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