He didn't pull up a chair and chat doubts with the devil.
Here is one example of Jesus talking to folks who pretended they were about God's word..
Joh 8:44 -Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts father ye will do. He was a murderer from thebeginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.[/quote] Yes, Jesus is talking to the Pharisee there. But there are no Pharisee here.
My point I guess is , if you're suppose to live the example of Christ and your behavior in the name of Christ as one who calls themselves Christians indicates, and this then lends a personal testimony of the faith in practice, how do you think it looks if you downgrade people and use ad hom's in your conversations with non-believers?
Right, and that means that he made his choice already and reached the next stage of things. The bible is a great book, we don't have to depend on one area alone to get the way God operates.
God hardened Pharaoh's heart so that he could challenge the ten God's and Goddesses of the Egyptian pantheon to stop the ten plagues he delivered.
And this to show Pharaoh that I Am was the only real God. One that delivered suffering and also took it away.
Innocent? I doubt that. Nations share some guilt when they are wicked.
And yet the Jews in bondage in Egypt believed in Jehovah God. And all citizens under Pharaoh's control suffered the trials that Jehovah God laid on the land even when they had naught to do with the test Pharaoh was going through. And that would include in that suffering the Jews.
God even killed the first born of every house in Egypt that didn't have lambs blood on the door so that the angel of death would pass by. The first born were innocent. But they died anyway. Even those Jews who failed to paint their doors with that blood lost children.
Why would a pro-life God kill first born children when he hardened Pharaoh's heart to not comply with his demand through Moses to let the Hebrew people go in the first place?