Free Will TB Megillah 25

On today’s daf TB Megillah 25 Rabbi Ḥanina states the rabbinic belief that human beings have free will. “Rabbi Ḥanina said: Everything is in the hands of Heaven, except for fear of Heaven. Man has free will to serve God or not, as it is stated: “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you other than to fear the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 10:12). The fact that God asks man to fear Him indicates that it is in man’s ability to do so.” (Sefaria.org translation) We have free choice to choose what is good or to choose what is bad, wrong, or evil.

Rambam in his Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Teshuvah (Laws of Repentance) dedicates two whole chapters on this topic of free will. He begins: “Every man was endowed with a free will; if he desires to bend himself toward the good path and to be just it is within the power of his hand to reach out for it, and if he desires to bend himself to a bad path and to be wicked it is within the power of his hand to reach out for it. This is known from what it is written in the Torah, saying: "Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil" (Gen. 3.22), that is as if saying: "Behold, this species, man, stands alone in the world, and there is no other kind like him, as regards this subject of being able of his own accord, by his reason and thought, to know the good and the evil, and to do whatever his inclination dictates him with none to stay his hand from either doing good or evil; and, being that he is so, 'Lest he put forth his hand, and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever'" (Ibid.)

“Permit not your thought to dwell upon that which ridiculous fools of other peoples and a majority of asinine individuals among the children of Israel say, that the Holy One, blessed is He! decrees at the very embryonic state of every man whether he should be just or wicked. The matter is not so. Every man is capable of being as just as Moses our Master or as wicked as Jeroboam, wise or incony, merciful or human, miser or philanthropist, and so in all other tendencies. There is none to either force things upon him or to decree things against him; either to pull him one way or draw him another way, but he alone, of his own free will, with the consent of his mind, bends to any path he may desire to follow.” (5:1-2)

All this leaves us to a theological problem in last week’s Torah portion Vaera and in this week’s Torah portion Bo. God hardens Pharaoh’s heart, takes away his free will and his ability to repent. If Pharaoh can't repent, why is he punished? Rambam has to admit that when the book of Exodus speaks of God hardening Pharaoh’s heart, one is forced to conclude that in certain instances God does intervene to limit human choice.

“And, it is possible that a man should commit either one grievous iniquity or a multitude of sins so that the Judge of Truth will decree against him that, whereas this sinner committed those sins of his own free will and consciously, repentance should be withheld from him altogether, and grant him no leave to repent, so that he might die and perish in the iniquity he committed…It is, therefore, written in the Torah; "And I will harden Pharaoh's heart" (Ex. 14.4), because at the beginning he sinned of his own free will, and meted out evil to Israel who sojourned in his land, even as it is said: "Come, let us deal wisely with them" (Ibid. 1.10). Thereat justice demanded to withhold repentance from him, so that due punishment might be visited upon him. Wherefore, the Holy One, blessed is He! hardened his heart. If it be so, then why did He delegate Moses to him, charging him to let Israel go forth and turn to repentance seeing that the Holy One, blessed is He! long since told him thou wilt not let them go forth, saying: "But as for thee and thy servants, I know that ye will not yet fear the Lord God" (Ibid. 9.30), and again saying: "But in very deed for this cause have I made thee to stand, to show thee My power, and that My name be declared throughout all the earth"(Ibid. –16)? To demonstrate to the future generations whenever the Holy One, blessed is He! withholds repentance from a sinner he cannot repent, but must die in the original evil which he perpetrated of his own free will.” (Ibid, 6:3, Sefaria.org translation)

On God’s hardening Pharaoh’s heart, Prof. Nachum Sarna in his New JPS Commentary provides an alternative understanding then Rambam’s:

 “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 two and 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 seed of the intellectual, moral, and spiritual life of the individual, this organ is the determinant 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 that in the first five plagues Pharaoh’s obduracy is self-willed. Is only thereafter that is attributed to divine causality. This is the biblical way of asserting that the Kings intransigence has by then become habitual and irreversible; his character has become his destiny. He is deprived of the possibility relenting and is irresistibly impelled to his self-wrought doom.” (Exodus 4:21, page 23)