(1) The LORD replied to Moses, “See, I place you in the role of God to Pharaoh, with your brother Aaron as your prophet. (2) You shall repeat all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall speak to Pharaoh to let the Israelites depart from his land. (3) But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, that I may multiply My signs and marvels in the land of Egypt. (4) When Pharaoh does not heed you, I will lay My hand upon Egypt and deliver My ranks, My people the Israelites, from the land of Egypt with extraordinary chastisements. (5) And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch out My hand over Egypt and bring out the Israelites from their midst.” (6) This Moses and Aaron did; as the LORD commanded them, so they did.
Rambam (Maimonides), Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance 6:3
There are many passages in Scripture which seem to contradict the principle of freewill, and many have been misled by their tenor. They imagine that the Holy One preordains man to good or evil. I shall however provide a key to understanding these passages. When a man sins of his own freewill, he is punished . . . sometimes in this world, sometimes in the Hereafter, and sometimes in both. When does this apply? When he does not make amends. But if he makes amends, repentance is the antidote to retribution. The same as mans sin is of his own free prompting, so is his repentance.
But it may sometimes happen that man's offence is so grave that he is penalised by not being granted the opportunity to turn from his wickedness, so that he dies with the sin that he committed. . . .
They sinned intentionally and eagerly transgressed until they deserved to be denied teshuvah, which is the “remedy.” Therefore it is written in the Torah: I will harden Pharaoh’s heart (Ex. 14:4) – since he initially sinned of his own initiative and abused Israel, who were living in his land, as it says, Come, let us deal cleverly with them (Ex. 1:10), judgment was rendered to deny [Pharaoh] teshuvah until [God] punished him – therefore the Holy Blessed One hardened [Pharaoh’s] heart.
(א) אֵי זוֹ הִיא תְּשׁוּבָה גְּמוּרָה. זֶה שֶׁבָּא לְיָדוֹ דָּבָר שֶׁעָבַר בּוֹ וְאֶפְשָׁר בְּיָדוֹ לַעֲשׂוֹתוֹ וּפֵרַשׁ וְלֹא עָשָׂה מִפְּנֵי הַתְּשׁוּבָה. לֹא מִיִּרְאָה וְלֹא מִכִּשְׁלוֹן כֹּחַ. כֵּיצַד. הֲרֵי שֶׁבָּא עַל אִשָּׁה בַּעֲבֵרָה וּלְאַחַר זְמַן נִתְיַחֵד עִמָּהּ וְהוּא עוֹמֵד בְּאַהֲבָתוֹ בָּהּ וּבְכֹחַ גּוּפוֹ וּבַמְּדִינָה שֶׁעָבַר בָּהּ וּפָרַשׁ וְלֹא עָבַר זֶהוּ בַּעַל תְּשׁוּבָה גְּמוּרָה. הוּא שֶׁשְּׁלֹמֹה אָמַר (קהלת יב א) "וּזְכֹר אֶת בּוֹרְאֶיךָ בִּימֵי בְּחוּרֹתֶיךָ". וְאִם לֹא שָׁב אֶלָּא בִּימֵי זִקְנוּתוֹ וּבְעֵת שֶׁאִי אֶפְשָׁר לוֹ לַעֲשׂוֹת מַה שֶּׁהָיָה עוֹשֶׂה אַף עַל פִּי שֶׁאֵינָהּ תְּשׁוּבָה מְעֵלָּה מוֹעֶלֶת הִיא לוֹ וּבַעַל תְּשׁוּבָה הוּא. אֲפִלּוּ עָבַר כָּל יָמָיו וְעָשָׂה תְּשׁוּבָה בְּיוֹם מִיתָתוֹ וּמֵת בִּתְשׁוּבָתוֹ כָּל עֲוֹנוֹתָיו נִמְחָלִין שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (קהלת יב ב) "עַד אֲשֶׁר לֹא תֶחְשַׁךְ הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ וְהָאוֹר וְהַיָּרֵחַ וְהַכּוֹכָבִים וְשָׁבוּ הֶעָבִים אַחַר הַגֶּשֶׁם" שֶׁהוּא יוֹם הַמִּיתָה. מִכְּלָל שֶׁאִם זָכַר בּוֹרְאוֹ וְשָׁב קֹדֶם שֶׁיָּמוּת נִסְלַח לוֹ:
(1) What is complete repentance? He who once more had in it in his power to repeat a violation, but separated himself therefrom, and did not do it because of repentance, not out of fear or lack of strength. For example? One who knew a woman sinfully, and after a process of time he met her again privately, and he still loving her as theretofore, and he being in a state of potency, and the meeting is in the same land where the sin was first committed, if he parted without sinning, he has attained complete repentance. Of such Solomon said: "Remember then thy Creator in the days of thy youth" (Ecc. 12.1). Even if he made no reparation save in his old age, at a time when it was already impossible for him to repeat his misdeeds, although it is not the best repentance, it still is of help to him and he is considered a penitent. Moreover, though he continued a life of sin but did repent on his dying day, and did die a penitent, all of his sins are forgiven, even as it is said: "While the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain" (Ibid. 12.2), yea, that is the day of death. Deduct herefrom that if he remembered his Creator and did repent ere he died, he was forgiven.1Ibid. 86b; Kiddushin, 40b; Shabbat, 151a. C.
