Yoram Hazony On Man's Free Will

Yoram Hazony, The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture

(New York: Cambridge University Press; 2012), pp. 96, 97.

ʻThe Hebrew Scriptures often depict the prophets of Israel as calling for the observance of God's laws and commands, and a crude reading can easily lead to the conclusion that an unthinking obedience is all the biblical authors are interested in.

Indeed, the very fact that man can be urged to obey, as the sea or the stars or the birds obey the laws that have been prescribed for them, strongly reinforces the view that the demand being made is one of simple, unthinking obedience.

But this reading of Scripture is too simplistic, leaving too many obvious questions unanswered and, indeed, unanswerable.

Unthinking obedience, after all, would require suspending the operation of man's natural faculties and his transformation into an automaton; and it would require that God should desire this.

It is exceedingly doubtful, however, that the authors of the History of Israel and the other biblical works believed that man should become an automaton, or that God would want something like this. . . .

ʻ[T]he same freedom that is given to man in the realm of speech and thought is given to him in the realm of action as well. . . .

In all this, man's freedom to choose appears to be a delight to God.

And even once this freedom leads man to evil, God does not repent having given man this freedom.

On the contrary, it is man's freedom to act against mankind's evildoing, and even against God, that is presented in the narrative as man's greatest glory, with those whom God loves best Abel, Abraham, Jacob, Moses being those who presume to challenge God, to wrestle with him, and even to defeat him for the sake of what is good.

No, there is no hint that the biblical authors would have found virtue in a man denuded of his freedom, an automaton.ʼ

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