then be to understand the various occurrences of that issue in its narrative context. Therefore, as regards the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, one key difference in our approach to many of those mentioned earlier is that we will not be attempting to find ‘an answer’ to the question of who is causing the hardening. Instead we will be trying to understand how these references can be sensibly understood within the narrative of which they form a part. To put it another way, we will not be abstracting