Because the God of Abraham is not in favor of free will, that was just made up by people later on to justify why there is so much evil in the world. . A while ago I asked the question on AB 'which passage in the Bible most clearly shows that God intended man to have free will' and I got zero answers.

You need to re-read the text (Exodus 4-12). It says that seven times Pharoah hardened his heart and once that God hardened Pharoah's heart. The idea is that we chose to accept or reject God by hardening our own hearts and in the end God makes it permanent. It was Pharoah's choice.

Doh! There is no god. Forget it.

Actually, it's interesting to contrast the Judaic God of this early part of the OT with the Christian God of later times. . Whilst the Christian God is all loving and merciful and only wishes that you a) provide Him your freely given love and/or b) believe that Jesus was His son; the Judaic God wanted you only to abide by His laws and commandments and was wrathful on those that didn't. . Free will was not a concept that was at the forefront of early OT beliefs and while it's existence was implied it was not the sacrosanct principle that Christian invention subsequently made it into. There was nothing unusual or earthshaking about Yahweh taking away people's free will, in fact the OT is full examples of this kind of behavior. . Early OT tradition amd belief about the nature of God was very different from those of Christians, and even to a degree from later Judaic belief. For instance; the first half of the OT strongly suggests that both the Jewish peoples and God himself accepted the existence of other Gods (albeit that they were inferior to Yahweh/Elohim). It is only when you get to Isaiah and beyond that you find the clear statement that there is only one God and no others.

We really dont have free will,cause we always chose sin,the bible says our hearts are continually evil.Epesians 1:4 for he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world;according to his WILL and good pleasure.Adam and Eve were the only ones who had a free will,because they were perfect,but when they sinned they lost that.

Response to A Legend in My Spare Time’ comment. . No, it doesn't really answer my question. . The existence or otherwise of the rapture is of no real consequence to the way people live their lives nor is it central to the very nature of humanity's existence. Likewise whether you accept the doctrine of the trinity or not doesn't affect the teachings or message of Jesus. . Free will on the other hand affects and is central to the existence of every single human being that ever walked the planet, regardless of religious persuasion, race gender, period in history etc. Of course free will exists (although it could be said that if we didn’t have it we probably wouldn’t realize it) but the question is, how does this concept fit with what religion tells us is the meaning of life. . Are we really to accept that nowhere in the entire 775,000 words of the Bible the most fundamental principle of our existence is not once explained? That in the thousands of words that supposedly came directly from God to men in the OT, something as important as the operation of free will and the reason for it never makes a single appearance? You might be forgiven for wondering what the point of the Bible is since the most critical things are noticeably absent from the texts. . Hedge-rider’s question gives an example of how our understanding of free will must be lacking and there are countless more examples throughout the Bible. Our misunderstanding is not really surprising of course since God never actually made the effort to explain to humanity how it is actually supposed to work (see previous paragraph) . You might also wonder how ‘free’ this free will actually is when the exercise of it results in immediate annihilation from God (Lot’s wife for looking over her shoulder, the whole of the earth’s population except for Noah + 7 others for doing who knows what etc, etc) In fact, even excluding the ‘Noah flood incident’ the Bible contains circa 2 million examples of God killing or ordering the deaths of people that had the temerity to exercise the ‘God given’ gift of ‘free will’.

In response to Hyperion: At least you're thinking about it, and with a reasonable intellectual prowess at that. However, what your missing is the fact that the people in the OT that were annihilated had plenty of time to change their ways and/or repent before their destruction. As soon as Lucifer was found with pride in his heart the very first time his sentence was eminant and irreversible because he never had the free will option as we do. A lifetime of sin with an untimely death at any given age is hardly immediate. As for the nations He ordered Isreal to completely decimate, men, women, children and livestock, He knew that they and their false gods would become a stumbling block and destraction from their true God, as was proven over and over again later on in the OT scripture (and they were duely punished). It was merely a preemptive strike postponing the inevitable. Yes, getting a little off track, sorry. Free will is in short the vehicle God allows us to decide for ourselves to either follow Him or our own self interests. It's that simple. Us or Him. We have a lifetime to decide. Thats a generous allowance as far as I'm concerned. As I've said, the OT proves over and over through the Hebrews as well as the gentiles that we have choices and our choices have either good or bad consiquences, just as we as individuals in our mundane day to day lives have similar choices with similar outcomes albeit on a much smaller scale. Again, as I've stated before, the free will concept is implied in every book of scripture if you're paying attention.

The answer is in the bible. God took away his free will in order to do more miracles so that the people should recognize and serve him. I assume that he wasn't punished for it because in reality the refusal was god's action, not his. The plague that followed was because the previous plagues were not enough punishment. The reason that god set it up this way was to do a lot of miracles so that people should recognize and serve him. (All this only makes sense if you assume that the bible is the word of god and that god didn't lie.)

Great Question. It is like why did Noah take mosquitoes on the ark? Seriously others have already given good answers but here is my answer as well. I do not know the mind of God nor am I able. God is God, that means He is Soverign. As a Soverign ruler, He can do what He pleases and why He does things and how He does them is His works. I love the Lord our God and the miracles He did for the Hebrew people are still a thrilling inspiration for today

I don't think G-d is or was in favor of free will; it is us (humanity) who chose it and look where that has brought us.................