Over the course of the Exodus, one of the driving forces in the story is the “hardening” of Pharaoh’s heart. This “hardening” set him in his cruel ways and prevented him from releasing the Jews from slavery, despite the increasing severity of the plagues and the pleas of his constituents. As most commonly understood, the loss of his free will to repent was a divine punishment for his mistreatment of the Jewish people in slavery, but there are voices within Jewish tradition that actually see Pharaoh’s challenge as something that plagues almost everyone — habituation.