Eva Rodriguez, "Bryan Stevenson savors victory in Supreme Court ruling on Juvenile Life Sentences"
Washington Post, June 25, 2012
If a juvenile has committed the most heinous of crimes and the jury has adjudicated that individual guilty, why is it offensive to the Constitution for that juvenile to be subjected to a mandatory life without parole?
Children are different than adults. We recognize that children need extra protection. Their maturity, their judgment, their development doesn’t permit us to treat them like adults. That’s the reason why we don’t let even the smartest kids smoke or drink or vote or drive cars before they’re eligible.
We protect children under the law except in the criminal justice system, and in the last 30 years, we have essentially dropped the protections for kids, put them in the adult criminal justice system, where I think many of them have been really unfairly sentenced and condemned. . . . We do it mostly to kids who are poor and kids of color, and that makes this sentence “unusual.”
I believe that to say to any child that you’re only fit to die in prison is “cruel.” It’s true that some of these crimes are very disturbing, but it’s also true that the lives that many of these children have lived are also disturbing. They’re in many ways some of the most vulnerable kids in society, and we owe them more than to simply throw them away.
How do you determine whether an adult who committed a heinous crime as a juvenile has truly changed and matured and become someone who can be trusted within a community at large?
I think the one way you don’t do it is to make that judgment when they are weeks or months away from the offense itself, and that’s what life without parole insists that we do. . . . You don’t say to kids at 14 that you can’t go to college because you’re too unmotivated, too incomplete, too unprepared. . . . We say the opposite. And I think in the criminal justice system making those kind of permanent, unalterable judgments is cruel and unusual.
(ג) דבר אחר: כי אני הכבדתי את לבו - אמר רבי יוחנן: מכאן פתחון פה למינין לומר, לא היתה ממנו, שיעשה תשובה, שנאמר: כי אני הכבדתי את לבו. אמר לו רבי שמעון בן לקיש: יסתם פיהם של מינים, אלא (משלי ג, לד): אם ללצים הוא יליץ, שהקדוש ברוך הוא מתרה בו באדם, פעם ראשונה, שניה ושלישית, ואינו חוזר בו, והוא נועל לבו מן התשובה, כדי לפרוע ממנו מה שחטא. אף כך פרעה הרשע, כיון ששיגר הקדוש ברוך הוא חמש פעמים ולא השגיח על דבריו. אמר לו הקדוש ברוך הוא: אתה הקשית ערפך והכבדת את לבך, הריני מוסיף לך טומאה על טומאתך. הוי, כי אני הכבדתי את לבו. מהו הכבדתי?
(3) Another explanation: For I have hardened his heart - Rabbi Yochanan said: Does this not provide heretics with an opportunity to open their mouths to say that he had no means of repenting, as it say "For I have hardened his heart". Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish said to him: Let the mouths of the heretics be stopped up. Rather, (Mishlei 3:34) If it concerns the scorners, he scorns them. When the Holy One Blessed be He warns a man once, twice, thrice and he doesn't repent, and G-d will close his heart against repentance so that He should not exact vengeance from him for his sins. So to with the wicked Pharaoh, since Hashem sent five times to him and he took no notice, G-d then said: "You have stiffened your neck and hardened your heart; well, I will add impurity to your impurity". Hence, "For I have hardened his heart".
Rabbi Jeffrey Goldwasser, "Bo: Pharaoh's Free Will,"
Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish says that when people freely and repeatedly choose a path that goes against God, they close themselves from divine compassion. As they harden themselves, God responds by hardening against them.
From a psychological perspective, this could be understood as a natural consequence of indulging in behavior that is willfully ruthless and cruel. The more people become used to behaving in uncaring ways, the more they become deaf to any call toward compassion. God does not deny free will to Pharaoh, Rabbi Shimon may be arguing. Rather, Pharaoh's own choices remove him from the ability to be moved by ethical concerns.
How shall we reconcile this with what modern science teaches us about free will? Benjamin Libet's research suggests that our behavioral choices are more on the instinctual level than on the conscious level. Acting ethically may be more of a habit than a conscious decision. Through repetition, we inure ourselves to behaving well or behaving poorly. Morality may be more about subconscious patterns of behavior than we had imagined, but it is still something human beings can nurture within themselves, even on a Pavlovian level.
