GEN845 There are some verses which lead people to fancy that God preordains and compels disobedience.  That is false and we shall explain these verses because people are often preoccupied with them.  One of them is His saying to Abraham: [this verse].  They said: “He preordained that the Egyptians would oppress the seed of Abraham.  Why then did He punish them, when they necessarily and inevitably enslaved them [the Hebrews] as He preordained?” The answer is that this is like the Exalted saying that some people born in the future will be sinful, some will be obedient, some virtuous, and some bad.  Now, this correct, but it does not necessarily follow from this statement that a given bad man is bad without fail, nor that a given virtuous man is virtuous without fail. Rather, whoever is bad I so by his own choice. If he wishes to be virtuous, he can be so; there is nothing preventing him.  Similarly, if any virtuous man wishes to, he can be bad; there is nothing preventing him.  The prediction is not about a particular individual, so that he could say: “It has been preordained for me.”  Rather, it is stated in a general way, and each individual remains able to exercise his choice upon his original inborn disposition.  Similarly, if any individual Egyptian who oppressed them and treated them unjustly had not wanted to oppress them, he had choice about that; for it was not preordained that a given individual would oppress them.  EWM 88-9