01/10/2025
Introduction
Imagine a legal clause that suddenly looks up from its checklists like precision and says, “God Himself will testify about you.” In the heart of Hilchot Teshuvah 2:2, which takes pains to define and source the necessary steps towards teshuva, the Rambam drops that startling line “He Who knows the hidden will testify” and then marches on, leaving readers to wonder what, exactly, just happened.
This essay follows that flash of deceptive-looking poetry into its halachic and philosophical depths. First, it maps out three classic readings of the testimony clause—literal, covenantal-witness, and descriptive—and weighs their strengths and pitfalls. Next, it tests each against the Rambam’s uncompromising doctrine of free will clarifying why God’s testimony cannot be, as it seems at first blush, a deterministic guarantee. Armed with greater clarity of this phrase, it will be shown how this line’s placement between regret and confession functions within the Rambam’s step-by-step arc of repentance. Finally, to enhance clarity of the Rambam’s position and to couch it in a broader discussion of the tension between free will and determinism there will be a brief review of three Rishonim: Rav Saadia Gaon, Ralbag, and Rabbenu Crescas. These three stand in distinction with the Rambam on three key levels regarding the nature of God and how far free will and divine knowledge of the future extend. What will emerge in this essay is a yardstick, of sorts, for sincere teshuvah that can withstand the scrutiny of the Knower of Secrets without surrendering the dignity of our fundamental mission to choose life and not death.
“He Who Knows the Hidden Will Testify” in Light of Free Will
In Hilchos Teshuvah 2:2, the Rambam defines teshuvah by describing the process one must undertake to complete it:
“What constitutes teshuvah? That the sinner should abandon his sin and remove it from his thoughts, and resolve in his heart never to do it again, as it says (Yirmiyahu. 55:7), ‘Let the wicked abandon his ways…’ Likewise, he must regret the past, as it says (Yermiyahu 31:19), ‘After I returned, I regretted.’ He Who knows the hidden will testify about him that he will never return to this sin again, as it says (Hoshea 14:4), ‘We will no longer say to the work of our hands, “You are our gods.”’ He must verbally confess and say these matters which he resolved in his heart.”
This outline takes a sharp poetic pitstop with the striking phrase, “He Who knows the hidden will testify” before getting back on the procedural path. While the other three stages are instructional, this middle step stands apart in several ways. Not only is it simply not instructional but it also changes perspective from what the individual must do to what Hashem does. No elucidation or theological implications are offered. Yet, just like the other steps it’s given a scriptural source making it hard to say it’s there for flair. Given the Mishnah Torah is a legal text for us and not God, this oddity in the text raises three questions:
1. How do we describe what this “testimony” means, precisely? Is it a literal divine declaration, symbolic affirmation, or something else?
2. How can “testimony” one will never sin again be reconciled with the Rambam’s views on free will?
3. Why is this phrase placed between regret and confession?
The Testimony: An Interpretive Approaches
Three approaches tackle what this testimony is, exactly. Benei Binyamin, Kovetz al Yad Chazaka, Nachal Eitan, and Maaseh Rokeach take this statement at face value. Hashem does indeed accompany a person on his process of teshuvah, quite literally. This position connects Rambam’s phrase to the midrash in Yalkut Shimoni Hoshea 532 where the Jewish people ask Hashem, “If we repent, who will testify for us?” God replies, “I will testify.” Only God, who knows the inner heart, confirms the penitent’s sincerity.
This position’s strength is its fidelity to the plain wording of the text resisting the impulse to soften it into metaphor. Supported by the midrashic precedent, grounding Rambam’s words in a recognized rabbinic tradition, it reinforces an image of teshuvah as an intimate process with God as an active participant in one’s personal transformation. Even when we are the farthest from Hashem, He is always there ready to accompany us on our journey home. Yet, this literalist reading faces serious challenges as it raises slight tension with the Rambam’s explicit insistence in Hilchos Teshuvah 5–6 that free will is never annulled. Also, the inclusion of divine action is out of place in this halachic code.
A second position sees this phrase as metaphorical. The Kesef Mishnah, understands the proof text of Hoshea 14:4 as illustrating the sinner’s own act of taking God as witness. This understanding is especially in light of the previous verse, “Take words with you and return…” (Hoshea 14:3). Thus, this phrase is covenantal and not a metaphysical guarantee. The Lechem Mishnah describes how this approach avoids contradicting the Rambam’s concept of free will which is entirely in the hands of man. God’s “testimony” is the sinner’s solemn acceptance of God as his witness much like, “I call heaven and earth to witness against you” (Devarim 30:19) blocking the theological trap of determinism that this is a divine promise such a person would never sin again.
