumber, eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear;) unto this day. And David saith,
Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumblingblock, and a recompence unto them: Let their eyes be darkened, that they may not see, and bow down their back alway.
—Romans 11:7–11
This description of being “blinded,” with a “spirit of slumber” and darkened eyes is summarized as “blindness” that “is happened to Israel” (Romans 11:25)—a people cast away from grace (Romans 11:15) pictured in branches broken off the olive tree (Romans 11:17).
Such a judicial hardening has given the Jews more of their darling sin. Having long enjoyed kicking against the pricks of true religion, the Lord has granted their desire. John Gill remarks that Jews of that generation “were given up to a judicial blindness and hardness of heart, and were left under the power of obstinate and invincible unbelief.” And Poole comments, remarking on the Jews of the present day, “Now David having, by the Spirit of prophecy, prayed down such miseries upon the Jews, they must be fulfilled; therefore the general unbelief and hardness of heart that is amongst that people is not to be wondered at.”
Conclusion
A discussion of the hard-heartedness of the Jews would be incomplete without concluding application. A Jew is as obligated as anyone to repent of his sins and believe in Christ. His heart of stone must be turned into a heart of flesh by means of law and gospel. “Rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith,” Paul commands Titus (Titus 1:13). To this end, we echo Peter’s words, “Him… ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain,” and “God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:23, 36). Therefore, “repent” and “save yourselves from this untoward generation” (Acts 2:38, 40). Become part of a faithful remnant, one of seven thousand Jews who have not bowed down to Baal (Romans 11:4–5).
To the Gentile, we first warn you against pride from your spiritual favor. “God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble” (1 Peter 5:5). Indeed, if God could judge his chosen people, do not think you will receive a lighter hand. As Paul argues, “Be not highminded, but fear: For if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee” (Romans 11:20–21). Second, evangelize your Jewish neighbors, not hesitating to tell them of their sin, their hardness of heart, and the remedy that is in the Christ their fathers crucified. And lastly, supplicate the Spirit to move upon the dry bones of Israel (Ezekiel 37:1–14). The Spirit can change the hardest hearts, for “with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).
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