Reference

Exodus 7:1−7

One thing that people struggle with is the idea of God hardening Pharaoh's heart in the plague narratives found in Exodus. The objection is made: See, God is not good. He is forcing Pharaoh to disobey him. He is causing Pharaoh to do evil!

Is this really what's going on? No. What we see is that the hardening of Pharaoh's heart has much more to do with the condition of Pharaoh in response to confrontation with God. With seeming providential irony, God uses Pharaoh's own hardness against him to multiply his signs that the Egyptians will know that Yahweh is God, and Pharaoh is not.