This position has clear advantages. It sidesteps theological contradictions making the testimony an act within human control. It also preserves the legal coherence of the Mishnah Torah by keeping it as an actionable step that aligns neatly with the Hoshea prooftext which reads naturally as human speech to God. However, it also has weaknesses. It strips the phrase of its extraordinary quality underplaying the strong wording that suggests more than a human pledge. Also, it does not fully integrate the rich imagery of the Midrash where God Himself vouches for the penitent.
The last approach, of the Divrei Yirmiyahu, is this phrase is descriptive. A true scenic route on one’s journey towards teshuvah gemurah. Here the Rambam is speaking about teshuvah me’ulah, akin to King David’s repentance in Shmuel II 12:13 where, “The Lord has removed your sin; you shall not die.” In agreement with the above position, “Testimony” is not a metaphysical suspension of free will but an expression of the relative, though not definitive, moral certainty achieved through total transformation.
The strength of this view is it preserves the almost lyrical force of the Rambam’s phrase without violating free will offering a psychologically sensitive account of how one’s moral state can approach certainty of non-relapse. Yet it too faces limits as it is difficult to verify such a rarefied state from the inside. It also lacks the sense of concrete instruction of integrating the “testimony” into practical teshuvah and risks redundancy with the earlier stage of resolving never to sin again making it appear more a flourish than a separate halachic element.
The Free Will Question
Taking this phrase as a divine guarantee raises a gigantic theological problem for the Rambam given his uncompromising stance in Hilchos Teshuvah 5 and 6. On the one hand, the Rambam asserts free will is absolute. No one is decreed righteous or wicked. Each of us can become as righteous as Moshe or as wicked as Yeravom. All reward, punishment, and prophetic admonition presuppose free choice. On the other hand, God’s omniscience does not negate human freedom. How Hashem’s foreknowledge and our free will coexist is beyond comprehension but both are foundational truths. Some challenging verses do exist implying divine compulsion but the Rambam explains these as exceptional cases where God punishes entrenched wickedness by closing the gates of teshuvah. Crucially, he makes clear withholding repentance is a consequence of prior willful sin and not a divine override of original freedom casting these examples within the framework of free will.
Looking at the Rambam’s Shemoneh Perakim, we can glean more precisely what the Rambam means by free will. For him, it is a divinely sanctioned power to choose good or evil in the moral domain of action and in the development of belief. While beginning in the emotional of “fear of Heaven,” the Rambam does not see free will as merely a feeling or an intention but as a clear, concrete, and manifestable human behavior. Everything else—weather, health, stature, physical circumstances—falls under the order of Heaven, but in the moral sphere Rambam insists the choice and consequence in action are wholly ours treating freedom as a trainable capacity of the soul that one can actively strengthen or degrade.
Free will, then, is a constitutive feature of being human axiomatically rooted in the Torah’s words, “Behold, man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil” (Bereshis 3:22). It is the hinge upon which the entire halachic system turns. Without genuine alternative possibilities actually existing in potential, Torah law, reward and punishment, and the very possibility of teshuvah would collapse. However, the Rambam insists this freedom is not a denial of nature’s fixed order nor is cancelled by divine foreknowledge. In this way, the Rambam’s definition of free will is maximal as a real trainable power of moral self-determination integral to the justice of halachah.
The Implications of Free Will
Rambam insists repeatedly man’s choices always remain his own, God does not determine righteousness or wickedness, and reward and punishment rest on voluntary action. Thus, when Rambam says, “He Who knows the hidden will testify,” this cannot mean God deterministically guarantees the sinner will never fall again. Instead, the commentators suggest three possible reconciliations.
The first is the covenantal-witness model. This view has a literalist and metaphorical version. The literalist read, advanced by Benei Binyamin, Kovetz al Yad Chazaka, Nachal Eitan, and Maaseh Rokeach takes the phrase at face value wherein God Himself actually testifies. To remain consistent with Hilchos Teshuva 5 and 6, this would be evidentiary attestation of a present, inward state, not decretive guarantee of future behavior accompanying repentance without causing it. The metaphorical version on this model, put forward in the Kesef Mishnah and Lechem Mishnah, makes the testimony a formal act of the individual himself within the process of repentance where he takes God as witness to his resolve invoking the Divine, not as a coercive force, but as the guarantor of one’s solemn promise. God’s role, in either view then, is more juridical-symbolic rather than determinative.
