Nitzavim: Choosing Forgiveness

(19) I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life—if you and your offspring would live...

(17) Perchance there is among you some man or woman, or some clan or tribe, whose heart is even now turning away from Adonai our God to go and worship the gods of those nations—perchance there is among you a stock sprouting poison weed and wormwood. (18) When such a one hears the words of these sanctions, they may fancy himself immune, thinking, “I shall be safe, though I follow my own willful heart”—to the utter ruin of moist and dry alike. (19) Adonai will never forgive them; rather will Adonai's anger and passion rage against that person, till every sanction recorded in this book comes down upon them, and Adonai blots out their name from under heaven.

...the Gemara relates: There were these hooligans in Rabbi Meir’s neighborhood who caused him a great deal of anguish. Rabbi Meir prayed for God to have mercy on them, that they should die.

Rabbi Meir’s wife, Brurya, said to him: What is your thinking? On what basis do you pray for the death of these hooligans? Do you base yourself on the verse, as it is written: “Let sins cease from the land” (Psalms 104:35), which you interpret to mean that the world would be better if the wicked were destroyed?

(35) May sinners disappear from the earth, and the wicked be no more. Blessed is Adonai, O my soul. Hallelujah.

(Devarim 11:26) "Behold, I set before you this day blessing and curse": Because it is written (Ibid. 30:19) "The life and the death have I set before you, the blessing and the curse," lest Israel say: Since God set before us two ways, the way of life and the way of death, we can choose whichever we wish; ... An analogy: A person is sitting at the crossroads, with two paths stretching before them, one, whose beginning is level and whose end is thorns, and one whose beginning is thorns and whose end is level. They apprises the passersby: This path whose beginning you see to be level — for two or three steps you will walk on level ground, and, in the end, on thorns. And this path whose beginning you see to be thorny — for two or three steps you will walk in thorns, and in the end you will walk on level ground. Thus did Moses speak to Israel: You see the wicked prospering — For two or three days they will prosper in this world, and in the end, they will be cast away,

as it is written (Proverbs 24:20) "For there is no (good) end for the wicked one," and (Kohelet 4:5) "The fool folds his hands together (in contentment), and, (in the end) he eats his own flesh."

They see the righteous suffering in this world. Their end is to rejoice, viz. (Devarim 8:16) "to benefit you in your latter end." And it is written (Kohelet 7:8) "Better the end of a thing than its beginning."