What Does Exodus 8:32 Mean?

But Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also, and did not let the people go. Verse 32 closes chapter 8 with the same pattern that closed chapter 7 and chapter 8's Frog episode: Pharaoh hardens his heart after the plague is removed and does not let the people go. The phrase "this time also" (Hebrew: gam bapa'am hazzot, literally "also in this turn") is the narrator's acknowledgment that this is now a pattern, not a single incident: "also this time" means this is not the first time Pharaoh has done this, and by implication, it will not be the last. The hardening is habitual, and the narrative marks it as such.

Moses specifically warned Pharaoh in verse 29 not to "deal deceitfully again by not letting the people go." Verse 32 reports that Pharaoh did exactly what Moses warned him not to do. The deliberateness of the hardening in verse 32, coming after Moses' specific warning, intensifies the moral weight of Pharaoh's choice: he was told what the expected behavior was, he agreed (implicitly, by accepting the intercession offer), the plague was removed, and he immediately reverted to refusal. The "this time also" is the narrator's quiet but devastating assessment of the pattern.

Chapter 8 closes with Pharaoh's hardened heart and Israel's continued enslavement. Three plagues (frogs, gnats, flies) have followed the initial blood plague; the Egyptian magicians have reached their limit and confessed divine power; Pharaoh's own court has told him "this is the finger of God"; two rounds of negotiation have produced two rounds of concession-then-retraction.

The total failure of the plague sequence so far to produce permanent compliance from Pharaoh is the evidence that more plagues will be necessary: and that the ten-plague sequence is the minimum necessary demonstration of YHWH's power to produce an event of such significance that all subsequent generations will know who brought Israel out of Egypt.