The Book of Ethics

On Pirke Avot (Chapters of the Fathers) 2:15

But one must realize that all of man’s deeds—everything done under the sun, all those things he does wittingly, whenever he moves or ceases to move—are all in his hand. If he wishes to move, he moves, and if he wishes to rest, he rests. Permission is granted him and his soul’s desire. There is no compulsion; they are driven by two faculties of his soul, the faculty of appetite and the faculty of sensory perception, as we explained above.

But the things found in the nature of man, according to the mixture of his humors, such as his physical appearance, whether beautiful or ugly, tall or short, ruddy or pale, strong or weak, or the things found in him that are the nature of the human species, such as walking on two legs, being broad chested, and having fingers, walking erect, having the ability to laugh, and similar characteristics that are found in the human species, are not decided by his will or created by his desire, [like] all future events, such as the fall of rain and its cease, the lack of dew, and all other things found in the world under the sun, all of these are in the hands of heaven, and man has no power over them, as it is written: Bad and good do not go forth from the mouth of the Most High (Lamentations 3:38), that is to say, the bad, meaning prohibited deeds, and the good, meaning the [positive] commandments, are not forced upon a man that he must do them but rather the power is given into your hand to do either of them as you wish, as it is written in the Torah of our God, See, I set before you this day, etc. (Deuteronomy 30:15). Since they are in man’s power and done, according to his will, if the good is done, he must rejoice in them, for they bring him to success and everlasting greatness. [ . . . ]

And one must know that it is revealed and known to all men that man’s standing and sitting, movement and rest are in the hands of heaven and according to the desire of his Creator. We explain this in the true manner. Just as one throws a rock up into the air and afterwards it falls back to the earth, the man’s throw into the air is in the power of man, for God gave that power into his hand to move and to rest as he wishes, while [the ball’s] fall afterward, back toward the center of the earth, is [also] by the desire of the Creator, exalted be His name, for He made the nature of earth to be heavy, and the water too, and so things fall from a slope and rest on a flat surface. And it is in the power of man that He gave him, should he wish to take a piece of the earth from its place and throw it, it will fly according to the power of the one throwing it, and once that [power?] has been spent it will return to its place. And its nature is like the sphere of earth [and the sphere of fire] and the sphere of air, for He made their nature light, each lighter than the one below, fire above air, and He created the [celestial] sphere to be intermediate in nature, and [celestial matter] neither ascends nor descends but rather orbits, each [element] acting according to its created nature, some light and some heavy. Thus, this piece of the earth descended, and this piece of fire ascended, according to His will and His desire, since He created each of them opposite in nature. It is not that the Holy One desired that now this piece of fire [should ascend above and the piece of earth] should descend below, but rather in the moment of creation He decided the nature of each of them according to His desire and His will, that air and fire ascend and earth and water descend.

In this matter, those who reason erred who brought proofs to support the religion of the Ishmaelites known as al-mutakallimūn, who reason that the Holy One creates anew every existent thing in every moment according to His will, and should He desire now that fire not burn it would not burn, and that water not moisten it would not do so, and likewise, if He wished that bread not satiate a man it would not, nor would a sword cut, and likewise all physical phenomena, such as colors, are renewed constantly, according to His desire and His will. This way of thinking that they built has no foundations, and they patch a failing wall with plaster [see Ezekiel 13:3], for they deny the evidence that is revealed to the eye and the other senses.

Those of our own religion, however, are correct when they reason that the divine will was during the six days of creation, and all created things go according to their nature and their way, which their Creator set in them on the day He created them, until today, as Solomon said: Only that shall happen which has happened, only that occur which has occurred; there is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9), and the world continues in its way. It was for this reason that our rabbis said that all the wonders that already occurred and those promised by the prophets that we yet await only fulfill the desire of the Holy One, from the six days of creation, and He created things such that it was their nature to change and manifest this new thing at the time they desire to, such as the splitting of the sea by Moses at that time, and the standing still of the sun and the moon for Joshua, and the standing of the waters of the Jordan at that time, and the retraction of the shadow by ten steps for Isaiah the prophet, precisely at that moment. One who sees these new phenomena and imagines that they are truly new—it is not so, but rather, they were created so in the six days of creation, and so our rabbis said: “Ten things were created at twilight” [Avot 5:1], and not only these ten things but all new things that we see and imagine to be new phenomena.