The second approach, offered by the Divrei Yirmiyahu, treats the testimony as descriptive of the present moral state of the penitent where the transformation is so complete that relapse appears unimaginable, though metaphysically possible. Rambam is sketching what complete repentance looks like from a divine vantage, not suspending choice.
The third approach, not yet addressed above and only hinted at in Tzafnas Pa’neach, sees this testimony as a kind of spiritual certification similarly framed to the first position’s literalist read with a slight nuance. When teshuvah arises from love rather than fear, God’s “testimony” functions as verification that teshuvah is complete akin to a halachic status determination. In the same way that a rav can assert an animal is fit to be offered as a korban, this does not preclude the possibility that in the future the animal may later develop a blemish. This approach straddles the line between halachic precision and theological elevation where at the highest level of teshuvah is a state of complete purification. This approach’s strength is it honors the halachic nature of Rambam’s code while still acknowledging the elevated theological imagery. It allows “He Who knows the hidden” to retain its divine force, since only Hashem can certify the heart’s inner transformation and yet it avoids any compromise of free will since the future remains open. The weakness lies in its abstraction. It situates the phrase at a level that is rare and rarefied making it more of an ideal than a practical step.
Qualitatively, this psak-framing differs from the literalist view in that instead of God attesting to an already-present sincerity, He renders a status judgment that constitutes the penitent as standing in teshuvah gemurah. Also, in the courtroom-role-shift from witness to judge Hashem is not reporting, so to speak, a personal subjective experience but deciding the halachic standing of the inherent status of the person and how others ought to see him as. These two points, cumulatively, show the witness-framing to be a weaker assurance. However, even despite the psak lens being more forceful as conceptually similar to objective truth, it still preserves freedom by operating in the present tense as certification and not a promise.
Strengths and weaknesses of each position aside, in all three views, the Rambam’s principle of free will is preserved. Divine testimony either reflects the sinner’s own declaration, describes his present transformation, or affirms the process has reached the level of teshuvah gemurah. None imply the individual loses the capacity to sin again in the future.
Here, the Shemoneh Perakim again illuminates the Rambam’s thought explaining how he holds omniscience and free will together without contradiction. If God infallibly knows today that one will sin tomorrow, then is it not so that one must sin and cannot be free? Rambam’s resolution is to deny God’s knowledge functions like human knowledge. Divine knowledge is identical with God’s essence, neither temporal nor discursive, unlike our composite, sequential cognition. Because it is sui generis, applying human categories of cause and necessity to it is a categorical error. Thus, “God knows” does not entail “man must.” We can affirm both truths of God’s perfect knowledge and man’s free choice while admitting we cannot supply the mechanism of their reconciliation since that would require penetrating the divine. Moreover, Rambam distinguishes between natural and moral causation in that God authored a stable natural order but does not micromanage each moral choice. Within the sphere of “fear of Heaven,” human agency is real and undetermined.
The Psak of He Who Knows the Hidden will testify
Given the above, a clearer and implemental understanding of this hilchos teshuva 2:2 emerges. The five elements listed are a single escalating process-oriented arc with each step being a prerequisite to the next, not a flat checklist. First comes abandonment of the sin which is the behavioral break that halts ongoing damage and interrupts habit. Next is the inward resolution for the future, an identity-level commitment that re-orients will. Rambam places this ahead of regret because genuine remorse ripens only after the deed has been decisively ceased and one has begun to habituate to the good. Regret then reframes the past from the standpoint of a reconstituted self as a moral cognition that the prior act was truly misaligned with the good. The phrase “He Who knows the hidden will testify”, the fourth step, is best read as the apex criterion that crowns this interior work laying down the internal motivational groundwork for the last step of verbal confession – coming full circle with the reemergence of behavior; the core conceptual pattern in all of the Rambam’s thinking where external action leads to internal thought reemerging as behavior in a sort of infinite moral regress loop emulating the divine process of creation where the physical brings about transcendence that then transforms the physical. Whether as a covenantal self-commitment before God, a description of a present state of transformation that even Heaven would acknowledge, or a status-verification of teshuvah, this step functions to ensure regret reaches full maturity before speech formalizes it. This step in teshuvah, then, is the requirement of one attempting full integration by drawing all the disparate parts of one’s psychology into a single unified focus. In one internally unified voice, the verbal confession externalizes the raw energy of this integrated inner process into crystal clear form as a juridical act sealing the return, giving halachic form to what has been achieved in deed, will, and heart.
