In Exodus 3:20 God promises Moses, “So I will reach out with My hand and strike Egypt with all My miracles…; and after that he will let you go.” The promise announces God’s initiative: He will act, not in response to human ability, but in His own power to deliver a people oppressed and reveal Himself through mighty signs. The text foregrounds divine action as the source of rescue, not merely human persuasion or moral winsomeness.
That observation raises the hard question behind your note: did God refuse to soften Pharaoh’s heart because of Pharaoh’s free will? Scripture does present a tension—we read of Pharaoh hardening his own heart (his repeated refusals, pride, and rebellion) and of God strengthening that stubbornness as judicial hardening. The pastoral balance is this: Pharaoh bore responsibility for his choices; he had hardened himself by rejecting Yahweh. God’s hardening, when it occurs, is not arbitrary whim but the righteous confirmation of an already recalcitrant will, used to bring about divine judgment and to make God’s power and holiness unmistakable.
Christ’s work illuminates this Scripture. The plagues and the Exodus point forward to the greater conflict with sin that culminates in Jesus, who confronts the bondage of a world resistant to God’s rule and wins our release by his cross and resurrection. Where God’s judgment is real, so is his saving mercy: through Christ the hand that strikes also reaches out to rescue. For believers this means we are called to repent and believe, recognizing both the seriousness of sin and the surpassing mercy of the Savior who breaks chains and calls stubborn hearts to new life.
If you are wrestling that God seems unmoved toward someone you love or even toward yourself, rest in the truth that God is both just and merciful. Persevere in prayer, bear faithful witness in love, and trust Christ to be the decisive Word that softens hearts and secures freedom. Be encouraged: the God who brought Israel out of Egypt is the same God who meets us in Jesus—powerful to judge, yet more powerful to save; keep trusting and keep praying.