29 And Moses said unto him, As soon as I am gone out of the city, I will spread abroad my hands unto the Lord; and the thunder shall cease, neither shall there be any more hail; that thou mayest know how that the earth is the Lord’s.

30 But as for thee and thy servants, I know that ye will not yet fear the Lord God.

Pharaoh had made quite a statement of repentance, admitting that he was wicked and that the God of the Israelites was righteous. They were impressive words, but in verse 30 Moses tells Pharaoh that he already knows that the king will still go back on his promise. Moses tells Pharaoh that the Lord will draw away this curse, but he makes it clear that it isn’t because Moses or the Lord have been fooled by Pharaoh. The Lord will not recall the hail because of Pharaoh’s phony repentance, but so that Pharaoh “mayest know how that the earth is the Lord’s.”

As I have discussed already, even more impressive than the curse is the healing. God would strike Egypt, and then, at the precisely prophesied moment, He would restore peace. Pharaoh was learning how God ruled from end to end, from start to finish, from destruction to creation, from life to death. Continuing to heal Egypt, even without Pharaoh’s full surrender, was still an opportunity to prove God’s absolute power.

It also might have helped to prove to Pharaoh the state of his own soul. It may have been that Pharaoh really did think he was going to let the Israelites go, and if God refused to call back the curse he would think that God was unfairly judging him. But by being given relief he could see how fickle his own heart really was, how deceitful and faithless he really was.

Certainly there are many of us who have misjudged the conviction of our own repentance. Sometimes God relieves our afflictions so that we can see how faithless we still are once everything gets back to being smooth and easy. He is convicting us of our own guilt, getting us to see ourselves as we really are. True repentance requires true appreciation of how deep our mischief runs.