Articles
“Judicial Hardening”
Now Eli was very old, and he kept hearing all that his sons were doing to all Israel, and how they lay with the women who were serving at the entrance to the tent of meeting. And he said to them, “Why do you do such things? For I hear of your evil dealings from all these people. No, my sons; it is no good report that I hear the people of the Lord spreading abroad. If someone sins against a man, God will mediate for him, but if someone sins against the Lord, who can intercede for him?” But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for it was the will of the Lord to put them to death.
(1 Samuel 2:22-25)
The aging prophet Eli heard about his sons’ flagrant immorality. They had turned the tabernacle into a brothel, a place where sins were committed rather than confessed. He tried to warn them that blatant defiance against God would leave them without hope. “But,” the text says, “they would not listen to the voice of their father, for it was the will of the Lord to put them to death” (25b).
We expect the text to say, “they would not listen to the voice of their father, so (in consequence) God decided to put them to death.” Rather, it says that the reason they would not listen to their father was because (“for”) God decided to put them to death. The deafness of Hophni and Phinehas to their father’s warning was the result of God’s judgment. How can this be? Is this not unjust?
Before we harm ourselves in attempting to be God’s prosecutors, we must recognize two things: first, all of God’s judgments are perfectly just; second, we are not more merciful than God.
The declaration of v.25b cannot be divorced from the preceding record of Hophni’s and Phinehas’ wicked behavior (1 Sam. 2:12-17). They had no regard for God (v.12). Clearly, God was punishing them for their persistent rebellion. But part of God’s punishment was their rejection of their father’s words of warning.
Therefore, the text teaches us that a person can remain so firm in his rebellion against God that God will actually confirm him in it. Paul speaks about those whose “consciences are seared” (1 Tim. 4:2; see also 2 Thess. 2:11-12). So entrenched in rebellion, such people will remain unmoved by any pleas for repentance or warnings of judgment. Like Pharaoh before them, Hophni and Phinehas had hardened their own hearts through their consistent rebellion. Once they reached the point of no return, God simply finished the job.
Paul teaches us the same truth about the pagan nations in Romans 1:18-32. Because they “suppress the truth,” “God gave them over” (three times, vv. 24, 26, 28) to the way of life they so eagerly desired. The point is not just that these reprehensible attitudes and behaviors are the evidence of humanity’s wickedness. They are also the evidence of God’s wrath. One of the ways in which God’s wrath is revealed is in abandoning people to their own stubborn craving to live apart from him. Note that the phrase “the wrath of God is revealed” is in the present tense. That is, God’s wrath is not just something reserved for the future but is currently at work when people insist on being ruled by their passions instead of their God.
How ought Christians to respond to this teaching of ‘judicial hardening’? We must never accuse God of lacking in mercy nor are we to treat this teaching with mere intellectual curiosity, trying to discern at what precise point it becomes “impossible… to restore” someone who persists in sin (Heb. 6:4-6). Rather, we should respond in the way the Hebrew writer admonishes us to:
“Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” (Heb. 3:13)
