God's ongoing confrontation with Pharaoh is seen in the 'ten plagues', supernatural disasters that befall Egypt. Each disaster is preceded by a warning, with a request that Pharaoh let the Israelites go. Yet Pharaoh continues to be hard-hearted in his opposition, and he is unwilling to listen to the warnings, because he unwilling to lose his workforce of slaves and unwilling to lose face. Again and again Pharaoh is given opportunity to repent - again and again he refuses.

This bible study is focused on just one plague, the seventh of the ten: the hail.

Read Exodus 9:13-21

• How would you describe God's attitude towards Pharaoh at this point? What does God want him to do? What does God want to achieve?

  • Does God's attitude here surprise you? Why/why not?

• What is Pharaoh's attitude towards God? What about the attitude of his officials? What does this show us about God's actions in the plagues?

Read 9:22-35

• What does it reveal about God that he would send thunder and hail and lightning like this?

• What do you think of Pharaoh's response to initially repent?

  • Why do you think he does that? And why do you think he goes back on it?

  • What does this show us about human hearts?

• What do you think it means that "Pharaoh hardened his heart"? Why is he hard-hearted?

Read Romans 9:14-24

• What point is Paul making here about Pharaoh's hard heart? Is this similar to what you thought?

• How do you feel about the idea that God might have used Pharaoh's hard heart "to make the riches of his glory know to the objects of his mercy"?

Read Ephesians 4:17-24

• How does this description of hard hearts fit with our understanding of Romans 9 and Exodus 9? [1]

• How do you feel about evil actions (and evil people), in light of what the bible teaches about hard-heartedness?

• How does Jesus's death on the cross (at the hands of evil men) serve as a response to the problem of evil in the world?

• How should we pray about evil actions and evil people, in light of what we've discussed tonight.

  • Pray those sorts of prayers together now!

[1] Pharaoh's hard heart is a common theme throughout the plagues. He is described as hard-hearted for the first five plagues, and then it seems that God begins to harden his heart further. Tim Mackie writes:

Strange things happen in the human heart and mind when we let the evil urges of our broken nature go unchecked. God will always graciously offer us chances to turn back (would you have given Pharaoh so many chances?!). But sometimes a person can cement themselves in a destructive path and reach a point of no return. God can and sometimes will allow our evil to destroy us."

Read the full article here: The Bible Project's explainer article for more on this difficult subject.