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Exodus 9:14 "For this time I will send all my plagues upon your heart, and upon your servants and your people, that you may know there is none like me in all the earth." So Moses is to say to Pharaoh in one of his many attempts to have God's people released from slavery. Moses delivers this warning when the first five plagues are over and the next five can still be avoided if Pharaoh relents. 

 

It is interesting that God says He will send these plagues upon Pharaoh's heart. It makes me think of how much of our suffering comes from our hearts. The plagues of Egypt were often physically painful, they depleted resources, and they caused suffering in other ways, but most of all they were terrifying. The one true God was revealing Himself as completely opposed to a people who had no familiarity with Him at all. Their gods couldn't help them, nor could their Pharaoh, as these horrible, confusing things happened one after the other. That kind of fear is a suffering of a disordered heart. We all love things we can lose (life, ourselves, others, our country, our way of life), but we fear, sometimes excessively, when when we forget (or don’t know) the one thing we can’t lose, God’s love.

 

Pharaoh was protected from the brunt of the physical suffering and economic consequences of the plagues, yet he felt them in his heart, the loss of his son most of all. Moses' warning implies the plagues will be sent upon Pharaoh's servants and people (they will suffer all of the plagues' effects), and will land on Pharaoh's heart. Pharaoh may have been protected physically, but his heart was unprotected because he did not know God.

 

God is especially concerned with our hearts. He tells us He will take our stony hearts and replace them with fleshy ones (Ezekiel 11:19); we are told not to harden our hearts (as Pharaoh's was) (Hebrews 3:8). These are not references to our physical hearts, but to the place in us that feels, the place that is most God-like in its ability to love. It is because God made us to love as He does that we feel emotion. This is a wonderful thing, as it allows us to love Him back and to love our neighbors as ourselves. But it is also the source of much suffering when our hearts are hardened or not aligned with His. 

 

If we give our hearts to God, continuing to love Him as we carry our cross, we can feel true peace in our hearts, even as we experience the other inevitable sufferings of this world.