How God Judges Man
Rabbi Moshe Ben-Chaim & Howard Salamon
Perhaps there is among you some man or woman, or some clan or tribe, whose heart is even now turning away from God our God to go and worship the gods of those nations. Perhaps there is among you a stock sprouting poison weed and wormwood (a corrupt person), who, when hearing the words of these curses, imagines immunity, thinking, “I shall be safe (from punishment) because I follow my own willful heart”—so that his moist is added to his dry. God will never forgive him. Rather, God’s anger and passion will rage against him, until every punishment recorded in this book comes down upon him, and God blots out his name from under heaven. (Deut. 29:17-19)
“His moist is added to his dry” means God will view his prior inadvertent (moist/drunken) sins as intentional (Rashi). Rashi says further, that God says:
When a person feels safe and denies these punishments, he causes Me to combine his prior inadvertent sins with those committed with premeditation and I will exact punishment from him for everything as if all his sins were fully intentional.
How do we understand God converting inadvertent sins to intentional sins? That sounds like God is changing the intent of previous sins, when you can’t change history! Furthermore, why is it discussed in a metaphor, God adds the “wet to the dry?” Just say clearly, “God is converting accidental sins into intentional sins.” Why use metaphor?
Metaphor is employed because God is not literally converting the prior inadvertent sins, as we said, history cannot be altered. Ezekiel 18:24 says similarly:
So, too, if someone righteous turns away from righteousness and does wrong, practicing the very abominations that the wicked person practiced, shall they live? None of the righteous deeds that they did shall be remembered; because of the treachery they have practiced and the sins they have committed—because of these, they shall die.
We derive that God judges a person in his current state:
God heard the cry of the boy, and an angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heeded the cry of the boy where he is” (Gen. 21:17).
Rashi: “Where he is”: According to the actions he is now doing shall he be judged.
God judges a person based on his current values. “None of the righteous deeds that they did shall be remembered.” Maimonides writes:
Anyone who changes his mind about the mitzvos that he has performed and regrets their merits, saying in his heart, “What value was there in doing them? I wish I had not performed them,” such a person loses all merits. As Ezekiel 33:12 states, “The righteousness of the upright will not save him on the day of his transgression” (Laws of Repentance 3:3).
The idolater, confident in his choice to sin, can’t be corrected as he heard the curses and ignores them; He's following his heart, which he feels determines reality. He feels justified in all his heart tells him and that the curses won't apply to him. He won’t change. His previous good deeds and lesser sins do not register anymore, as he has corrupted himself to a level of evil that is irreparable. He denies Torah’s warnings. He is beyond help. His current values render him “as if” his lesser sins are now converted to intentional sins, and as if all his previous good deeds never took place. All previous merits plays no role in his current state (he no longer values them), it is as if he never performed those good actions, for his previous goodness does not affect him. This is the meaning of “I will exact punishment from him for everything as if all his sins were fully intentional.”
History remains unchanged, but his prior goodness no longer plays any role now. “God will never forgive him” precisely because this person will never repent. But a person who does repent, Torah [1] tells us that nothing stands before repentance, meaning it is effective and he can be forgiven.
But the final question arises: If God does not recall the good of a person who becomes wicked, judging a person in his current state alone, how can Maimonides say in that very same law (Repentance 3:3) that each year God weighs a person's sins against his merits? This cannot be if God forgets all the merits! So which way is it: does God retain the merits from the year, or does God forget them?
But the answer is found in that very same law because Maimonides qualifies that the person only loses merits when he regrets doing them. This means that he does not value the good whatsoever. But if he does not regret the mitzvos he performed, then he is a person who had moments during the year where he was righteous and moments during the year where he slipped and committed sins. In that case God retains both: all his good and all his evil and then weighs them at Rosh Hashanna. But if one regrets all the good he did, or if he hears the curses and is confident that what he did was righteous (meaning he justifies his evil), in that case there is no merit to the person's life.
There are two individuals that are being addressed:
1) An individual, like all individuals, who has sins and merits throughout the year. This type of person, each Rosh Hashanah, God will weigh his merits against his sins and whichever weighs out determines his fate.
2) One who has done good during the year but then he becomes corrupt and does not value the good activities and mitzvos. That person has no merit whatsoever.
[1] Pirkei Avos 4:11, Maimonides Hil. Teshuva 6:2