Before Moses reaches Pharaoh, God says something that stops every careful reader cold.

God tells Moses to go demand the release of Israel. Then, in the same breath, God says He will harden Pharaoh’s heart so that Pharaoh will refuse. The plagues will follow. Egypt will suffer. And the whole sequence, God explains, is designed to multiply signs and wonders so that Egypt will know who Yahweh is.

The theological problem arrives immediately: if God hardens Pharaoh’s heart, how is Pharaoh responsible for his refusal? If the outcome is predetermined, what happens to human agency, the principle Latter-day Saint theology places at the very center of the plan of salvation?