DECEMBER 16 • 2021 | 37

ill and was at the point of death. The 
prophet Isaiah, son of Amoz, went 
to him and said, ‘This is what the 
Lord says: Put your house in order, 
because you are going to die; you 
will not recover.’ Hezekiah turned 
his face to the wall and prayed to the 
Lord, ‘Remember, Lord, how I have 
walked before you faithfully and with 
wholehearted devotion and have 
done what is good in your eyes.’ And 
Hezekiah wept bitterly. Before Isaiah 
had left the middle court, the word of 
the Lord came to him: ‘Go back and tell 
Hezekiah, the ruler of my people: This 
is what the Lord, God of your father 
David, says: I have heard your prayer 
and seen your tears; I will heal you.’” 
(2 Kings 20:1-5; Isaiah 38:1-5)
The prophet Isaiah had told King 
Hezekiah he would not recover, but he 
did. He lived for another 15 years. God 
heard his prayer and granted him stay 
of execution. From this the Talmud 
infers, “Even if a sharp sword rests 
upon your neck, you should not desist 
from prayer.” We pray for a good fate 
but we do not reconcile ourselves to 
fatalism.
Hence there is a fundamental 
difference between a prophecy and a 
prediction. If a prediction comes true, it 
has succeeded. If a prophecy comes true, 
it has failed. A prophet delivers not a 
prediction but a warning. He or she 
does not simply say, “This will happen,” 
but rather, “This will happen unless you 
change.” The prophet speaks to human 
freedom, not to the inevitability of fate.

PREDICTIONS ARE FUTILE 
I was once present at a gathering where 
Bernard Lewis, the great scholar of 
Islam, was asked to predict the outcome 
of a certain American foreign policy 
intervention. He gave a magnificent 
reply. “I am a historian, so I only make 
predictions about the past. What is 
more, I am a retired historian, so even 
my past is passé.” This was a profoundly 
Jewish answer.
In the 21st century, we know much at 

a macro- and micro-level. We look up 
and see a universe of a hundred billion 
galaxies each of a hundred billion stars. 
We look down and see a human body 
containing a hundred trillion cells, 
each with a double copy of the human 
genome, 3.1 billion letters long, enough 
if transcribed to fill a library of 5,000 
books. But there remains one thing 
we do not know and will never know: 
What tomorrow will bring. 
The past, said L. P. Hartley, is a 
foreign country. But the future is 
an undiscovered one. That is why 
predictions so often fail.
That is the essential difference 
between nature and human nature. 
The ancient Mesopotamians could 
make accurate predictions about the 
movement of planets, yet even today, 
despite brain-scans and neuroscience, 
we are still not able to predict what 
people will do. Often, they take us by 
surprise.
The reason is that we are free. We 
choose, we make mistakes, we learn, 
we change, we grow. The failure at 
school becomes the winner of a Nobel 
Prize. The leader who disappointed 
suddenly shows courage and wisdom 
in a crisis. The driven businessman has 
an intimation of mortality and decides 
to devote the rest of his life to helping 
the poor. Some of the most successful 
people I ever met were written off by 
their teachers at school and told they 
would never amount to anything. We 
constantly defy predictions. This is 
something science has not yet explained 
and perhaps never will. Some believe 
freedom is an illusion. But it isn’t. It’s 
what makes us human.
We are free because we are not merely 
objects. We are subjects. We respond 
not just to physical events but to the 
way we perceive those events. We 
have minds, not just brains. We have 
thoughts, not just sensations. We react 
but we can also choose not to react. 
There is something about us that is 
irreducible to material, physical causes 
and effects.

The way our ancestors spoke about 
this remains true and profound. We are 
free because God is free, and He made 
us in His image. That is what is meant 
by the three words God told Moses at 
the burning bush when he asked God 
for His name. God replied, Ehyeh asher 
Ehyeh. This is often translated as “I am 
what I am,” but what it really means is, 
“I will be who and how I choose to be.” 
I am the God of freedom. I cannot be 
predicted. Note that God says this at the 
start of Moses’ mission to lead a people 
from slavery to freedom. He wanted the 
Israelites to become living testimony to 
the power of freedom.
Do not believe that the future is 
written. It isn’t. There is no fate we 
cannot change, no prediction we cannot 
defy. We are not predestined to fail; 
neither are we pre-ordained to succeed. 
We do not predict the future because 
we make the future: by our choices, 
our willpower, our persistence and our 
determination to survive.
The proof is the Jewish people itself. 
The first reference to Israel outside the 
Bible is engraved on the Merneptah 
stele, inscribed around 1225 BCE by 
Pharaoh Merneptah IV, Ramses II’s 
successor. It reads: “Israel is laid waste, 
her seed is no more.” It was, in short, 
an obituary. The Jewish people have 
been written off many times by their 
enemies, but they remain, after almost 
four millennia, still young and strong.
That is why, when Jacob wanted to 
tell his children what would happen to 
them in the future, the Divine spirit 
was taken away from him. Our children 
continue to surprise us, as we continue 
to surprise others. Made in the image 
of God, we are free. Sustained by the 
blessings of God, we can become 
greater than anyone, even ourselves, 
could foresee. 

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks served as the 

chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of 

the Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His teachings have 

been made available to all at rabbisacks.org. This 

essay was written in 2015.

