De-liver us!

There are so many discussions of Free Will that surround the story of the Exodus from Egypt, I'd like to focus on one little piece of the story and explain a little bit how, to the best of my understanding, Free Will works.

There are three central controlling organs in the human body, at least according to Kabbalah: (1) The Heart, (2) the Brain, and (3) the Liver.

In people this breaks down fairly nicely, and the most is said about our circumstances: Our Brain is the seat of the Godly Soul, the Liver is the seat of the Evil Urge or Animal Soul, and the Heart is the war-torn battleground between them. The Heart is the place where everything interesting takes place.

In Angels, their Heart is the seat of the Godly Soul, their Liver would be the battleground, but since there is no seat for their Evil Urge, they don't really have one. Therefore Angels are ruled purely by their Godly Soul.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Animals, their Animal Soul dwells in their heart and the Brain would be the battleground but there's no seat for the Godly Soul. Therefore Animals are ruled by their Animal Soul. Truly evil people can attain this level where they have all but entirely driven their Godly Soul out of their Brains, and have entirely ceded their Heart to the Animal Soul, this causes a loss of Free Will which was exactly Pharoah's problem. This is why it is said: "His heart was made hard," or more literally "His heart became liver." The Hebrew word used to mean hard in this case is the same word that means "Liver."

This is a grave over-generalization (For one, Angels don't have physical bodies in a classical sense) but it provides useful imagery to explain how People are in the sweet spot that gives us the ability to determine the battle between the forces of Good and 'Evil' which have both taken up residence within us.

a fragrance to ponder

The Noam Elimelech on B'ha'alotcha goes into a number of interesting principles:

First, he explains that malachim do not know a person's thoughts, (because they are hidden to HaShem) but HaShem did give angels the ability to smell the different intentions people have in their prayers. Through this ability the angels are able to know which prayers to offer up to HaShem in heaven such that they will produce a 'pleasant smelling offering.' (ריח נחוח)

Second, that Tzaddikim can know the thoughts behind a person's speech. This is how Mosheh Rabbeinu was able to know that even though the people were crying in their tents about 'the fish they had in Egypt,' he knew they were crying about the newly-prohibited marital relationships.

Third, that all the thoughts a person has are expressed in their prayers. This is how the angels discovered that Bnei Yisrael was crying over forbidden marital relationships. Because Mosheh Rabbeinu knew the thoughts behind their words, and prayed on their behalf, and Mosheh's thoughts entered into his prayers and the angels smelled his prayers. Otherwise the angels could never have known of Bnei Yisrael's true desires.

This explains why Mosheh sees this particular incident as his own failure, and asks to be killed rather than see his own folly in rearing the nation.