Read this way, this phrase is neither extraneous poetry nor a digression in the hidden mysteries of the divine. Rather, it provides halachic guidance calibrating the quality-threshold for charatah and kabalah le’atid. One must shape his resolve and remorse until he could, in good faith and without hubris, “take God on as a witness,” or until his present moral stance is so stable that, from a divine vantage, relapse is morally unthinkable even if, in principle, free will remains. The clause sets an aspirational but legally meaningful yardstick. Aim for a teshuvah with the sincerity that would withstand the scrutiny of the Knower of Secrets. This understanding also explains its placement before confession since this inner work is necessary in order to give confession its full legal voice.
Rambam’s Stance Amongst Rishonim
The Rambam refuses to buy peace between free will and Hashem’s knowledge of what is by shrinking either. This paradox is fortified behind the walls of divine simplicity that God’s knowledge is not like ours coexisting with free choice (Hilchos Teshuvah 5:5; Moreh Nevuchim I:68; III:20–21). The broad strokes of this position can be found earlier in Rav Saadia Gaon’s Emunos Ve-Deos, Treatise IV. While the Gaon of Sura doesn’t split the difference between free will and divine omniscience either, unlike the Rambam, he pushes forward boldly asserting axioms about the nature of Hashem as opposed to hunkering down behind negative theology. Given humanity is the center of creation and the addressee of command, reward, and punishment our distinctive intellect makes us genuinely responsible (Emunot Ve-Deos IV, Intro–ch. 2). Our freedom to act is real and this ability was given to us as a divine corner of the universe in order to emulate Hashem. Cumulatively on the basis of not only reason but also the straight forward phenomenological felt sense of our experience of this power, such as the simple experience of how we clearly determine for ourselves if we wish to speak or be silent and this mastery of our actions does indeed manifest, numerous scriptural demands to “Choose life”, and from tradition (IV:4) it is clear Hashem does not act for us and we are the engine of our actions.
Hashem knows each human act “as it will in fact result” from our deliberation and is not caused by our actions. Had one chosen, in theory to turn left instead of right, His timeless knowledge would have matched that alternative. His knowledge has tracked the way one’s life will unfold until the end but not by fate nor by forcing the outcome (IV:4). In special exceptions where Hashem does interact in the world by decree, this is limited to only outcomes but not the process. This caveat preserves the boundaries of free will. Death and loss may be decreed by God, but murder belongs to the murderer and theft to the thief (IV:5). For Rav Saadia, free will is always inviolable. Yes, the ends can be established, the stage can be set, and one’s abilities increased or decreased, but the will itself to choose and do is untouched.
Two other positions are worth noting. While Rav Saadia expands the realm of what is possible to know about Hashem, the Ralbag limits His divine knowledge and Rabbenu Chasdai Crescas limits Free will. Looking at the Ralbag, first, freewill is preserved as the Rambam but limits God’s knowledge. In Milchamos III.1–III.3 he presents numerous objections to the Rambam’s idea of Hashem’s omniscience over contingents and is unimpressed by his radical disanalogy between God’s knowledge and ours seeing it as a verbal escape hatch. If divine knowledge doesn’t behave like knowledge at all then on what grounds can this term be used at all? Rambam’s Godly knowledge, if applied to people, would be at best fantasy and at worst considered confusion and outright error. Avoiding this equivocation pitfall, the Ralbag limits God’s knowledge as being posterior in an analogical sense to make room for both divine simplistic immutability and genuine contingency that are not determinate truth-conditions. God knows natures, laws, orders, and all necessary consequences. He knows every possible condition and outcome but not the undetermined upshot of a genuinely free choice as a determinate fact before it occurs. Once the act is done, however, God knows it as actual. Before then, He is only aware of it as one of several open possibilities fixed by the universal order He perfectly comprehends (Milchamos III.2–III.3).
Rabbenu Chasdai Crescas offers a third position. In Or Hashem (II.5), he asserts what is possible exists in a thin vale given God’s total knowledge. As such, every physical event is necessarily determinant and what we experience as choice only exists on the level of emotion and only where there is an absence of felt coercion. For Rabbenu Crescas, Pirkie Avos 3:19 statement, “everything is foreseen and yet permission is granted” is only permission to a small subset of feelings that are backed by conviction over instinct (II.5 ch 1-4). From this determinist position reward and punishment are only in reference to the love, joy, eagerness, or aversion one internally has towards truths and the motivational desire to act. What happens between one’s heart and hand is Hashem’s business (II.5 ch. 5).
