Did Pharaoh have Free Will? TB Makkot 10

Daf TB Makkot 10b asserts that God has given us free will. “Rabba bar Rav Huna says that Rav Huna says, and some say it was a statement that Rav Huna says that Rabbi Elazar says: From the Torah, from the Prophets, and from the Writings one learns that along the path a person wishes to proceed, one leads and assists him (בַּדֶּרֶךְ שֶׁאָדָם רוֹצֶה לֵילֵךְ בָּהּ  מוֹלִיכִין אוֹתוֹ).

“One learns this from the Torah, as it is written that initially God said to Balaam with regard to the contingent dispatched by Balak: “You shall not go with them” (Numbers 22:12). After Balaam implored Him and indicated his desire to go with them, it is written: “Arise, go with them” (Numbers 22:20). One learns this from the Prophets, as it is written: “I am the Lord your God, Who teaches you for your profit, Who leads you on the path that you go” (Isaiah 48:17), indicating that along the path that one seeks to go, God will direct him. One learns this from the Writings, as it is written: “If one seeks the cynics, He will cause him to join the cynics, but to the humble He will give grace” (Proverbs 3:34), indicating that if one chooses cynicism God will direct him there and if he opts for humility God will grant him grace.” (Sefaria.org translation)

The Meiri, 13^th-late 14^th century Provençal rabbi, and Talmudist, commenting on “along the path a person wishes to proceed, one leads and assists him (בַּדֶּרֶךְ שֶׁאָדָם רוֹצֶה לֵילֵךְ בָּהּ  מוֹלִיכִין אוֹתוֹ) writes: God does not decree either for good or for evil whether or not a person will annul a mitzvah in the Torah as it is written “See, I set before you this day life and prosperity, death and adversity. (Dt. 30:15) this principle is learned from the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings.

The free will is also central theme in Moses Maimonides.. If human beings lack of free will, Maimonides argues that it follows that the Almighty is unjust:

“If God decreed that a person should be either righteous or wicked, or if there was some force inherent in his nature which irresistibly drew him to a particular course… how could God have commanded us through the prophets ‘Do this and do not that, improve your ways, and do not follow your wicked impulses,’ when, from the beginning of his existence a person’s destiny had already been decreed?... What room with there be for the whole of the Torah? By what right or justice should God punish the wicked or reward the righteous? ‘Shall not the Judge of all the earth act justly?’ (Genesis 18:25). (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance, 5:4)

Rambam holds that free will in the moral realm is absolute. “Every human being may become righteous like Moses our teacher, or wicked like Jeroboam (the king who reintroduce idolatry and Israel; see I Kings 12:26-33;…merciful or cruel, miserly or generous, and so with all other qualities.” (Ibid., ibid., 5:2) (from Jewish Wisdom by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin page 245)

Yesterday was the last day of Passover and we have to ask ourselves the question did Pharaoh have free will or not when it came to freeing the Israelites. On the verse “And the Lord said to Moses, ‘When you return to Egypt, see that you performed before Pharaoh all the marbles that have put within your power. I, however, will stiffen his heart so that he will not let the people go.’” (Exodus 4:21) Prof. Sarna in the new JPS commentary on the book of Exodus writes:

The motif of the stiffening, or hardening, of Pharaoh’s heart runs through the entire Exodus story; it appears exactly 20 times. Half of the references are to an essential attribute of the man’s character, half are attributed to divine causality. In the biblical conception, the psychological faculties are considered to be concentrated in the heart. Regarded as the seat of intellectual, moral, and spiritual life of the individual, this organ is the determining of behavior. The ‘hardening of the heart’ thus expresses a state of arrogant moral degeneracy, unresponsive to reason and incapable of compassion. Pharaoh’s personal culpability is beyond question.

It is to be noted than the first five plagues Pharaoh’s obduracy is self-willed. His only thereafter that it is attributed to divine causality. This is the biblical way of asserting that the king’s intransigence has by then become habitual and irreversible; his character has become his destiny. His deprived of the possibility relenting and is irresistibly impelled to his self-wrought doom. (Page 23)

On the verse in the Etz Hayyim Humash commentary below the line “But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, that I may multiply my signs and my marbles in the land of Egypt.” (7:3) comments:

The verse raises major moral and theological problems. If Pharaoh is foreordained to reject Moses’ plea, if God will arrange for the confrontation to continue, how can Pharaoh be held responsible for his actions and how can we justify his being punished for what God causes him to do? “Although ‘hardening of the heart’ seems deterministic, events flow naturally from the ambitions and conflicts of the human being, Pharaoh, who is seized with the illusion of self-sufficiency. What events unfold under the providence of God, the unfolding is always according to the motives of the human beings through whom God’s will is done without their realizing it…. Pharaoh conducted himself in conformity with his own motives and his own godless view of his status. God made it so, but Pharaoh had only to be himself to do God’s will” (Moshe Greenberg)

We note that for the first five plagues, the text reads: “Pharaoh’s heart was hardened.” That is, he himself chose to be stubborn. Only the last five plagues do we read “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.” In the beginning of the process, Pharaoh was equally free to be generous or to be stubborn. Every time he chose the option of stubbornness, however, he gave away some of his free will. Each choice made it more likely they would choose similarly the next time, both to spare himself the embarrassment of admitting that he was wrong and because he now had to self-image of a person who would not yield to Moses’ pleading. “At first, it was you who harden your heart. Henceforth I shall contribute to the hardening.”

Similarly, Maimonides writes: “Sometimes a man’s offense is so grave that he forecloses the possibility of repentance. At first (Pharaoh) sinned repeatedly of his own free will, until he forfeited the capacity to repent.” Eric Fromm has written, “Pharaoh’s heart hardens because he keeps on doing evil. It hardens to a point where no more change or repentance is possible…. The longer he refuses to choose the right, the harder his heart becomes…until there is no longer any freedom of choice left him.” God is structure the human heart in such a way that Pharaoh prevents himself from changing. (page 356)