Nachmanides asks a question concerning the nature of prayer.⁸, Berachos, chapter 5. How can prayer change a divine decree from bad to good? Can there be a change in G‑d’s will?⁹ Perhaps we can understand it if a person is praying for himself, for just as he changed from bad to good, so the divine decree changed from bad to good. But this does not apply to prayers offered by others on his behalf. The Baal Shem Tov answered in the name of his teacher,¹⁰ that prayer sweetens the judgment of Malchus, which is called Judgment (Din) in its root in Binah. When you pray in this way for a friend, you bind him to his root above, and he becomes a different person than he was. To explain this further, it is known that the divine decree is a drop of seed in the womb of Malchus, and that it is composed of letters, as the Talmud says: “Betzalel knew how to combine the letters that went into the creation of heaven and earth.”¹¹ 55a. Certainly, the King does not enact His decrees upon others Himself. He appoints an emissary, who uses the word-combinations that convey the decree. But the emissary can arrange the first letters of the words so that they imply something else.¹² Now, the Tzaddik is the emissary of the Matron,¹³ who knows how to sweeten the judgments and to bind the drop that is in Malchus to Binah, so that it is transformed to something else. Katones Passim, p. 47b

footnotes: ⁸ See also the commentary “HaKosev” on Ein Yaakov ⁹ Seeing that G‑d’s Will is part of His Essence, since He is unchangeable, so His Will is unchangeable. ¹⁰ The prophet, Achiya HaShiloni. ¹¹ Berachos ¹² The Baal Shem Tov here specifies recombining the first letters of words to change the meaning of the decree. However, in other lessons, he speaks about different types of letter combinations that can alter the decree that descends from above. ¹³ The Shechinah.