Did Amalek Have Free Will? Understanding Torah’s Eternal Blueprint

Idan asks: “I’ve heard that the Torah preceded the world, which would mean that God predetermined the mitzvah ‘Remember what Amalek did to you.’ Does that imply the Amalekites had no free choice?”

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Shalom and thank you for your question, Idan.

Many might mistakenly think the Torah was given to humans only after the fact — like state laws drafted in response to rising crime and a need for order. They assume that God devised the Torah’s laws merely to repair humanity’s bleak reality, and that in an ideal world the Torah wouldn’t be necessary.

Our Sages wanted to uproot this false view at its root. They taught that the Torah was hidden away 974 generations before the world was created (Shabbat 88b), and said in the Midrash: “The world and everything in it was created only for the sake of the Torah” (Bereishit Rabbah 1:4).

The world was created in accordance with the Torah’s ideal blueprint. The very word Torah means “instruction” or “guidance” — that is, command. God created the world and human beings so that we would be able to fulfill the Torah’s mitzvot. Consider for example, the mitzvah of honoring parents. Frogs don’t have family structures like humans; they lay and rear offspring communally. Humans, by contrast, were created with a familial nature — father and mother, because God wanted us to fulfill “Honor your father and mother.” If there were no such mitzvah (and others that relate to family life), God would not have created human nature with that family structure. Because of the spiritual purpose embedded in each mitzvah, we were created in ways that match the Torah. The Torah is the manufacturer’s ideal guidebook by which the world was made. There is great depth packed into this brief teaching of our Sages.

Every mitzvah has a spiritual root that can manifest in several physical ways. The Talmudic Sages taught: “The commandments were given only to refine human beings” (Bereishit Rabbah 44:1). Historical events were therefore linked to the inner meanings of the mitzvot, and not the other way around.

Our Sages relate that Avraham observed all the commandments even before the Torah was given. Avraham could, for example, eat matzah on Passover long before the Exodus provided the historical reason for the mitzvah, because each mitzvah contains a deeper spiritual meaning independent of the later historical layer attached to it. The same is true regarding “blotting out Amalek.” At its core it is a spiritual command to uproot evil within us — the heretical, destructive traits represented by Amalek. Later, this inner command was bound to erasing the Amalekite nation that embodied that ideology. In principle, the same mandate could apply to any people that chose Sodom-like cruelty as its creed.

Any Amalekite who accepted the Seven Noahide Laws was not to be killed according to halacha (Rambam, Hilchot Melachim, ch. 6). Moreover, if an Amalekite converted, he could study Torah. The Talmud even records one opinion that “descendants of Haman (a descendant of Amalek) taught Torah in Bnei Brak” (Gittin 57b). Haman was Amalekite, yet his descendants who converted became Torah teachers. This illustrates that the mitzvah to eradicate Amalek is first and foremost an eternal spiritual mitzvah to eradicate Amalekite traits, and therefore does not apply to a non-Jew who does not represent those traits. In addition, mitzvot are not temporary; “erasing Amalek” points to a spiritual rectification relevant in every generation.

The inner meaning of this commandment is uprooting the evil that sacrifices itself to rebel against the Torah’s moral order. The Amalekite nation chose this role in the wilderness, savagely attacking the Jewish People's weak and elderly, out of ideological hatred rather than for plunder. They waged war on the very core of our faith.

Thus, “Amalek” is a name for cruelty and defiance of Torah ethics. Just as we must flee the ways of Sodom, the Torah commands us to battle Amalek in every generation, and most importantly, to root out the Amalek within.

Theoretically, had there been no Amalekite people, this inner mitzvah would have expressed itself differently, either through another form of uprooting evil within us, or through erasing another wicked nation that came to embody that evil in history.

At the same time, remember that God “calls the generations from the beginning” (Yeshayahu 41:4). He therefore fixed even the historical/physical contexts of the mitzvot at Creation. God knows the future and directs the history of nations according to the Torah’s plan, as it says (Mishlei 21:1): “A king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord; He inclines it wherever He wishes.” God guides rulers and turns the wheels of history.

This does not contradict the free choice of nations. As our Sages said: “Merit is brought through the meritorious, and guilt through the guilty” (Shabbat 32b). When a nation freely chooses evil, God channels that evil toward those upon whom such a decree has been passed. Individual free will always remains, as we learn from Ruth the Moabite and Rachav (Rahab), who chose to join Israel.

In answer to your question, God foresaw the Amalekites’ deeds even before the world was created and also directed that nation’s evil choices toward Israel in a way that fit the mitzvot’s purpose and context.

This explanation is stated explicitly by our Sages in the very Midrash that teaches the Torah predated Creation. There we find a parable: A king was married to a noblewoman but had no son. Passing through the market, he said, “Prepare pens and notebooks for my son.” People mocked: “He has no son, and he says ‘Prepare for my son’!” But if the king had not foreseen a son, he would not have ordered school supplies for him. Likewise, had the Holy One not foreseen that after twenty-six generations Israel would receive the Torah, He would not have written in the Torah: “Command the Children of Israel,” “Speak to the Children of Israel,” and so on (Bereishit Rabbah 1:4).

God reads all generations in advance and shapes worldly events to fit the mitzvot. You could say the Torah is the soul of Israel, and the world is the garment tailored for it. Just as the soul precedes the body — and the body is prepared for the soul, so the Torah precedes the world, and the world is prepared for the Torah’s fulfillment. The world’s existence therefore depends on the Torah’s study and observance: “Thus says the Lord: Were it not for My covenant day and night, I would not have established the laws of heaven and earth” (Yirmiyahu 33:25).