Rivkah is extremely puzzled at the start of Toldos. She has twins inside her stomache, and (as Rashi quotes on 25;22) one kicks to get out whenever they pass a house of idol worship, whilst the other kicks to get out when she passes the yeshiva of shem v’ever..and Rivkah doesn’t necessarily know she is having twins! So she seeks prophetic advice, and is told that she’s having twins who will head two opposite nations. The question is this: It is a basic axiom that to be able to be punished or rewarded, one must have free will. Butif Esav was already kicking out to avodah zarah when still unborn, where was his free will? What hope did he have for later on in life?
The answer is (as the Ramchal points out in derech hashem 1;3;8) that free will does not mean that one has no urges. It could still be that one has a 90% pull to do an aveirah, yet the fact that there is 10% fighting that urge (or even less) means that it is no longer inevitable that you must sin. And that’s where your free will kicks in – you must decide whether you will go with the 90 or the 10. So too here, Esav had a strong urge to do avodah zarah even in the womb, but when he grew older he had the tools to fight that urge.
The lesson for us is that it is perfectly natural to have urges to do things which are not 100% correct; are we going to give in or fight them?[or better still to use those same urges for good.eg gemarra shabbes 156a says that if someone has an urge for shedding blood he should channel that urge by being a mohel].
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