This same measure holds true when looking at one’s culpability in their beliefs. Even here it is the devotional relish one brings in how they orient themselves in knowing God that matters (II.5 ch. 6). The actual propositionally held belief itself is not relevant. Thus, if a person’s cognition, a product of all the previous determinant causes that led up to it, currently compels him to think “God does not exist,” yet he resents and fights that conviction, then he is functionally a**s because it was the causal chain and not emotionally motivated conviction which forced his belief. By contrast, when disbelief in Hashem is owned and loved, negligently cultivated motivationally refusing correction outside of a causal chain which could also produce the same outcome of resistance, or is used to justify vice only then does this cross the threshold into blame. In this view, given the importance antecedents are given, mitzvos function as causal instruments that direct, shape, and refine the will’s delight. The paradoxes of unqualified omniscience with providence along with preserved moral responsibility encased in a prison of meaningless action all spin on the axis of the human heart (II.6 intro-ch. 2).
Returning to the Rambam’s “He who knows the hidden will testify concerning him that he will never return to this sin again” how would these three giants have meant this phrase if their hands were on the pen? Rav Saadia Gaon provides the assurance the Rambam can stand on. Ralbag, by contrast, would see the testimony as God’s knowledge of the general principles and moral dispositions now present in the person, from which relapse is not impossible (Milchamos Hashem III.2–3). Despite the philosophical differences, in the final analysis Ralbag too would not see this statement as deterministic. Rabbenu Crescas, while conceding the person may never act out a sin, this is of little relevance. Since responsibility is grounded in the noncoerced motivation of one’s will (Or Hashem II.5–6), the testimony is only speaking about these sorts of feelings which are also out of Hashem’s control. In sum, while each thinker resolves the tension differently—Rambam and Rav Saadia by paradox, Ralbag by restricting foreknowledge, and Crescas by restricting freedom – all would ultimately concur that this phrase cannot be legitimately referring to Hashem controlling one’s behavior assuring teshuvah is deterministically secure. While all agree Hashem knows the future in some sense, each carve out an untouchable space for free will.
Conclusion
“He Who Knows the Hidden Will Testify” is not a rhetorical flair or poetic twist. It’s a deliberate marker of the motivational apex necessary to push teshuvah forward. Ceasing the behavior and even emotional regret are only the beginning steps. Put another way, teshuva is not reflection on one’s past nor updating one’s moral compass in the present. Instead, it is a life choice that looks towards the future with the goal of radically changing one’s fundamental character. In that sense, Hashem witnessing the creation of a new being intuitively makes sense as it, in of itself, is a divine act of creation.
The testimony, as an image, illustrates what complete teshuvah looks like. Admittedly, this level may remain elusive to some but this high standard is not relevant when articulating the archetypal nature of what teshuvah is in its fullest sense. After all, the beginning words of this halacha poses the question of what teshuvah is. By definition, it must be presented in its full aspirational sense but even at the height of the Divine gaze, the ontological possibility of choice is never denied. In this way, the poetic-seeming clause is not a digression but an integral theological and legal statement in image, showing teshuvah culminates not only in human resolve but also in the recognition of that resolve before the One who searches all hearts.
To Reach Out:
Email: info@jerusalemtherapy.org
Phone: 053-808-0435
International: +972538080435
- Bio -
Yonasan’s a graduate of Hebrew University’s School of Social Work and Social Welfare. He completed post graduate training in a wide array of therapeutic approaches from CBT at The Beck Institute, behavior and emotion focused therapies, to various Psychodynamic theories. Before Hebrew University, he studied at Washington University in St. Louis and Drake University majoring in philosophy and ethics. He received his rabbinic ordination from Rav Yitzchak Berkovits.
Yonasan is a member of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science and a Dialectical Behavioral Therapist skills trainer. He has collaborated with Machon Dvir and has been a group leader for the National Educational Alliance for Borderline Personality Disorder Family Connections program.
He specializes in treating anxiety, depression, anger, poor self-esteem, insomnia, autism, eating disorders, psychosis, problems in parenting, sexual dysfunction, and marital conflict. He has an extensive background working with individuals, couples, families, and children in his therapy practice.
