‘In his rage and fury’ – is it synthetic? No, I think it is real rage and fury. Satan puts it into his mind: ‘These are the people who make you look small, who detract from your authority and your power.
Far from being unrealistic, this vacillation in matter of faith is typical of those who have not really come to know God and received a new heart. One moment they can acknowledge God as the true God, and the next they can be reasserting their own independence: their authority over their own lives, and the lives of others. The king is full of unbelief: ‘Who is that God?’ The faith of chapter 2 is grounded on signs and wonders. Such a ‘believer’ needs them all the time. Unless there is a constant supply of signs, faith fails, because it is built on them.
Pride is at the bottom of a great deal of frustration and anger. Is it not pride that makes a man believe he has the right to compel worship of something he has made, and to interfere with the freedom that belongs to all men to worship as they think fit? Can he control another human heart, the secrets of which God has not made accessible to anyone other than himself? Why can’t he recognise the limits of his authority? On the last day God will judge the secrets of men’s hearts, but before then he has given licence to men and women to refuse the worship that is his due. If God grants this licence, who are earthly rulers to take it away?