Then Pharaoh sent and called Moses and Aaron and said to them, "This time I have sinned; the LORD is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong. Plead with the LORD, for there has been enough of God's thunder and hail. I will let you go, and you shall stay no longer." Moses said to him, "As soon as I have gone out of the city, I will stretch out my hands to the LORD. The thunder will cease, and there will be no more hail, so that you may know that the earth is the LORD's. But as for you and your servants, I know that you do not yet fear the LORD God." (The flax and the barley were struck down, for the barley was in the ear and the flax was in bud. But the wheat and the emmer were not struck down, for they are late in coming up.) So Moses went out of the city from Pharaoh and stretched out his hands to the LORD, and the thunder and the hail ceased, and the rain no longer poured upon the earth. But when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned yet again and hardened his heart, he and his servants. So the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people of Israel go, just as the LORD had spoken through Moses.
Exodus 9:27-35
When we read these words we may be tempted to think that the comments made in the previous Note were premature, for here once again Pharaoh is touched by the Spirit of God, and a change in his attitude is evident. In view of what Moses says in 30, however, it seems clear that remorse rather than repentance was at work in him, and that Moses saw this to be so. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 7:10, 'the sorrow of the world worketh death' and bears little relation to true heart repentance. The die, it seemed, had already been cast, and Pharaoh’s attitude hardened and fixed beyond remedy. It is very frightening to see such human impenitence in face of the great demonstrations of divine power at the hands of Moses. It is sometimes thought - as it was, for example, by the Jews in our Lord's day - that if signs and wonders are impressive and dramatic enough, they will compel belief; but here we see that not only is this not so, but in fact they serve to do the opposite, producing in the end an irremediable hardness of heart (cf. Matthew 16:1ff; Luke 16:27ff; John 2:23-25). It is significant, however, to see that even in his impenitence and rebellion, the king was obliged to confess the righteousness of God's dealings with him (27). Again and again we see in the Scriptures that in God's judgment of men He makes them agree with the justice of His case against them (cf 1 Kings 20:35-43). This much the wonders did effect: Pharaoh was made to know that the Lord was God of all the earth (29); but there is an eternity of difference between bowing the knee to Him in glad and humble worship and adoration, and being crushed by that Lordship under His feet (1 Corinthians 15:25).