Exodus 7:14

“And the Lord said unto Moses, Pharaoh’s heart is hardened, etc.] Or “heavy” f200, dull and stupid, stiff and inflexible, cannot lift up his heart, or find in his heart to obey the will of God: he refuseth to let the people go; which was an instance and proof of the hardness and heaviness of his heart, on which the above miracle had made no impression, to regard what God by his ambassadors had required of him.”

“Pharaoh's heart is hardened--Whatever might have been his first impressions, they were soon dispelled; and when he found his magicians making similar attempts, he concluded that Aaron's affair was a magical deception, the secret of which was not known to his wise men.”

“7:14-25 The first plague was the plague on the Nile, when the whole river turned to blood (7:20). The Egyptians correctly understood that without the Nile there would be no life in Egypt. They worshiped the Nile as the Mother of Egypt, but God showed that life is his to give or withhold. 7:14 See “Hardened Hearts” Theme Note.”

“Pharaoh's: Exo 8:15, Exo 10:1, Exo 10:20, Exo 10:27; Zac 7:12 he refuseth: Exo 4:23, Exo 8:2, Exo 9:2, Exo 10:4; Isa 1:20; Jer 8:5, Jer 9:6; Heb 12:25 Exodus 7:15”

“When Pharaoh hardened his heart against the first sign, notwithstanding the fact that it displayed the supremacy of the messengers of Jehovah over the might of the Egyptian conjurers and their gods, and refused to let the people of Israel go; Moses and Aaron were empowered by God to force the release of Israel from the obdurate king by a series of penal miracles. These מפתים were not purely supernatural wonders, or altogether unknown to the Egyptians, but were land-plagues with which Egypt was occasionally visited, and were raised into miraculous deeds of the Almighty God, by the fact that they burst upon the land one after another at an unusual time of the year, in unwonted force, and in…”