Comentários de Citação sobre Números 15:7

You should know that if G-d had decreed that Reuven should be killed and such a decree had been recorded and sealed in front of G-d on Rosh Hashanah (in other words that the decree had become irreversible), the human executioner of said Reuven will not be considered free of the charge of murder even though what he did resulted in G-d’s decree being carried out. Such an executioner is a murderer and will be punished by G-d as such. If however, said human executioner had heard from the mouth of a prophet that a decree of death had been passed by the celestial court on a certain person and he made himself the executioner of that decree in order to carry out G-d’s will, he will not only not be considered a murderer but he will be credited with having done a good deed. We find a classic example of this when Jehu killed the surviving family of Achav (Kings II 10,17, and 10,30). We read there: יען אשר הטיבות לעשות הישר בעיני ככל אשר בלבבי עשית לבית אחב, בני רבעים ישבו לך על כסא ישראל. “Because you have acted well and done what was pleasing to Me, having carried out all that I desired upon the House of Achav, four generations of your descendants will sit on the throne of Israel.” If the person doing something similar had not heard the decree of G-d against his intended victim and he had committed the act out of feelings of personal hatred or in order to commit robbery, he is subject to being punished for the same deed that someone who had heard G-d’s decree would be rewarded.
We have an explicit verse in Isaiah 10,5-6 in which the prophet spells this out. “Ha, Assyria, rod of My anger in whose hand, as a staff is My fury! I send him against an ungodly nation, I charge him against a nation that provokes Me. To take its spoil and to seize his booty and to make it a thing trampled like the mire of the streets.” The prophet goes on to say in verse 7: “But he (Assyria) has evil plans, his mind harbours evil designs, etc.” It is clear that the prophet draws a line of distinction between a conqueror who does what he does because he wishes to fulfill the designs of his Maker, and the conqueror who is merely motivated by dreams of personal glory, vengeance, and other base motives.
The same applied to Nebuchadnezzar. All of the prophets had declared that G-d had decreed destruction on Jerusalem and that Nebuchadnezzar and all his people had been chosen to be the instrument by means of which G-d’s decree would be carried out. This is what we read in Jeremiah 32,28-29: הנני נותן את העיר הזאת ביד הכשדים וביד נבוכדרצר מלך בבל, “here I am about to deliver the city of Jerusalem into the hands of the Chaldaens and Nebuchadrezzar the King of the Babylon and they will put the city to fire.” Nonetheless we find that Nebuchadrezzar was punished just as Sancheriv had been punished for exiling the Ten Tribes (compare Jeremiah 50,18). כה אמר ה' הנני פוקד אל מלך בבל ואל ארצו כאשר פקדתי אל מלך אשור, “so says G-d: ‘I will deal with the King of Babylon and his country just as I have dealt with the King of Ashur.” Thus far Nachmanides’ comment on our verse.