The Mekhilta presents a teaching that reaches back before the creation of the world itself. The names of the righteous — and their deeds — are known to God before they are ever born. The proof comes from the prophet Jeremiah, to whom God said: "Before I created you in the womb, I knew you" (Jeremiah 1:5). God did not discover Jeremiah's character after he grew up. God knew the prophet — his name, his mission, his nature — before a single cell of his body existed.
But the teaching does not stop with the righteous. The Mekhilta asks: what about the wicked? Are their names also known in advance? The answer comes from Psalms: "The wicked are estranged from the womb" (Psalms 58:4). Even before birth, the trajectory of the wicked is apparent to God. Their estrangement from righteousness is not a surprise that unfolds over a lifetime — it is visible from the very beginning.
This teaching raises profound questions about free will and divine foreknowledge — questions the rabbis debated extensively elsewhere. The Mekhilta does not resolve the tension here. It simply states the fact: God knows. Before creation, before birth, before the first breath, the names and natures of both the righteous and the wicked stand revealed before the divine mind.
The symmetry is striking and intentional. Righteousness and wickedness are not accidents. They are patterns that God perceives from the beginning of time, written into the fabric of souls before those souls ever enter the world.