Teshuva

(6) And now lest he send his hand: Rabbi Abba bar Kahana said, "It teaches that the Holy One, blessed be He, opened an opening of repentance for him:

And now: this can only refer to repentance, as it is stated (Deuteronomy 10:12), "And now, Israel, what does the Lord, your God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, etc.' And it states, 'lest'; and 'lest' is always [meaning], no (such that Adam refused to repent). The Holy One, blessed be He, said, 'He will also send his hand and eat from the Tree of life - it is a wonder; if he will eat, he will live forever!' Therefore, 'And the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden.' Once He sent him away, He began to lament, 'Behold, man.'"

What is teshuvah? It is when a person abandons the sin that he sinned and removes it from his thoughts and commits in his heart that he will not do it again, as it says, The wicked should abandon his path etc. (Isaiah 55:7). And also that he regrets sinning, as it says, After I returned I regretted (Jeremiah 31:18). And the One Who Knows Hidden Things testifies about him that he will never return to this sin, as it says, And we will no longer call the work of our hands “god” etc. (Hosea 14:4). And he must confess verbally and say these things that he has committed in his heart.

(6) Although it is ever well to cry out and repent, but during the space of the ten days' time between Rosh ha-Shanah and Yom ha-Kippurim it is exceedingly better, and the supplication is presently accepted, even as it is said: "Seek ye the Lord while He may be found" (Is. 55.6).

WHERE HE IS. R. Simon said: The ministering angels hastened to indict him, explaining, 'Sovereing of the Universe! Wilt Thou bring up a well for one who will one day slay Thy children with thirst? "What is he now?" he demanded. "Righteous," was the answer. "I judge man only as he is at the moment," said He. [Therefore scripture continues, ARISE, LIFT UP THE LAD.

(5) Likewise the Egyptians, if each and every one of those who vexed and wronged Israel had no desire so to wrong them, he had it in his power to refrain from doing it; for, He did not decree against a particular man, but made known to Abraham that in the end his seed will be enslaved in a land which is not theirs. But we have already stated that it is beyond human power to understand the way in which God has cognizance of future events.

(1) 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.)

(2) 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. It is concerning this that Jeremiah said: "Out of the mouth of the Most High proceedeth not the evil and the good" (Lam. 3. 38), which is as if saying, the Creator decrees not that man should be either good or bad. Now, this being so, the consequence hereof is that the sinner alone brought harm upon himself. It is, therefore, meet that he should lament and shed tears because he sinned, and because of what he did to his soul and rewarded it with evil. Even this is the meaning of the succeeding Verse: "Wherefore doth a living man complain, or a strong man? Because of his sins" (Ibid.) Again, he continues, in the succeeding Verse seeing that it all is in our power, and we did all the evil of our own free will and accord, it is, indeed meet for us to turn in repentance and abandon our wickedness, for our free will is in our hands now as well as at the time we committed the sins saying: "Let us search and try our ways, and return to the Lord" (Ibid.–40)

(3) And, this matter is a great and component part, the very pillar of the Torah and its precepts, even as it is said: "See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil" (Deut. 30.15), and it is, moreover, written: "Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and curse" (Ibid. 11.26). This is as if saying, the power is in your hand, and whatever human activity man may be inclined to carry on he has a free will to elect either good or evil. And, because of this very subject it is said: "Oh, who would grant that they had such a heart as this, to fear Me, and to keep all my commandments at all times" (Ibid. 5.26). This is as if saying, that the Creator forces not the sons of man, and makes no decrees against them that they should do good or evil, but that it all is in their own keeping.

(4) Had the decree of God prompted man to be either just or wicked, or had there been a fundamentally inborn something to draw man to either of the paths, or to any one branch of knowledge, or to a given tendency of the tendencies, or to particular act of all actions as the astrologists maintain by their foolish inventions, how did He charge us by the prophets, to do thus and not to do such, improve your ways, and do not follow your wickedness, whereas man from his embryonic state already had a decree of his conduct issued, or his inborn nature draws him toward a given path of conduct from which he can not deviate? Moreover, what need would there be, under such circumstances, for the Torah altogether? And by what law, and under what system of justice could the wicked be punished, or the just rewarded? Shall the judge of the whole earth not exercise justice?