Anger Leads to Error

In the Torah portion of Matoth, Israel fights a war against the nation of Midyan (B'Midbar/Numbers 31:1-12), and upon vanquishing that nation, returns with a tremendous bounty of spoils, including food implements of all types. Thereupon, the people are commanded in the laws relating to purifying those vessels (ibid. v. 21-25) before they can be used for consumption by Israelites. We read (v. 21):

"Elazar the Kohen said to the men of the army that went to battle, 'This is the statute of the Torah that HaShem (G-d) commanded Mosheh (Moses)...'"

Peculiar is the fact that the one to command the people regarding these laws is Elazar the son of Aharon (Aaron) as opposed to Mosheh. Since the passing of Aharon shortly before this incident, Aharon's son Elazar took over his father's position of Kohen Gadol (High Priest), and was perhaps Mosheh's second-in-command at this time. Nevertheless, despite Elazar's high rank, it remains anomalous that he should instruct the people in these laws when throughout Israel's forty-year trek through the wilderness under Mosheh's command, it was consistently the custom of Mosheh himself to do so. Why the sudden change in procedure?

Rashi offers the following suggestion (ibid.):

"Because Moshe came to anger, he came to err, as the laws . . . became hidden from him."

In the previous section (v. 13-20), Mosheh becomes angry (v. 14) at the men of the army for having spared the females of Midyan. Prior to the war (ibid. 25:1-9), these women had seduced the Israelite men into idol worship and lewd sexual practice, bringing upon Israel a plague that decimated 24,000 Israelites. This spiritual attack against Israel instigated the war against Midyan from which Israel now returned. As a result of this anger, Mosheh seems to forget the relevant laws, necessitating Elazar to became a temporary substitute.

Rashi's suggestion that Mosheh's anger caused him to become unable to instruct the people is based on Rashi's observation, which he elucidates in his following comments, that we consistently find that the rare occasions that Mosheh appears to err occur in conjunction with Mosheh becoming angry (indeed a rare occurrence for the one that the Torah describes as "the most humble of all men upon the face of the earth" -ibid. 12:3).

Why should anger have such an effect? Why would anger cause forgetfulness?

In his classical ethical work, Mesilath Yesharim (The Path of the Just), Rabbi Moshe Chayim Luzzato (RaMChaL), writes (Ch. 11):

"We shall now discuss anger... [The furious man] . . . becomes so filled with wrath that his heart is no longer with him and his judgment vanishes. A man such as he would destroy the entire world if it were within his power to do so, for he is not in any way directed by reason and is as devoid of sensibility as any predatory beast... He can easily commit any conceivable sin to which his rage brings him, for he is bound by nothing but his anger and he will go where it leads him."

While this statement concerns the extreme case, "the furious man," even of lesser anger Ramchal writes:

"This form of anger, too, is unquestionably evil, for much that is very damaging may proceed from him during his fit of anger and he will not afterwards be able to straighten what he has made crooked."

Anyone who has ever gotten really mad (which includes most of us) can certainly attest to the accuracy of the Ramchal's description. Any manifestation of anger, however, on whatever scale, will contain traces of these elements in proportion to the degree of the emotion. Therefore even the smallest degree of anger will impact one's intellectual equilibrium.

Anger clouds one's judgment, allowing the emotional side of the person to supersede the intellectual. How many times have we regretted things that we've said or done under the influence of anger? For this reason, Mosheh was deemed unfit to instruct the people in the laws relevant to the spoils of war. Since he had just become angered, his intellect was in some way hampered by the effects of that most pernicious emotion. Even the slightest anger of the most humble of all men rendered Mosheh incapable of accurately tranmitting the Divine Law.

Clearly, anger leads to error. We see this principal demonstrated in the errors of Mosheh himself, the humblest of all men! How much more so any of us! Let us strive to distance ourselves from this damaging emotion, and may the ensuing peace be for us a true redemption.