32 January 10 • 2019
jn

W

hy does God declare that
He has “hardened Pharaoh’
s
heart” so that the despot
will not change his mind and
free the Israelites? Doesn’
t
this collide head on with our
notion of free will?
Is the Torah telling us that
God interrupts the ordinary
course of human events to
introduce His will into the
hearts of people, sometimes
even preventing them from
making the right decision?
What about the idea that
absolutely nothing must stand
in the way of repentance, that
no one, not even a righteous
person, can stand where a
penitent stands?
Rabbi Shlomo Goren gives a novel
explanation, which was apparently
inspired by the miraculous events he
experienced with the rise of the State
of Israel. There are times, he maintains,
when God must introduce His will into
the hearts of people, but this is limited
to monarchs, emperors and pharaohs.
Rabbi Goren suggests that we have to
distinguish between an individual and
the leader of a nation.
Individuals always have free choice.
However, because God has a master
plan with Israel as the catalyst, the
Almighty may sometimes be moved
to control the choices of leaders of
key nations during critical and fateful
historical periods. Such a situation
occurred at the very dawn of histo-
ry with the confrontation between
Pharaoh and the Hebrew slaves, and
the Almighty had to step in.
The obstinacy on the part of
Pharaoh provides a means for solving
the tension between the notion of
free will and God’
s initial declara-
tion regarding “hardening his heart.
”
Pharaoh had already been given five
opportunities to repent, five oppor-
tunities to hear the voice of God
demanding that His people shall be
released from slavery and still refused.

God is now effectively saying to
Pharaoh: “You stiffened your neck; you
hardened your heart; now I am going
to add stubbornness to your own
inner stubbornness.
”
The result is that Pharaoh
himself became frozen, locked
into a conception of how to
behave; once that happens, it
becomes exceedingly difficult for
anyone to change his mind.
It seems to me that had
Pharaoh come to the conclusion
that it was wrong to enslave the
Hebrews based on his own new-
found convictions about the
true God of the universe who
guarantees freedom to all, his
repentance would have emanat-
ed “from love” and would have been
accepted. Since, ironically enough, it
would have been his former sinful acts
and obstinacy that led him to such a
conclusion, even his prior transgres-
sions could now be seen as merits.
After all, had it not been for them, he
would never have switched positions
and arrived at his new awareness and
religio-ethical consciousness.
This is clearly not the position in
which we find Pharaoh. Were he to
release the Jews after the fifth plague, it
would have nothing to do with a trans-
formed and ennobled moral sensitivity
and everything to do with his having
been bludgeoned over the head by the
power of the plagues. Such repentance
out of fear is hardly true repentance
and cannot be accepted by God to
atone for previous sins.
Because Pharaoh is not truly repent-
ing in any shape or form, God “hard-
ens his heart” to the suffering of the
plagues and allows him to continue
to do what he really believes in doing:
enslaving the Hebrews, who must wait
until the Almighty deems it the proper
time for redemption. ■

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin is chancellor of Ohr Torah

Stone and chief rabbi of Efrat, Israel.

jews d
in
the
section

Rabbi
Shlomo Riskin

What Of Free Will?
What Of Free Will?

Parshat

Bo: Exodus

10:1-13:16;

Jeremiah

46:13-28.

spirit

torah portion