That is also, in a curious way, what the midrash suggests. Pharaoh did not lose his free will because of a divine thunderbolt. Through his own behavior and choices, Pharaoh trained himself toward the kind of hardhearted behaviors that stripped him of the ability to do otherwise. That is why God says that Pharaoh's heat was hardened; it was the consequence of his own choices.
And what does that teach us about ourselves? Be very careful about the choices you make in life. Every time you choose to respond to another person with care and compassion, you are setting an unconscious pattern that will be repeated. Every time you choose to be indifferent or unresponsive to the needs of others, you train yourself to be as stubborn and unmovable as Pharaoh.
(כא) ואני אחזק את לבו כי בהיותו בלתי יכול לסבול המכות היה משלח את העם בלי ספק, לא מפני שיכנע לאל יתברך לעשות רצונו, ולזה חזק את לבו שיתאמץ לסבול המכות ולבלתי שלחם:
(21) ואני אחזק את לבו, for if he could not endure the plagues he would let the Israelites go, not because he was finally humbling himself before the Lord and do His will, but only in order to get relief from the plagues. This was not a good enough reason to grant him relief; therefore God reinforced his natural obstinacy.
Joseph Albo (15th c. Spain) Sefer Ha'ikkarim (The Book of Principles)
The wicked man becomes pious and returns to the Lord when the blow falls -- out of fear of retribution, as in the case of Pharaoh, who said, "I have sinned this time; the Lord is righteous (Exodus 4:27). Because such a situation savours of compulsion and not of free will, the Lord hardened his heart, so that he imagined that the plague was accidental rather than providential. This was to eradicate the cowing effects of the plague itself, leaving his freewill uninfluenced by any compulsion. Only then could it be demonstrated whether his repentance was freely motivated. In this manner, the gates of repentance are shut in the face of the wicked. But, far be it from the Almighty to withhold from man his free choice to do good! On the contrary, Scripture states (Ezekiel 18:32): "For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth . . . wherefore turn yourselves and live." But God leaves man to his free choice, exercising no outward compulsion on him."
-- from Nechama Leibowitz, "I will harden Pharaoh's heart," New Studies in Shemot, vol 1, p. 153.
(ב) בֶּן עַזַּאי אוֹמֵר, הֱוֵי רָץ לְמִצְוָה קַלָּה כְבַחֲמוּרָה, וּבוֹרֵחַ מִן הָעֲבֵרָה. שֶׁמִּצְוָה גּוֹרֶרֶת מִצְוָה, וַעֲבֵרָה גוֹרֶרֶת עֲבֵרָה. שֶׁשְּׂכַר מִצְוָה, מִצְוָה. וּשְׂכַר עֲבֵרָה, עֲבֵרָה:
(2) Ben Azai says: Run to do an easy commandment as to a difficult one, and flee from sin; since a commandment leads to another commandment, and a sin leads to another sin; since the reward for a commandment is another commandment, and the reward for a sin is another sin.
Madeleine Aggeler, "What do we want from an apology?,"
New York Magazine, Nov. 10, 2017.
[Louis] C.K. is the latest in a long (and growing) list of powerful men who are finally facing repercussions for their alleged acts of sexual assault and harassment. And while many aspects of C.K.’s story are similar to the others — he had a signature M.O.; his behavior was an open secret in his community; he and his team reportedly worked to suppress accusers’ stories — his apology is different than any we’ve seen so far. Instead of issuing a brief non-apology before scurrying away to sex rehab, C.K. confirms the allegations against him, acknowledges how he abused his power, and how his actions have hurt not only the victims of his harassment, but also his friends, family, and co-workers.
This does not absolve him. Having a not actively harmful response does not take away from the fact that C.K. is a sexual predator who used his position of influence to humiliate and debase women. But given that it is the most comprehensive statement of contrition we’ve seen from any of the men recently accused, it raises some important questions: How will we, as a society, choose to handle the apologies of sexual aggressors? What do we want from them? Do we believe any of them can be truly penitent? Does it matter?
If we want perpetrators to fully acknowledge the harm they’ve caused, C.K. does a pretty good job. But there is a glaring omission in his statement. Although he expresses regret over his sexual misconduct, he does not apologize for the years and years he and his team spent denying the allegations. . . .
Is a good apology enough if it only comes on the heels of mounting and irrefutable evidence against you? When and how should perpetrators of sexual violence come forward and acknowledge their crimes? These are huge, difficult questions, but ones we will inevitably have to grapple with in the coming weeks and months as the number of accusations continues to pile up.