Most versions of the Passover story depict Pharaoh as an archetypal villain, an arrogant tyrant who gets his just desserts for challenging God and stubbornly refusing to let the Hebrew people leave Egypt. Indeed, there is no denying that the Pharaoh of the Exodus story is a murderous, slaveholding despot. But a close reading of the text—particularly the climactic episode in which Pharaoh "hardens his heart" and repeatedly refuses to let the Hebrew people go—reveals a more complex character, a more subtle interplay between the forces of good and evil, and raises many thorny questions about the nature of biblical...