Bible Commentaries

Differences in Character

Exodus 11:7

That there are diversities in human character and conduct, in human fortune and destiny, no one questions. The atheist sees in such diversities the result of circumstances and, since in his view there is no controlling mind in the universe, of inexplicable caprice. The Christian, on the contrary, believes that in these diversities there exists, though it is not alway discoverable, the operation of Divine Exodus 11:10

schylus recognizes in certain forms of mental blindness a Divine influence. There is a malady of the mind, a heaven-sent hurt, which drives the sinner to destruction. This infatuation or Ate is a clouding both of heart and of intellect; it is also both the penalty and the parent of crime. But only when a man has wilfully set his face towards evil, when; like Xerxes in the Persae, or Ajax in the play of Sophocles, he has striven to rise above human limits, or like Creon in the Antigone has been guilty of obdurate impiety, is a moral darkening inflicted on him in anger. Here schylus and Sophocles agree. As we read in the Old Testament that "the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart," so in schylus, "when a man is hasting to his ruin, the god helps him on". It is the dark converse of "God helps those who help themselves".

—Prof. Butcher, Aspects of the Greek Genius, p115f.

References.—XII.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xix. No1092. C. Kingsley, Sermons on National Subjects, p337. XII.—Rutherford Waddell, Behold the Lamb of God, p41. XII:1 , 2.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxviii. No1637. XII:1-14.—A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture— Exodus , p38. XII:1-20.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xlvii. No2727. XII:1-27.—Ibid. vol. lii. No3013. XII:1-29.—T. A. Gurney, The Living Lord and the Opened Grave, p57. XII:3 , 4.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. li. No2937. XII:3 , 23.—A. Murray, The Children for Christ, p77.