We have dealt with the matter before, however, it comes up frequently, because it lacks an apparent satisfactory explanation. The theme is freedom of action, the free will of the human being, challenged and questioned, for example, in the biblical account in which God “hardens” the heart of Pharaoh so that he does not allow the Hebrews to leave Egypt. Because of Pharaoh’s refusal, God sent plagues that decimated the Egyptians, as a demonstration of His power and authority that was above the power of the gods of the Egyptian pantheon. Pharaoh is punished for his stubbornness, for not allowing the exodus that would be the moral model for future generations. A people must not enslave other people, each group or individual must be able to serve God, its God, in the way it deems appropriate.
The great ethical dilemma is how can the individual be punished when God “hardens” his heart? Punishment and reward must be based on the possibility of being able to choose freely, but when the acts are predetermined or when a higher force imposes behavior, is it moral in such a circumstance to blame the person who lacks choice, or free will?
We read, for example, in Deuteronomy: “I give you the choice between good and evil,… I advise them to choose the good,” instructive that teaches that the person has alternatives and, therefore, allows him to be held accountable, to question the conduct of the human being. Why did Pharaoh not choose to do good? It was a viable alternative, within reach of his will as sovereign.
The Talmud quotes Rabbi Yochanan, a scholar who claims that on several previous occasions God had warned Pharaoh to change his attitude. The first five plagues that struck the Egyptians must have been the warning, it was only from the sixth plague onwards that the text says that God “hardened” Pharaoh’s heart. Rabbi Yochanan teaches, perhaps, that perversity and evil eventually become second nature to man, preventing free will. Sin takes over the person and entraps him.
However, Judaism states that it is never too late for repentance, for a return to the roots of decency and morality. The idea is that a person can change, even on the day of his death. To postulate that those who become accustomed to immorality lose ethical autonomy contradicts the possibility of Teshuva, returning to God. The Talmud quotes that the executioner of the ten sages condemned to death by the authorities of the time asked: would he have a place in the Hereafter if he removed the wet wool that had been placed on the chest of one of the sages to prolong his agony while he was cremated? The response was positive, yes you would get the desired place. Even an action of dubious piety, which as in this case would only diminish the pain, because the inevitability of the sage’s death had not been altered, was a meritorious sign of piety.
Repentance does not consist solely of Vidui, a declaration or acknowledgment of having erred, it points to a state of being fully involved, it is an experience that must envelop and modify the totality of being. We identify confession with the admission of sin. Confession is to stand before God, because He is the Only One before Whom the soul can be stripped naked, free from the cloak of hypocrisy, both at the moment that only warns of darkness and in the hour of supreme joy.
The account concerning the “hardening” of Pharaoh’s heart must be analyzed in detail. At that time, Egypt was one of the two most important powers in the area. It had arisen thanks to the use of slaves. They erected palaces and built cities, and excelled in agriculture, all based on the forced, unpaid labor of hundreds of thousands of serfs. Suddenly, Moses and Aharon appear on stage, go to Pharaoh’s court and demand the freedom of their brothers. The consequence would have been catastrophic because the Egyptian economy was based on cheap, free labor. After the death of the firstborn, a fact that included the royal firstborn, in a moment of despair, Pharaoh succumbs to the request to release them, but hours later begins the persecution of the slaves because the foundations of Egyptian society would collapse in the absence of these serfs.
Pharaoh’s “sin” consisted in ignoring the possibility, in effect the necessity, of bringing about a “change” in the Egyptian economy. The immorality of slavery should have led him to think of alternatives, however difficult and traumatic they were for his society: long-term solutions, which in the future would produce a dignified, ethically viable environment for his people.
Dilemmas dominate when the intellect is idle when the limits that have been arbitrarily marked by the pragmatic and utilitarian are not pierced when events are judged by immediate material benefit and the authentically spiritual ingredient of the human being is removed. There is the self-limitation of free will by lack of imagination, by the cessation of the search for creative and novel solutions to crossroads and laborious circumstances.
Moses emerged from Pharaoh’s palace and dared to challenge tyranny. Future generations learned from the Hebrew experience in Egypt, and produced new leadership that raised the flag of freedom to defend the basic rights of society. Because of this, at all times of Jewish religious significance, we repeat “in remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt.”
